Why Container Ships Can’t Sail Around the California Ports Bottleneck

Art Deco said:
This exactly ... how much of the cheap Chinese made junk (Harbor Freight, Wal-Mart, etc.) you ever bought was even in use a decade later? I have some USA made stuff I bought thirty years ago from Wal-Mart that is still in use today.
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Remember, the “cheap Chinese junk” often ends up in your ebike!
Most of the little that I’ve bought at HF or Northern Tool are good if used for light to medium duty now and then. That’s all I need it for. Got a great electric angle grinder and impact wrench at HF that I’ve had and used for years and they work just fine.
 
JRA said:
A few years ago the port of Portland, OR stopped all container ship activity. I can't imagine that if they hadn't at least some of these delays might have been prevented. They still do a very active amount of bulk and tanker traffic.
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Apparently they have worked out the labour issues with the union and are now processing containers there again...
 
I've never heard of Northern, but there was nothing at my local Harbor Freight's grand opening (only time I went in) that I would buy except for maybe a one time use for cheap.

And I don't think either your Treks or my Specialized actually have many real Chinese parts. Taiwan isn't China, no matter what the communist party says.

Anyway think about all the crap Amazon sells ... made to last?
 
Art Deco said:
Harbor Freight's grand opening (only time I went in) that I would buy except for maybe a one time use for cheap.
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Yeah, I've read that same logic in forums over the years. I tried and failed. I burned out their grinder in 10 minutes and tossed a hydraulic lift I couldn't find repair parts for. Suddenly the price wasn't so good factoring in the failures.
I found buying factory rehab brand names to be a better purchase for me.

Nothing worse than a failed power tool in the middle of a project.
 
Art Deco said:
I can't say from experience since the only young people I have much contact with were all eager beavers at the local highly competitive university, but "entitlement" just seems like a synonym for "lazy" in today's media.
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Synonym.....and excuse for burning and looting. (One set of looters was in a Range Rover.) :)
 
I still get "Come drive for us!" postcards in the mail from various trucking companies. I drove for just under 3 years total and hated it. Not saying its a terrible job, I made pretty good money and the benefits were above so-so, but it's surely not for everyone.
 
sc00ter said:
I still get "Come drive for us!" postcards in the mail from various trucking companies. I drove for just under 3 years total and hated it. Not saying its a terrible job, I made pretty good money and the benefits were above so-so, but it's surely not for everyone.
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I was an evil dispatcher right out of college. Actually driving wasn't a bad job way back then. For a guy with only a H.S. diploma and an easy to get commercial liscence, they made good money and benefits.
Our over the road drivers only had 3 stops maximum, usually 1 or 2. Our city drivers had maybe twice that. But that was before JIT inventory and tiny minimum orders. And the guys who had many years driving were still really beat up.
Anyway, the topic was getting stuff off the ships and on the road, and that's probably not going to improve for a long time ... certainly not for Christmas or Easter.
 
Riding down Whidbey Island to catch a flight out of SeaTac last week, noticed several huge container ships tucked away in our normally scenic, tranquil bays awaiting their turn at the Port of Seattle (I think I read the wait is weeks long to get in there). There are not a lot of deep water moorings in the Sound, but there are a few near the south end of the island.
 
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Awhile back it was the independent truckers the port wanted to get rid of, having put a big dent in that they decided mandating cleaner trucks was the new wrench in the works. Now, rather then phase the changes in in an efficiant manner they want it all now so, combine the idiot political thought process and the pandemic, what you see is the end result...enjoy.
 
Dallant said:
Sure, let’s blame the unions, since sabotaging the port would screw their livelihood too.
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It was the unions. Ships got tired of the striking and other stuff and quit using Portland. The story is factual. I'm not a Portland resident, but lived in SW Warshington for a few years, and read about it all.

In the town I now live in, there was a lumber mill. It was going to close down. The employees bought it. Then, later on, some of those employees went on strike. It made no sense to me. The mill did not survive.
 
mclewis1 said:
For some there can be ways around some of the backlogs at the big ports ... Rad Power using an alternative ship and port -
www.bicycleretailer.com

How e-bike brand Rad Power shortened its supply chain by more than 50 days

EVERETT, Wash. (BRAIN) — Like all bike companies, Rad Power has struggled to deliver enough bikes to meet demand for the last year and a half. But the Seattle-based consumer-direct powerhouse recently trimmed weeks off the transit time for its e-bikes by using an alternative seaport.
www.bicycleretailer.com www.bicycleretailer.com
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Great story.

More people need to be smarter to get around these delays.

We often ride down Huntington Beach and Long Beach and there are way more container ships out there than before... must be horrible for the crew to be on the ocean for that long... I wonder if they just go in for "shore leave".
 
"I wonder if they just go in for "shore leave".

9/11 put an end to shore leave. I used to live in a port town and would run into crewmembers, primarily asians, in the local bars. Sometimes they would invite us down onto the ship for a night cap which we would politely refuse just in case we woke up under way.
 
Cowlitz said:
It was the unions. Ships got tired of the striking and other stuff and quit using Portland. The story is factual. I'm not a Portland resident, but lived in SW Warshington for a few years, and read about it all.

In the town I now live in, there was a lumber mill. It was going to close down. The employees bought it. Then, later on, some of those employees went on strike. It made no sense to me. The mill did not survive.
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The reason the mill shut down is because the workers weren’t needed when the lumber was being shipped overseas raw, thus eliminating the need for processing.
Another example of American job elimination due to greed and exploitation of our resources.

How about laws that prevent raw log export.
 
Codocee said:
The reason the mill shut down is because the workers weren’t needed when the lumber was being shipped overseas raw, thus eliminating the need for processing.
Another example of American job elimination due to greed and exploitation of our resources.

How about laws that prevent raw log export.
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Oooh, you are sadly misinformed. We do have laws that prohibit log export off Federal and State owned lands. As for the private lands, well, sometimes that log export market saves their bacon. When the recession hit, the domestic mills were shutting down. For the loggers and land owners, a good log export market kept them going.

Our local mill shut down mainly because of junk bond funding and the lack of a sustainable supply of logs in this area. This is not the west side of the state, but the east side, where tree growth is slow and volume is lower. That mill had timber rights on tracts of private lands, much to the surprise of some property owners, and because the mill was desperate, the cut every tree they could to try to stay in business. What with their funding problems (which is over my head in understanding--it had something to do with junk bonds in the 1990s) the strike by the employee owners just added more problems.

The supply grows less as we have fires every year. That's another problem.
 
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While Cowlitz is correct in her assessment of the situation regarding log export regulations/mill shutdown I personally agree with Codocee's statement regarding US/Canadian log export practices over the years as well.

If years ago we had set up the infrastructure here to mill and condition the lumber to international spec, basically switching to metric, to order and loaded the actual lumber aboard ships that market that was ongoing during the recession would have kept towns afloat perhaps and also provided good jobs and tax revenue all along.

Unfortunately that ship has sailed (sic) long ago and just as a point of reference every ship that leaves here loaded with logs represents 5 million board feet of lumber......which has added up to quite a bit I would suppose over the years.
 
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