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This article is ridiculous. "It's so easy but nobody expected it to happen!" Most of freight is run off spreadsheets and over the phone or by email. Flexport i

• ncmncm 5y ago
  You appear to assume that the problem described is the problem faced. I bet we don't get a nice neat story about how changing stacking rules didn't actually solve the problem, and after a short time made it worse.
  • revel 5y ago
    I would love to hear why you think this won't help
    • CalChris 5y ago
      Because that two high rule doesn't apply to the port. Take a look at this photo. https://polb.com/ https://polb.com/ The port is already stacking five high. The two high rule is for outlying yards. Basically, it will help if it helps. We just don't know yet, but it seems like a really good+cheap idea.
  • CalChris 5y ago
    I completely agree. It is just too soon to tell. Moreover, this stacking rule won't change the port; it will change things in the City of Long Beach. I don't think it will make matters worse but I won't be surprised if it doesn't actually solve the problem. It just seems like a cheap+fast attempt at a solution which is good. There's a lot of narrative that's going into this discussion, an heroic visionary CEO, a bumbling politician. In fact, the mayor made the change as soon as it was brought up. But I really like Petersen's thread: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks? Modern finance with its obsession with "Return on Equity." https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1453753924960219145 https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1453753924960219145
    • ncmncm 5y ago
      At least, they will have a lot of yards with empty containers stacked five high, when LB doesn't want that. Then, once the yards are stacked high, if the inflow and outflow rate still do not match, the problem will remain, just with a lot of higher stacks.
    • throwaway81523 5y ago
      That seems to also be a disguised pitch against the proposed unrealized gains tax. Whether that tax is good or bad or has fixable problems, I don't know, but there was some clear self-interest going on in that tweet thread.
• saas_sam 5y ago
  Flexport's technology had nothing to do with this, though. The CEO literally took a boat ride around the bay and looked at what was happening + talked to some people. He did the thing everyone assumes public officials do, but who clearly are not doing.
  • erlapso 5y ago
    But the CEO has a different level of understanding of logistics compared to the major. They may be looking at the same port, but they see different things. The CEO saw bottlenecks like Neo sees the Matrix
    • kaesar14 5y ago
      Why doesn't the mayor of a city with one of America's most important ports call in experts like this the second trouble started? It was this easy and he never bothered to ask the experts?
      • gota 5y ago
        This is inching close to the conclusion that mandatory expert panels are required for government to function. But then you go back to the problem of "who determines who are the experts". Point in case, the anti-vaccine politicians dredge up the 1 out of a 1000 doctors that spouts whatever fits their narrative. Lots o people die gasping for air unnecessarily as a result... And we have no idea how to begin to solve that problem while keeping a functional democracy, it seems Sorry to bring in vaccines into the topic - it's just the clear parallel between these situations that I wanted to draw on. Experts are what you want them to be
        • tomc1985 5y ago
          Huh? Calling up your local shipping exec for a meeting is most definitely not forming "expert panels"
          • 5y ago
• dcow 5y ago
  I don't know. If it's such a problem how can the mayor not be concerned, appraised, and trying to solve the problem? The article says "everyone knew this was happening and didn't do anything". So I'm not sure it's fair to suggest that people simply didn't know and thank god Flexport with it's vested interest in improving logistics took a look".
• more_corn 5y ago
  It is quite reasonable to make fun of people who required a 2 container limit for aesthetic reasons which accidentally caused a major kink in the global supply chain. It was also inarguably effective to publicly shame them into reversing their decision.
  • gorbachev 5y ago
    Do you think the current mayor had anything to do with enacting the regulation to limit the stacking height?
  • p1mrx 5y ago
    If the limit had always been 6 instead of 2, wouldn't we have (1) smaller truck yards, and (2) the same problem with no easy solution?
    • revel 5y ago
      You can go to any port town in the US and you will see containers stacked up like tiny towns. The equipment to move the containers is usually the bottleneck not the yard space.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    I may be going against the grain here, but making fun of people and/or publicly shaming them, while it may temporarily make you feel better, tends to be counterproductive in the end.
  • djrogers 5y ago
    > which accidentally caused a major kink in the global supply chain Nope - you don’t get to blame a new problem on a 20+ yr old regulation. Changing this will likely help in the short term, but it’s not the cause of the problem.
• s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Has a causal relationship between the Flexport analysis and Garcia's order been established?
  • jlkuester7 5y ago
    I mean sure without confirmation from Garcia there is no "proof" that the Flexport tweets influenced his decision. But it seems like a reasonable conclusion given that both the problem and Garcia's power to implement the fix existed together for a long time, but he only acted (8hrs) after the Flexport tweets when viral....
    • s1artibartfast 5y ago
      The timeline seems so short, it makes me suspect. I would hope that the Mayors office would do some form of diligence before making the order. 8 hours just seems really fast for Tweet> Mayor notices > Expert review > Draft proposal > Order signed. It seems at least as likely to me that the timing is a coincidence or ,more cynically, Flexport knew the stacking was under review.
• defen 5y ago
  > This guy almost certainly didn't even realize he could do anything to fix the problem Isn't that alone an indictment of him or his organization (which, by extension, is an indictment of him)? Why did no one on his team tell him about the container backlog? If they did, why did they not suggest that he allow containers to be stacked higher? This isn't a new problem, it's been going on since at least March if not earlier.
  • revel 5y ago
    This kind of cross-cutting issue is very challenging for even the best run organizations to deal with. Local government is not equipped to randomly start calling in experts and directing large scale projects because we, collectively, have chosen not to fund and structure our government in a way that allows them to do so. Also consider for a minute how blindingly obvious it is, in retrospect, to know that containers can -- and should -- be stacked 3+ high vs. how hard it is to walk into a field of 2-stacks and know that they're being stacked inefficiently. Part of the challenge is informational: those that see the problem see it so obviously that they assume that there's a reason why the problem can't be fixed. Those that can't see the problem don't even realize there is a problem!
    • defen 5y ago
      > This kind of cross-cutting issue is very challenging for even the best run organizations to deal with Do you specifically mean local governments here when you say organizations? If he were the CEO of Long Beach, Inc, and you were a shareholder, would you consider any of this to be reasonable? > Also consider for a minute how blindingly obvious it is, in retrospect, to know that containers can -- and should -- be stacked 3+ high I don't believe that the mayor of Long Beach has never seen a fully-loaded container ship. A good first question might be "Why can we stack them 9-high on a ship that traverses the Pacific ocean but only 2-high on land"?
• ksdale 5y ago
  *A local city mayor who also happens to have one of the busiest ports in the world in his city. The back up is literally in the global news. It doesn't seem unreasonable for him to, at the very least, ask someone on his staff to give him a gigantic list of problems at the port and spend quite a lot of time figuring out which problems he had the power to solve. He probably speaks at least monthly, if not weekly, with who knows how many people connected with the port. I agree that the fact it was changed so quickly should be celebrated, but it also gives me pause to think about just how many things could instantly be improved if the people with the power sat up and paid attention.
• whateveracct 5y ago
  > Referring to him diminutively as a bureaucrat is unfair. HNers have pretty much no understanding or respect for what it means to realistically be in public service. They treat the realities as unfortunate errors ripe for optimization.
  • IncRnd 5y ago
    You should look up the word bureaucrat. It was used correctly in the article.
    • iudqnolq 5y ago
      A mayor isn't a bureaucrat by most definitions. Webster: Bureaucrat: A member of a bureaucracy Bureaucracy: a large group of people who are involved in running a government but who are not elected https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucracy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucracy
      • IncRnd 5y ago
        Your definition from websters is called "the essential meaning" and is literally not the dictionary definition. It is very similar to using definitions from what google returns at the top of a search page - kind of useful but not the same as the definition of the word. Look below that in the next section. There you will find the definition of bureaucracy. That section is called "Full Definition of bureaucracy" 1a: a body of nonelected government officials b: an administrative policy-making group 2: government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority 3: a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation
  • ksdale 5y ago
    I don't think this is unique to HNers talking about government, the reverse is also true, with many government officials assuming that most businesses are awash in cash that they can use to solve any problem (true of many businesses to be sure, but in the same way that government officials are scoring own goals, sometimes, not universally).
• IncRnd 5y ago
  That is the definition of the word bureaucrat, which was absolutely used in a fair manner to describe the person who caused this issue. Reason 4 of the cause is what you should rail against: "This rule was created, and I am not making this up, because it was decided that higher stacks were not sufficiently aesthetically pleasing."
  • ncmncm 5y ago
    And, what do you imagine are the odds that the person charged with enforcing the rule also made the rule?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• ramblenode 5y ago
  > Referring to him diminutively as a bureaucrat is unfair. This guy almost certainly didn't even realize he could do anything to fix the problem... That's kind of the heart of the perennial frustration with bureaucracy: it's nobody's fault, so nothing gets done.