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I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions in this thread. >It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The

I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions in this thread. >It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It’s a true traffic jam This seems like definitely not the real bottleneck. You have to ask yourself, "why is there no space to put new containers" and the answer is (probably) "well we don't have enough trucks to move the ones we have off the docks". Why don't you have enough trucks? This is where the root cause for the bottleneck probably splits. I'm speculating here, but we either don't have enough physical trucks (I doubt this) or we don't have enough labor to load the containers on the trucks and actually drive them off the dock. Which is probably the most important question: why don't you have enough labor? I can venture a guess[1]. >Port truckers are typically independent contractors, without the benefits and protections of unionized transport sectors or even major companies with shipping divisions, like Amazon.com Inc. Their jobs require them to line up for hours to pick up cargo, and they’re paid only when they move it. [Emphasis mine] >“The port truck driver, for decades now, has basically been the slack adjuster in the whole system,” said Steve Viscelli, an economic sociologist with the University of Pennsylvania who studies labor markets and supply chains. The entire system, he said, is built around free labor from truck drivers as they wait for containers. Cut checks to these people, and get those containers off the docks. I feel like we're living through some Black Mirror version of The Wire Season 2. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-21/biden-tackles-supply-chain-crisis-with-few-tools-clock-ticking?srnd=premium&sref=vuYGislZ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-21/biden-tac... Edit: added the larger context for the Bloomberg article quote

edmundsauto 5y ago
Doesn’t the thread say that there is nowhere to unload containers to, even if there was labor? That seems like what’s causing the truck shortage - it’s not a truck shortage, it’s an empty truck shortage.
- remarkEon 5y ago
  I think that point in the thread was really about the lack of chassis on which to move the containers. That part I'm inclined to agree with to a certain extent, but then you're back to asking why there aren't enough chassis, and I'm back to asking why there are still full containers on the docks that can accept stacking empties higher than 2x.
  - jljljl 5y ago
    It sounds like the chassis traditionally will arrive with an empty container, and then swap it for a full container. They can't do that now if here isn't a place to drop the container. Temporarily lifting the zoning restrictions + employing chassis solely to move containers out of the yard (instead of swapping them for empties) seems like the fastest fix
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      This is my understanding. The ports are "backed up" in the biological sense.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    Does "chassis" ~= "truck"? It seems like maybe a technical, specific term that I don't understand.
    - HaGoijer 5y ago
      A chassis is the trailer to carry the container. The truck pulls the trailer/chassis. Often chassis dont have cranes to (un)load containers themselves and therefore require cranes (capex heavy assets). Such cranes aren't everywhere/in surplus.
vilppuvuorinen 5y ago
Every available chassis and inch of yard space is filled with empty containers. Maybe the labor deficit is in the production of exportable goods that would turn the empty containers into full containers on their way out of the docks. There's an ongoing world wide (minus some regions) container shortage going on at the same time.
- fulafel 5y ago
  Lots of (most?) places have permanent imbalances in # of full containers imported vs exported, it just means empty containers are shipped out or in.
spiffytech 5y ago
> Why don't you have enough trucks? This is addressed later in the thread. Normally, many trucks haul containers to their destination, unload the container, then return it empty to the port, pull it off the trailer, and haul away another loaded container. But the port is too full to accept empty containers, and zoning laws mean truck companies have already maxed out their own container holding areas. This leaves enormous numbers of truck trailers sitting idle, waiting for somewhere to put the empties they're holding before they can pick up more goods to haul.
- remarkEon 5y ago
  I agree with you, some emergency zoning changes need to happen, but my inclination is still to think that'll end up being a short term bottleneck and it'll move further down the supply chain when/if that happens. Needs to be an all hands on deck (no pun intended) approach.
  - more_corn 5y ago
    Absolutely, clearing a bottleneck shifts the bottleneck. Our options are 1) Do nothing and let the current situation continue to deteriorate 2) Clear the existing bottleneck and then clear the next one.
- nradov 5y ago
  Would it make sense to clear the jam by scrapping some of empty containers for steel recycling?
  - more_corn 5y ago
    No. Those containers are needed. Scrapping them would cause a shortage of containers bottleneck two weeks after clearing this bottleneck. We simply need to take the containers off the trucks, but are not allowed due to zoning.
  - doodlebugging 5y ago
    Containers (8'x40' single-trip) were selling at auction over the last few years for $4000-5500. At auction in the last month I have seen the same item sell for $10000-14000. Accepting scrap prices for a good container is a losing deal right now when the market obviously has room for them at a much higher price.
qeternity 5y ago
No, this is not the likely root cause for reasons another commenter notes. But I want to point something out: ports and logistics infrastructure are the most unionized, protected industries that exist. The truckers may not be, but the rest of the value chain is, often resulting in huge inefficiencies. You note something like truckers waiting in lines for hours but only getting paid when they move the goods. 1) they are waiting in line for hours because unions strictly control the amount of labor in ports (these manual labor jobs often pay low-mid six figures) and 2) driver’s simply factor these types of costs and many others into their prices. Owner operators aren’t paid hourly, like millions of other business owners. This is absolutely not where the current issues lie.
- jljljl 5y ago
  I don't think this matches what the thread is saying. Longshoremen are highly unionized, but they are not the bottleneck -- they are blocked because they have nowhere to put the containers they unload. Fixing the problem requires identifying somewhere to place the empty containers, and arranging transport to move those containers out as quickly as possible
  - qeternity 5y ago
    I’m not saying it’s the problem now. I’m saying it’s been a problem in the last. But the current problem is absolutely not due to truckers being non union.
    - fieldcny 5y ago
      Seems like your comment was just an attempt to dunk on a group of people you seem to believe are over paid. You have no real facts or information about how much port workers make and you present no evidence that rules that you may deem to be “inefficient” aren’t in place for safety reasons. You also seem to ignore the fact that most manual labor jobs have to provide enough income for a worker while they are able to physically engage in the work to provide for the significantly longer period of time their bodies won’t be able to do the work. Everyone in this country seems to think they know exactly how much everyone else should make and surprisingly they always think others are over paid. It’s especially comical when it’s coming from tech folks where an L7 sitting at FB can be pulling down seven figures and could sit in their aeron chairs working till they are 80, we should all recognize the privilege we have in that regard
hammock 5y ago
Owner-operators are actually not completely allowed in California. And trucks for the most part must be very new to comply with California emissions requirements. The "labor shortage" is in part aggravated by these regulations. >Danielle Inman, a spokesperson for the National Retail Foundation, which has lobbied for California to overturn AB 5, told PolitiFact that the state’s regulations on trucking impact the availability of drivers and trucks >(AB 5) makes it nearly impossible for truck drivers to be independent contractors >At the time AB 5 passed, industry experts said that some owner-operators sought work elsewhere. Some fleets, too, chose to stop doing business with owner-operators in California. And >To meet the current clean air regulations, the state Department of Motor Vehicles blocks new registrations of any oversized vehicles older than 2011 — or those with engines manufactured before 2010. >Some trucking companies have used the regulations to pressure drivers to buy newer rigs, and some in the industry have claimed that, while not necessarily the cause of the backlog, this kind of policy doesn't help.
- afuchs 5y ago
  > Owner-operators are actually not completely allowed in California. And trucks for the most part must be very new to comply with California emissions requirements. The "labor shortage" is in part aggravated by these regulations. ... Both of these claims have been disputed by fact checking organizations: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/19/facebook-posts/californias-trucking-regulations-may-have-had-impa/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/19/facebook-p...
  - swiley 5y ago
    Because we all know how those don't need to be fact checked.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - hammock 5y ago
    My quotes are from the very article you linked, man.
thephyber 5y ago
The truck driver is a part of the solution, but not to any of the primary issues right now. Just saying “give truck drivers more compensation and better working conditions” doesn’t fix the fact that their destinations aren’t open 24/7 so keeping the ports open for an extra shift doesn’t do much right now. It doesn’t fix the fact that the truck driver depends on someone else to take their container and/or chassis at the end of a delivery and many delivery depots can’t or won’t right now. And the biggest asymmetry right now has nothing directly to do with truck drivers. There is a shortage of empty containers in East Asia and a glut in the US. Container ships aren’t waiting in the US ports to load up with empty containers, so thyme are exacerbating the issue.
lugged 5y ago
It's in the Twitter thread, to do a port pickup you have to wait days at the port because they're so slow, (because of the traffic jam of containers), truckers are choosing to do pickups elsewhere that doesn't involve waiting for two days to get their load on. They're paid by the load, so sitting idle is a non option.
ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
>we either don't have enough physical trucks (I doubt this) There was a reddit thread in the truckers group around a year back which literally said this: there are not enough physical trucks since trucks have to been maintained and the spare parts for it are not making their way across border fast enough. This meant that owners have to buy new trucks to compensate for their broken down trucks and leading to escalation of costs which means they expect the same person to work 2x to make up for it.
thephyber 5y ago
> Why don't you have enough trucks? Trucks are plentiful. Trailer empty chassis are not. Your assumption that truck labor is in short supply is a derivative of your misunderstanding of the difference between the trucks and the chassis. The truck is the thing with the Diesel engine, the cab, and the truck driver. It can detach the trailer and pick up a new trailer. The thread clearly identifies the “empty chassis” (the trailer with wheels that is capable of mounting a standard container on top) as one of the scarce items.

edmundsauto 5y ago

Doesn’t the thread say that there is nowhere to unload containers to, even if there was labor? That seems like what’s causing the truck shortage - it’s not a truck shortage, it’s an empty truck shortage.

remarkEon 5y ago
I think that point in the thread was really about the lack of chassis on which to move the containers. That part I'm inclined to agree with to a certain extent, but then you're back to asking why there aren't enough chassis, and I'm back to asking why there are still full containers on the docks that can accept stacking empties higher than 2x.
- jljljl 5y ago
  It sounds like the chassis traditionally will arrive with an empty container, and then swap it for a full container. They can't do that now if here isn't a place to drop the container. Temporarily lifting the zoning restrictions + employing chassis solely to move containers out of the yard (instead of swapping them for empties) seems like the fastest fix
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    This is my understanding. The ports are "backed up" in the biological sense.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  Does "chassis" ~= "truck"? It seems like maybe a technical, specific term that I don't understand.
  - HaGoijer 5y ago
    A chassis is the trailer to carry the container. The truck pulls the trailer/chassis. Often chassis dont have cranes to (un)load containers themselves and therefore require cranes (capex heavy assets). Such cranes aren't everywhere/in surplus.

vilppuvuorinen 5y ago

Every available chassis and inch of yard space is filled with empty containers. Maybe the labor deficit is in the production of exportable goods that would turn the empty containers into full containers on their way out of the docks. There's an ongoing world wide (minus some regions) container shortage going on at the same time.

fulafel 5y ago
Lots of (most?) places have permanent imbalances in # of full containers imported vs exported, it just means empty containers are shipped out or in.

spiffytech 5y ago

> Why don't you have enough trucks? This is addressed later in the thread. Normally, many trucks haul containers to their destination, unload the container, then return it empty to the port, pull it off the trailer, and haul away another loaded container. But the port is too full to accept empty containers, and zoning laws mean truck companies have already maxed out their own container holding areas. This leaves enormous numbers of truck trailers sitting idle, waiting for somewhere to put the empties they're holding before they can pick up more goods to haul.

remarkEon 5y ago
I agree with you, some emergency zoning changes need to happen, but my inclination is still to think that'll end up being a short term bottleneck and it'll move further down the supply chain when/if that happens. Needs to be an all hands on deck (no pun intended) approach.
- more_corn 5y ago
  Absolutely, clearing a bottleneck shifts the bottleneck. Our options are 1) Do nothing and let the current situation continue to deteriorate 2) Clear the existing bottleneck and then clear the next one.
nradov 5y ago
Would it make sense to clear the jam by scrapping some of empty containers for steel recycling?
- more_corn 5y ago
  No. Those containers are needed. Scrapping them would cause a shortage of containers bottleneck two weeks after clearing this bottleneck. We simply need to take the containers off the trucks, but are not allowed due to zoning.
- doodlebugging 5y ago
  Containers (8'x40' single-trip) were selling at auction over the last few years for $4000-5500. At auction in the last month I have seen the same item sell for $10000-14000. Accepting scrap prices for a good container is a losing deal right now when the market obviously has room for them at a much higher price.

qeternity 5y ago

No, this is not the likely root cause for reasons another commenter notes. But I want to point something out: ports and logistics infrastructure are the most unionized, protected industries that exist. The truckers may not be, but the rest of the value chain is, often resulting in huge inefficiencies. You note something like truckers waiting in lines for hours but only getting paid when they move the goods. 1) they are waiting in line for hours because unions strictly control the amount of labor in ports (these manual labor jobs often pay low-mid six figures) and 2) driver’s simply factor these types of costs and many others into their prices. Owner operators aren’t paid hourly, like millions of other business owners. This is absolutely not where the current issues lie.

jljljl 5y ago
I don't think this matches what the thread is saying. Longshoremen are highly unionized, but they are not the bottleneck -- they are blocked because they have nowhere to put the containers they unload. Fixing the problem requires identifying somewhere to place the empty containers, and arranging transport to move those containers out as quickly as possible
- qeternity 5y ago
  I’m not saying it’s the problem now. I’m saying it’s been a problem in the last. But the current problem is absolutely not due to truckers being non union.
  - fieldcny 5y ago
    Seems like your comment was just an attempt to dunk on a group of people you seem to believe are over paid. You have no real facts or information about how much port workers make and you present no evidence that rules that you may deem to be “inefficient” aren’t in place for safety reasons. You also seem to ignore the fact that most manual labor jobs have to provide enough income for a worker while they are able to physically engage in the work to provide for the significantly longer period of time their bodies won’t be able to do the work. Everyone in this country seems to think they know exactly how much everyone else should make and surprisingly they always think others are over paid. It’s especially comical when it’s coming from tech folks where an L7 sitting at FB can be pulling down seven figures and could sit in their aeron chairs working till they are 80, we should all recognize the privilege we have in that regard

hammock 5y ago

Owner-operators are actually not completely allowed in California. And trucks for the most part must be very new to comply with California emissions requirements. The "labor shortage" is in part aggravated by these regulations. >Danielle Inman, a spokesperson for the National Retail Foundation, which has lobbied for California to overturn AB 5, told PolitiFact that the state’s regulations on trucking impact the availability of drivers and trucks >(AB 5) makes it nearly impossible for truck drivers to be independent contractors >At the time AB 5 passed, industry experts said that some owner-operators sought work elsewhere. Some fleets, too, chose to stop doing business with owner-operators in California. And >To meet the current clean air regulations, the state Department of Motor Vehicles blocks new registrations of any oversized vehicles older than 2011 — or those with engines manufactured before 2010. >Some trucking companies have used the regulations to pressure drivers to buy newer rigs, and some in the industry have claimed that, while not necessarily the cause of the backlog, this kind of policy doesn't help.

afuchs 5y ago
> Owner-operators are actually not completely allowed in California. And trucks for the most part must be very new to comply with California emissions requirements. The "labor shortage" is in part aggravated by these regulations. ... Both of these claims have been disputed by fact checking organizations: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/19/facebook-posts/californias-trucking-regulations-may-have-had-impa/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/19/facebook-p...
- swiley 5y ago
  Because we all know how those don't need to be fact checked.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- hammock 5y ago
  My quotes are from the very article you linked, man.

thephyber 5y ago

The truck driver is a part of the solution, but not to any of the primary issues right now. Just saying “give truck drivers more compensation and better working conditions” doesn’t fix the fact that their destinations aren’t open 24/7 so keeping the ports open for an extra shift doesn’t do much right now. It doesn’t fix the fact that the truck driver depends on someone else to take their container and/or chassis at the end of a delivery and many delivery depots can’t or won’t right now. And the biggest asymmetry right now has nothing directly to do with truck drivers. There is a shortage of empty containers in East Asia and a glut in the US. Container ships aren’t waiting in the US ports to load up with empty containers, so thyme are exacerbating the issue.

lugged 5y ago

It's in the Twitter thread, to do a port pickup you have to wait days at the port because they're so slow, (because of the traffic jam of containers), truckers are choosing to do pickups elsewhere that doesn't involve waiting for two days to get their load on. They're paid by the load, so sitting idle is a non option.

ganeshkrishnan 5y ago

>we either don't have enough physical trucks (I doubt this) There was a reddit thread in the truckers group around a year back which literally said this: there are not enough physical trucks since trucks have to been maintained and the spare parts for it are not making their way across border fast enough. This meant that owners have to buy new trucks to compensate for their broken down trucks and leading to escalation of costs which means they expect the same person to work 2x to make up for it.

thephyber 5y ago

> Why don't you have enough trucks? Trucks are plentiful. Trailer empty chassis are not. Your assumption that truck labor is in short supply is a derivative of your misunderstanding of the difference between the trucks and the chassis. The truck is the thing with the Diesel engine, the cab, and the truck driver. It can detach the trailer and pick up a new trailer. The thread clearly identifies the “empty chassis” (the trailer with wheels that is capable of mounting a standard container on top) as one of the scarce items.