California Port’s 24-Hour Operation Is Going Unused

Funny how they're trying to make things flow now but any other time they could care less. Let that Chinese trash sink to the bottom of the sea. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll take California with them.

 

First problem is where do you find the extra drivers.

Second is where you find the land to put the trailers.

Third is all the extra miles getting to the yard.

Even ignoring all of that, you'd just move the bottleneck downstream.

 

Drivers pick up 24/7. That is not the issue. As was pointed out by the one truck company. You have to make an appointment. But if you don't have the right chassis. They want. They won't give you an appointment. So right now. Being open 24 hours is useless.

 

Don’t the containers that come out of the west coast, south East and other places all come on rail.

 

Yes

 

Not worth it for anyone to hire more employees at this point to later fire them because the backlog has ended.

Also

I’m surprised containers and chassis haven’t been standardized yet.

 

reroute the ships to other ports..why sit out there and wait?

 

DeSantis has said ships are welcome to unload in Florida.
Florida tries to lure ships waiting at backlogged California ports

 

A significant number of those ships can't fit into other ports.

Even if it fits, moving the ship to another port won't necessarily mean the ship is off loaded any faster or that the cargo gets to it's destination any faster.

I don't know much about the port/rail infrastructure on the West Coast, but for arguments sake let's use Chicago, Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Bay City, MI. Say Chicago's port is backed up - just move the ship up to Milwaukee - it's got plenty of capacity to handle the extra freight. The problem is that once off loaded, most of that freight still has to move through Chicago. All you've done is move the bottle neck from the port to the rail heads.

Ok, let's use Green Bay instead, it's got port facilities right? That's what our Town Council likes to say, but not really. We'd struggle to handle the off load, not to mention the lack of chassis and the complete lack of cross dock facilities to take freight from ocean containers on to road trailers or intermodal boxes. Even if the off load wasn't a problem, half of the freight would still have to route through Chicago.

Ok, let's go farther afield to Bay City, MI or Detroit. Detroit is already running at capacity, so you'd have to wait there. Bay City has the capacity and capabilities and can get everything off loaded, but it's added 500 miles of transit to all of those loads, and you guessed it - 1/3 have to go through Chicago anyways so you're back to the original bottle neck.

@AModelCat posted that DeSantis wants to get ships to unload there - how long does it take to move a ship from LA to Miami? How much does it cost to transit the Panama Canal (which includes an average 10 day wait time)?

We can blame lots of individual things - lazy crane operators, labor 'shortages' at warehouses, the truck driver port strike back in April (?), rail road inadequacy, rail road policies, driver 'shortages'. The real "PROBLEM" is that there's "too much" freight. Port of LA is hitting record levels of volume. The Cass Freight Index is up 15% year over year and about 1% compared to 2019 levels.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/cas...olumes-at-pre-pandemic-levels-costs-rise.html
https://www.fitchratings.com/resear...es-cause-bottlenecks-boost-revenue-29-07-2021

There is no simple solution.

 

Unlike CA. FL ports have been modernized. We've spent over a billion dollars doing that. We've already taken backlogged ships from Savannah. Our ports are big enough.