I'm having trouble understanding the premise here.<p>> Why is there only one crane for every 50–100 trucks at every port in America? No ‘expert’ will answer this question.<p>Cranes should be THE bottleneck. They are massive, expensive and land intensive. Maybe LA needs more cranes, but it doesn't sound like that is the issue. The author states the problem is a trucker problem, "lines to get in, lines to get out" but that isn't a crane problem.<p>The author gets paid by the hour, others get paid by the job, job duration is variable and undefined, so wages are undefined. One solution is to pay drivers more, and pay them per hour. I've had containers full of goods waiting somewhere around the port of LA in the last year. If there were way to pay more to move them on through the system, I'd gladly pay, but its a giant black box.<p>My conjecture is that the REAL real issue is a very complicated and embedded union vs non-union vs contractor vs fed government vs state govt vs local govt pissing contest that could all be circumvented by federal government investing in alternative ports around the US border. Port of Louisiana, Port of Houston, Ports of Florida in the gulf. Lots of alternatives, and we are all sitting around like Port of LA is the sole option. Separately, I dont understand why Mexico isn't more prominent in container transport moved via trains into Texas.
Watching the port of Los Angeles & Long Beach, since the COVID pandemic began, the growing backlog of container ships waiting outside the port has been obvious. But this article helps explain the strange part, which is that the shipping backlog has been getting <i>worse</i> even as
COVID cases & restrictions have steadily proved in California.<p>I can't speak to whether this explanation is correct, but it's better than literally anything I've heard so far.
Hopefully we can use this failure of globalization to finally take a step back and acknowledge globalization has been a net-negative for the majority of Americans. Instead of trying to band-aid globalization to make a minority rich, how about we reduce the need for so much international shipping in the first place?
<i>> It’s important to understand what the cost implications are for consumers with this lack of supply in the supply chain.</i><p>The sea is full of ships with 1000's of containers full of goods.<p>The port is full of containers with goods.<p>The warehouses are full of goods and have containers sitting around in the lots or on the streets, also full.<p>Where is the lack of supply exactly?
From the article: "So when the coastal ports started getting clogged up last spring due to the impacts of COVID on business everywhere, drivers started refusing to show up. Congestion got so bad that instead of being able to do three loads a day, they could only do one."<p>I could not make the connection from the first sentence to the second. If drivers are not showing up, congestion (in the lines for drivers) should go down, shouldn't it?
There are plans to fine companies for slow moving freight (<a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/10/25/ports-of-los-angeles-long-beach-to-fine-companies-for-slow-container-movement/" rel="nofollow">https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/10/25/ports-of-los-ange...</a>).<p>Additionally the east coast has been ramping up capacity for years. The port of Baltimore is experience no such slow-down and just added more cranes. It is one of the fastest growing ports in the nation.
I've been in international air freight for over 15 years, I don't see things getting even remotely "back to normal" until 2023, if it doesn't continue to worsen before getting better.