A 20-year old Class A truck driver, Ryan Johnson, published an article on Medium explaining that “nothing is going to change in the shipping industry.” After you read this, you will feel helpless. The crisis is very serious.
First, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers. There are long lines to get in, to wait, and to get out. One line alone can take eight hours of waiting. Most port drivers are not paid by the hours, they’re ‘independent contractors’, leased onto a carrier who is paying them by the load. They only get paid a set amount no matter how long they wait.
When COV hit and they could only handle about 2/3rds of what they handled before, they took a huge pay cut. They were working 12 hours a day.
Earlier this summer, railways shut down their yards and they haven’t caught up. There are lots of shortages. One critical shortage is the container chassis (the trailer the container sits on). They are essential but there is a backlog. Drivers sit around, sometimes for days, waiting.
Containers are pulled out of ports and dropped anywhere because ports are desperate to get them out so they can unload new boats. When this happens, there is no plan. Eventually, the ports will not be able to move the containers. The priority is not delivery, it’s to clear the ports.
When containers do get to warehouses, they have to be unloaded by hand since there are no pallets, and the warehouses laid off people when the pandemic hit and they are short-staffed.
What used to take 20-30 minutes now takes 3-4 hours.
Freight drivers cannot pick up as much freight as they used to and freight simply isn’t moving.
Most freight moves cheaply but those days are coming to an end.
Owners of shipping and carrier companies won’t invest in the needed infrastructure because they make more money this way.
Mr. Johnson writes, “What we have is a system with a limited amount of trucks and qualified drivers, many of whom are already working 14 hours a day (legally, the maximum they can), and now the supposed fix is to have them work 24 hours a day, every day, and not stop until the backlog is cleared. It’s not going to happen. It is not physically possible. There is no “cavalry” coming. No trucking companies are going to pay to register their trucks to haul containers for something that is supposedly so “short term,” because these same companies can get higher rate loads outside the ports. There is no extra capacity to be had, and it makes NO difference anyway because If you can’t get a container unloaded at a warehouse, having drivers work 24/7/365 solves nothing.
“What it will truly take to fix this problem is to run EVERYTHING 24/7: ports (both coastal and domestic), trucks, and warehouses. We need tens of thousands more chassis, and a much greater capacity in trucking.
Many supply chain workers are paid minimum wages and any point that fails bottlenecks the whole system. Truckers aren’t going to work without guaranteed wages or facing a possible loss of money.
There are no laws compelling the companies to do anything and every business is reliant on transportation.
No one in the supply chain wants to pay to fix it.
“At the point we are at now, things are so backed up that the backups THEMSELVES are causing container companies, ports, warehouses, and trucking companies to charge massive rate increases for doing literally NOTHING. Container companies have already decreased the maximum allowable times before containers have to be back to the port, and if the congestion is so bad that you can’t get the container back into the port when it is due, the container company can charge massive late fees. The ports themselves will start charging massive storage fees for not getting containers out on time — storage charges alone can run into thousands of dollars a day. Warehouses can charge massive premiums for their services, and so can trucking companies. Chronic understaffing has led to this problem, but it is allowing these same companies to charge ten times more for regular services. Since they’re not paying the workers any more than they did last year or five years ago, the whole industry sits back and cashes in on the mess it created. In fact, the more things are backed up, the more every point of the supply chain cashes in. There is literally NO incentive to change, even if it means consumers have to do holiday shopping in July and pay triple for shipping.”
He doesn’t see any hope and predicts it will get a lot worse. Meanwhile, our government is planning reparations for illegal aliens and they pour in by the millions. Money is going for ridiculous fake infrastructure and they waste time on meaningless laws that won’t help anyone but a handful of Democrat voting blocs. And what is Biden doing? Nothing! He doesn’t even know or care what the problem is. All he worries about is making truckers buy electric trucks they can’t afford or use efficiently.
Read the article on this link.
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There’s a lot of blame to go around for the present Supply Chain Problems. One in the Just in Time, with no excess capacity management that has infected America Business. With no excess capacity, all it takes is a small hiccup to tumble the house of cards. Long term that thinking destroys a business.
Next is the Unions. Unions do everything they can to cripple automation. Unions cause a huge inefficiency in America Industry. One of the reasons we don’t manufacture in America is Unions. We can easily compete with China, but we will need massive automation and a STEM educated work force. Creating Social Justice Warriors is not education, creating Engineers is Education. We don’t create Engineers because there are almost no Engineers in the school system. You can blame the Teachers Unions for this. In Public schools 50% of cost is overhead. We need to strip schools of do nothing Liberal Arts Degree Administrators and use that money to hire Engineers to teach STEM. In a modern world Liberal Arts Degrees as nearly worthless. Universities should not have undergraduate programs in Liberal Arts, that is why a 2 year Associates Degree in a science field will put a lot more food on your table.
Everything goes back to education. Just 100 years ago, an 8th grade education would get you a good job. Today a College Graduate is less “educated” than the 8th Grader of a hundred years ago. Just look at how many College Graduates there are who can’t do basic math or spell without a Smart Phone. They don’t know History or Geography. Hell, they can’t even change a tire and some can’t change a light bulb safely. That’s because they are not being taught even basic science and how to use the hands. We could educate technicians and even field engineers by the 12th grade, but Teacher’s Unions and Colleges would fight this until hell freezes over. The education elite are not going to give up their do nothing 6 figure cushy gigs in Universities and Government.
Most of America’s problems can be traced back to Big Government. Universities control education and not parents, Unions protect obsolete jobs, and taxes are ridiculous because of a Bloated Federal Government that picks winners and losers. For half of America’s History, the Federal Government was 4% of the GDP. Why is it over 30% today controlling every aspect of our lives? Today the Federal Government’s main function has become Redistribution of Wealth – mostly to the do nothing rich. Government used to promote things like the Continental Railroad. The last big thing the U.S. Government promoted was putting a man on the Moon and since then America has been in decline even when the Space Race gave us the technology that is the core of everything modern in America today.
To untangle the mess we are in to day, the first thing we need to do is to greatly downsize the Federal Government back to 4% or 5% of GDP and curtail most of it’s regulatory power. All Entitlements need to be completely phased out in 3 years. Social Security needs be put back in a lock box. We need to return State’s Right. To do this, both the 16th and 17th Amendments need to be repealed. These Amendments give the Federal Government too much power and are the core reason that the Federal Government expanded and got out of control. We are supposed to be the United States of America, not the American Oligarchy. Large Federal Governments centralize all activity and today unions influence too much of the Government. The Present Supply Problems is a direct result of far too much centralization and Federal Government Regulation that create bottle necks and overhead to everything.
The best laid plans of mice and men.
The flick of the switch best reset ever forward won’t go so smoothly either.
Luckily we live in a non shopping desert so you can find whatever you need if driving is not a bother.
Prices may vary and it is very greedy of das grocery to have the best year ever (profits) and still raise the prices on almost everything.
Sneaking ten cents up to a dollar price increase on items without any notice.
First, I have NO RESPECT for some 20-year-old newbie behind the wheel! He doesn’t belong there! He has a provisional license at best. The minimum age is 21 to haul interstate freight.
2nd, this little twerp should shut his yappie piehole and get some experience before writing ANYTHING! I’d fire his ass if he worked for my company.
The supply chain is more comicated than this toddler knows. The fact is, what he described is called EVERYDAY LIFE at every shipping and rail port across the country! There is nothing unusual going on, other than this is the first time this little boy is experiencing this issue instead of playing at recess at school.
Ports are always backed up. Containers are the lowest paid gig in trucking because the bulk of the money is taken by railroads, who then kick a few peanuts to the trucking companies. A pay solution would be to stop the theft by the railroads and establish a new pay scale industry-wide. Wouldn’t take much to do it, but every single container cimpany in existence is just as crooked as the railroads!
The problem with the supply chain isn’t trucks waiting at gates. For decades, this happens daily at ports, grain elevators, and warehouses everywhere. The problem is now we have these lidicrous covid limitations and shutdowns. The left demonizes anyone who chooses freedom over the death dose, clot shot, St Peter Poke, etc. Many drivers refuse, and ports & warehouses, and trucking companies are institutiing the mortal madates.
Now we have a fraction of the workers in ports and warehouses. Everyone has to wear the monkey mask of obedience to leftist overlords, and stay 6 feet apart, though no science is behind eitger of those things. At warehouses, instead of filling 50 or 100 dock doors with trucks, they now fill every other door, because a snifflr bug that kills 0.03% of people infected causes fear and panic, even though the common flu kills 0.08%.
Industry-wide, the leftist scum in this country are making it harder and harder to just stock shelves or get freight moving. Keep in mind also that U.S. ports are controlled by unions that have forced us into LAST place in the entire world for ports capacity and speed. South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, India, and even Brazil (and many others) have ports that can handle 5-10 times as many containers in a fraction of the time.
Want the supply chain crises solved forever? Here’s the solution: 1) lift these ludicrous restrictions from that stupid flu bug. 2) break the union leftist control on all major ports, railroads, trucking companies, and warehouses with Right To Work laws. 3) Change the pay scale for container freight and force the railroads to take a smaller percentage. 5) Have congress invest money in REAL INFRASTRUCTURE, expanding all rail ports, and greatly expanding the size and capacity of all deep water ports, instead of throwing money at illegal aliens (who should all be shot for attempting to enter the US illegally). 6) Secure all borders. And MOST importantly, 7) F**K JOE BIDEN!!!
Please go easy on me for the stupid spelling errors. Huge hands, tiny keyboard… up all night…
Then there is the ridiculous CAFE regs on trucks. The idiots in CA have made independent truckers a thing of the past via more regs. Your list is good and is illustrative of why this administration is in need of being gone. And the folks in CA need to get rid of that dictator in Sacramento. Just sayin’.