4 ms·

> We were paying $30K to move a container that used to cost $2K. You can bet that cost had to be passed on to customers. And the result? Less orders. Less work.

> We were paying $30K to move a container that used to cost $2K. You can bet that cost had to be passed on to customers. And the result? Less orders. Less work. We had to let people go. If it's so easy, a new player will enter the market If it's truly too expensive to ship the goods you want, you need to stop sourcing things astronomically far to be efficient. The same economic effect causing the the steel factory to be down the river from the mines is still in play.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
> If it's truly too expensive to ship the goods you want, you need to stop sourcing things astronomically far to be efficient. I saw a picture of canned peaches that said the peaches were grown in Argentina and canned in Vietnam. Those peaches made two trips across the Pacific just to get on a grocery store shelf in America. It's ridiculous.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  Right, let the free market work and it will. If you find yourself swimming against the tide of the market, you are either going to get very rich or very poor. Generally best to stay in your lane.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    It was "the free market" that gave us peaches travelling twice across the Pacific to get to a grocery store. Massively lower labor costs in two countries, and lack of the infrastructure in one of them: the typical scenario for capital to seek out these energetically absurd but (temporarily) profitable arrangements.
    - calvinmorrison 3y ago
      Offset by international tensions, Panama canal backups etc. These are all economic costs. Keep up or die
    - maxerickson 3y ago
      I already posted a comment saying something like this to the story here, but it's likely enough that the energy the consumer spends bring the can of peaches home exceeds the energy used to get it to the store. Where's absurd defined?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        The fact that mass-scale transportation of goods means that the amortized cost/impact per can of peaches is small doesn't invalidate the point that mass-scale transportation of goods is energetically ridiculous and likely adds about 3% of global greenhouse gases. Sometimes the amortized cost per unit isn't the important point.
        maxerickson 3y ago
        Of course the amortized cost is important. If people eat a lot of steak and one steak is ten years of peaches, we should focus on the steak!
        PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        "Hey everyone, I know the world is doing just fine, but I have this new idea. We'll burn giga-joules of energy every year shipping stuff all over the place, but not to worry, because the joules-per-can-of-peaches is hardly anything". OK, then.
        maxerickson 3y ago
        Correct, even if the world isn't doing fine.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        Thankfully we don't have to choose between dealing with the insanity of shipping everything everywhere six times during production to take advantage of cheap labor and lax regulation somewhere, and steak production being terrible for the environment. We can get rid of ALL the stupid things that are "profitable" to a few middlemen but nobody else.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  A video about how “Grown in Argentina, Packed in Thailand” actually ends up making sense https://youtu.be/0aH3ZTTkGAs https://youtu.be/0aH3ZTTkGAs The summary is that pears must be picked 1-2 weeks before they are ripe and are allowed to ripen under refrigeration (otherwise the inside ripens first and they get mushy). Instead of running air conditioners, a ship running in cold water provides “free” air conditioning. The biggest market for room-temperature stable fruit in syrup is south east Asia, so packing in Thailand is closest to the biggest customer base. And with the scale they have there, it makes sense to just pack the fruit for the smaller markets like the US at the same place instead of creating secondary supply chains for each market.
robomartin 3y ago
1> If it's so easy, a new player will enter the market 2> If it's truly too expensive to ship the goods you want, you need to stop sourcing things astronomically far to be efficient. The same economic effect causing the the steel factory to be down the river from the mines is still in play. This thread has some of the dumbest comments from people who obviously know nothing whatsoever about business. Lending validity to the Dunning-Kruger idea, people somehow think they actually know what they are talking about. The above two comments fall under this category. And yet, I will address both of them in hopes that (1) someone will learn something and (2) others will refrain from posting comments about shit they know nothing about. Having an opinion doesn't make it valid. It would be like me posting about heart surgery. I would fully expect people to laugh I what I might say and let me know just how stupid I am to pretend I understand the subject --and rightly so. Comment 1: Short version: Impossible. The shipping industry, from 2020 until somewhere around 2022 was a complete mess. The cost of moving a container from Asia to the US (and anywhere else) rose by a factor of 10x to 15x. From approximately USD $2,000 to somewhere in a range between $20K to $30K. If you were shipping something other than to China, good luck. We had to ship a few crates to Singapore. Ocean freight that normally takes a couple of weeks was being quoted to require at least THREE MONTHS and at a very high price. Why? Because all shipping capacity got diverted to China. We ended-up having to air-freight. Even that took a ridiculous amount of time. I don't even want to talk about how much more the shipment cost than normal air freight. It was a mess. Ports were stacked with containers not going anywhere. New players? It takes three years or more to build a new ship at a cost of a hundred million dollars. That is, assuming a normal economy and supply chains. In the period between 2020 and 2022, good luck building anything at scale. Car manufacturers had to make cars without components and park them until they could get those components. To make a dent you'd need to build, I don't know, 100 to 500 ships, if not more. Which means making an investment between $10 billion and $50 billion. BTW, during difficult times like that, anyone taking an order to build such ships would likely charge a 25% to 50% premium. We are talking about a potential $75 billion investment. That investment would result in ships being ready to sail not earlier than 2026. By that time, with things back to some version of normal, freight pricing would also return to a normal trading range. Which, in turn, likely means whoever made that investment would be facing bankruptcy and that CEO would also be out of a job for being a dumbshit. Comment 2: Not sure how to reply to this other than to be surprised by the lack of connection to reality the comment reveals. OK, well. We don't make anything in the US and Europe any more. Our supply chains are long. And there's no way around it. Bring manufacturing back? OK. Well, this will take decades. In some cases it is absolutely impossible. In other cases it would require 25 years of solid investment in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Do you actually think we can pull off anything even remotely close to this when we can't even build a high speed train across California. Our politicians have failed us for at least five decades. If we our nation was united and our politicians --all of them-- actually worked towards goals for the benefit of the nation and its people, maybe we could pull some portion of that back in 25 years. As we exist and behave today? No way in hell. Not happening. Ever. During the pandemic, the world discovered that nobody could make N95 masks. One of the simplest products to manufacture. Not only could we not make the masks. We didn't make the machines that make the masks. And we didn't make the cloth needed to make the masks, or the machines that make the cloth. People who are not in manufacturing don't really have a sense of just how bad things are in this sense. We can't make anything. If China decided to shut down exports for six months the world would descend into the dark ages. It's that bad. So, yeah, comment <2> is just, well, being kind, misplaced. Next time you post about something, be sure you actually know what you are talking about. Don't be like me talking about open heart surgery. Good for comedy, and not much more than that.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago

> If it's truly too expensive to ship the goods you want, you need to stop sourcing things astronomically far to be efficient. I saw a picture of canned peaches that said the peaches were grown in Argentina and canned in Vietnam. Those peaches made two trips across the Pacific just to get on a grocery store shelf in America. It's ridiculous.

calvinmorrison 3y ago
Right, let the free market work and it will. If you find yourself swimming against the tide of the market, you are either going to get very rich or very poor. Generally best to stay in your lane.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  It was "the free market" that gave us peaches travelling twice across the Pacific to get to a grocery store. Massively lower labor costs in two countries, and lack of the infrastructure in one of them: the typical scenario for capital to seek out these energetically absurd but (temporarily) profitable arrangements.
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    Offset by international tensions, Panama canal backups etc. These are all economic costs. Keep up or die
  - maxerickson 3y ago
    I already posted a comment saying something like this to the story here, but it's likely enough that the energy the consumer spends bring the can of peaches home exceeds the energy used to get it to the store. Where's absurd defined?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      The fact that mass-scale transportation of goods means that the amortized cost/impact per can of peaches is small doesn't invalidate the point that mass-scale transportation of goods is energetically ridiculous and likely adds about 3% of global greenhouse gases. Sometimes the amortized cost per unit isn't the important point.
      - maxerickson 3y ago
        Of course the amortized cost is important. If people eat a lot of steak and one steak is ten years of peaches, we should focus on the steak!
        PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        "Hey everyone, I know the world is doing just fine, but I have this new idea. We'll burn giga-joules of energy every year shipping stuff all over the place, but not to worry, because the joules-per-can-of-peaches is hardly anything". OK, then.
        maxerickson 3y ago
        Correct, even if the world isn't doing fine.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        Thankfully we don't have to choose between dealing with the insanity of shipping everything everywhere six times during production to take advantage of cheap labor and lax regulation somewhere, and steak production being terrible for the environment. We can get rid of ALL the stupid things that are "profitable" to a few middlemen but nobody else.
kalleboo 3y ago
A video about how “Grown in Argentina, Packed in Thailand” actually ends up making sense https://youtu.be/0aH3ZTTkGAs https://youtu.be/0aH3ZTTkGAs The summary is that pears must be picked 1-2 weeks before they are ripe and are allowed to ripen under refrigeration (otherwise the inside ripens first and they get mushy). Instead of running air conditioners, a ship running in cold water provides “free” air conditioning. The biggest market for room-temperature stable fruit in syrup is south east Asia, so packing in Thailand is closest to the biggest customer base. And with the scale they have there, it makes sense to just pack the fruit for the smaller markets like the US at the same place instead of creating secondary supply chains for each market.

robomartin 3y ago

1> If it's so easy, a new player will enter the market 2> If it's truly too expensive to ship the goods you want, you need to stop sourcing things astronomically far to be efficient. The same economic effect causing the the steel factory to be down the river from the mines is still in play. This thread has some of the dumbest comments from people who obviously know nothing whatsoever about business. Lending validity to the Dunning-Kruger idea, people somehow think they actually know what they are talking about. The above two comments fall under this category. And yet, I will address both of them in hopes that (1) someone will learn something and (2) others will refrain from posting comments about shit they know nothing about. Having an opinion doesn't make it valid. It would be like me posting about heart surgery. I would fully expect people to laugh I what I might say and let me know just how stupid I am to pretend I understand the subject --and rightly so. Comment 1: Short version: Impossible. The shipping industry, from 2020 until somewhere around 2022 was a complete mess. The cost of moving a container from Asia to the US (and anywhere else) rose by a factor of 10x to 15x. From approximately USD $2,000 to somewhere in a range between $20K to $30K. If you were shipping something other than to China, good luck. We had to ship a few crates to Singapore. Ocean freight that normally takes a couple of weeks was being quoted to require at least THREE MONTHS and at a very high price. Why? Because all shipping capacity got diverted to China. We ended-up having to air-freight. Even that took a ridiculous amount of time. I don't even want to talk about how much more the shipment cost than normal air freight. It was a mess. Ports were stacked with containers not going anywhere. New players? It takes three years or more to build a new ship at a cost of a hundred million dollars. That is, assuming a normal economy and supply chains. In the period between 2020 and 2022, good luck building anything at scale. Car manufacturers had to make cars without components and park them until they could get those components. To make a dent you'd need to build, I don't know, 100 to 500 ships, if not more. Which means making an investment between $10 billion and $50 billion. BTW, during difficult times like that, anyone taking an order to build such ships would likely charge a 25% to 50% premium. We are talking about a potential $75 billion investment. That investment would result in ships being ready to sail not earlier than 2026. By that time, with things back to some version of normal, freight pricing would also return to a normal trading range. Which, in turn, likely means whoever made that investment would be facing bankruptcy and that CEO would also be out of a job for being a dumbshit. Comment 2: Not sure how to reply to this other than to be surprised by the lack of connection to reality the comment reveals. OK, well. We don't make anything in the US and Europe any more. Our supply chains are long. And there's no way around it. Bring manufacturing back? OK. Well, this will take decades. In some cases it is absolutely impossible. In other cases it would require 25 years of solid investment in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Do you actually think we can pull off anything even remotely close to this when we can't even build a high speed train across California. Our politicians have failed us for at least five decades. If we our nation was united and our politicians --all of them-- actually worked towards goals for the benefit of the nation and its people, maybe we could pull some portion of that back in 25 years. As we exist and behave today? No way in hell. Not happening. Ever. During the pandemic, the world discovered that nobody could make N95 masks. One of the simplest products to manufacture. Not only could we not make the masks. We didn't make the machines that make the masks. And we didn't make the cloth needed to make the masks, or the machines that make the cloth. People who are not in manufacturing don't really have a sense of just how bad things are in this sense. We can't make anything. If China decided to shut down exports for six months the world would descend into the dark ages. It's that bad. So, yeah, comment <2> is just, well, being kind, misplaced. Next time you post about something, be sure you actually know what you are talking about. Don't be like me talking about open heart surgery. Good for comedy, and not much more than that.