I know, I know.  Christmas is coming and y’all are desperate to spend money to buy your gifts.  Others are desperate to get a new (or used) set of wheels.  I’m waiting to get a supply of pineapple juice.

We’re all screwed because the supply chain is in desperate shape.  Part of that problem has been the philosophy of corporate America to find the cheapest place to build the parts they need.  Which means in far away lands that exacerbate this supply chain issue.

And, the other day, my good buddy (who has this “supply chain” of messages  from the far right/fake news region) sent me a piece of drivel supposedly written by a truck driver claiming the problem in Los Angeles/Long Beach is the lack of cranes to supply the trucks.  Except that is clearly not the case.  (Long Beach has 17 heavy duty cranes to offload the ships and tons of mobile equipment to load the trailers onto waiting truck-trailer combinations.)

As a matter of fact, the data indicates that the truckers are not taking advantage of the extended hours to move containers out of the ports.  (You do recall that President Biden worked it out with the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to work around the clock three weeks ago.  [Some 1000 of the 2000 available slots for truckers at Pier 400 in Long Beach have been unused.  Those are Maersk figures. (Maersk is the shipping company own that site.)])

Of course, we also have to recognize that there are hours of service rules for truckers.  Long distance truckers aren’t going to be thrilled to be loading their rigs in the middle of the night and then starting on their journey.  Maybe we will have to force the short-haulers that tranport containers to the nearby rail yards to work the night shift so the long-haulers can operate more freely during the day.

Moreover, the Port of Long Beach just relaxed their regs.  To get more stuff off the ships- while they await the long-haul truckers and short-trip haulers (the latter bringing their containers to the rail yards)- containers are now allowed to be stacked four tall (not two tall per the regs).  (This does not affect the private terminals at the port whose rules stipulate that containers can be stacked 6 tall.)

To entice (or is that to penalize the laggards?) container transport, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are now hitting up rail carriers with a $ 100 a day fine for each container that finds itself in the port after day 3.   Truck bound (long-distance) cargo won’t get those penalties until day 9.

Yeah, I know that’s cheap.  But, adding $ 100 a day to those fees for each day of additional delay is certain to get the attention of the rail and truck carriers.

There is a problem, though.  I can see the rail and truck carriers twiddling their thumbs and then passing these fees onto retailers who are not patiently awaiting their deliveries.  (I don’t have a solution for this- unless we can get the State of California and/or the Feds to rule that pass-along illegal.)

We can also expect some carriers to load up empty containers at the port and bring them to a storage facility.  The problem?  I don’t know of many (or is that any?) available storage lands (or unused government acreage) in the neighborhood of the LA County.

And, right now, there are plenty of empty containers, some of which are being loaded onto the supercarriers returning to their ports of origin to get them refilled there,  Which means transportation fees escalate more (since the container is only being paid for once on a round trip- and the supercarriers have less- or no- revenue as they leave the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

In the meantime, we can hope that President Biden will do what he said at a CNN Town Hall.  That is- send in the National Guard to alleviate the cargo backlogs.

(I do know that a fair number of National Guard units can operate tractor trailers- but I don’t expect to have them traveling across America.  A deal will have to be made to have the guard discharge their containers to the  railroad carriers; additional distribution sites across the USA will need to be developed.)