Monthly Archives: October 2021

Major forwarder on how to reduce the bottlenecks at Long Beach

Posted on October 25, 2021 by | 1 comment

Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport, hired a boat to visit the Port of LA/Long Beach to see the traffic jam of ships and observe what the terminals are doing. He came away with numerous suggestions, some of which have appeared in the directive published yesterday by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Ryan is a keen observer of the shipping scene, in addition to being CEO of a fast-growing forwarder.

The problems he detects seem to be yard space for containers, and a shortage of chassis and places to put empty containers to get them off chassis.

The new policy will allow stacking up to six high instead of only two high. That will help out both port yards and inland yards, such as for rail. More land available for stacking will also help, if properties close to rail yards can be identified and assigned for stacking.

Apparently, because empty containers cannot be dropped off, chassis are standing around with empty containers on them, preventing their use for a full container newly unloaded from a ship. A shortage of chassis ready to take a loaded container thus occurs.

How come it is always chassis and empties that cause the problems in the container supply chain?

By Alex Lennane 25/10/2021

Major forwarder on how to reduce the bottlenecks at Long Beach – The Loadstar

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Posted in Logistics, Ports, Shipping, Supply Chains

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Shadow inflation: Shipping costs are up way more than you think

Posted on October 23, 2021 by | 3 comments

This article gives lots of measures of factors contributing to supply chain cost. There are good graphs indicating the changes.

But these are contributing hidden costs to products, and those costs will be borne by consumers of the final products. That’s inflation.

It may be the first time that inflation is influenced by marine supply chain problems since the incessant wars on the seas in the 17th and 18th century. And in those days, frequent shooting wars guaranteed recessions; it was leisure goods like tea that had inflated prices. World Wars I and II also caused inflation, and shortages, but these were only partly caused by pillaging of marine traffic on the high seas. In most cases price controls were put into effect to resist inflation for ordinary people; and the extra goods were needed for the soldiers. We don’t have those now.

Somehow in the US and EU we need to find people to do the hard jobs in the supply chain to keep goods moving— warehouse jobs and driving jobs.

Greg Miller, Senior Editor Friday, October 22, 2021

Shadow inflation: Shipping costs are up way more than you think

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Posted in Logistics, Supply Chains

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Maersk’s forwarder move could be abuse of its dominant position, says Clecat

Posted on October 22, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks Maersk is staking out a monopoly position, discriminating against forwarders.

I think Maersk and others are in danger of killing off forwarders, and also customers. Larger customers will look at private transport. Small customers will mistrust Maersk’s platform, and evaluate its performance against the others out there, such as DP World’s. So it better work lots better than the others, not likely an advantage that can be sustained for long, nor for every type of customer. Many forwarders have end-to-end booking platforms.

I bet even large forwarders will start chartering ships if current price conditions for container shipments continue for long, like till Spring 2023.

And actually, I did not have to wait long. IN THE SAME LOADSTAR, on 10/22/2021, I found the second article.

By Nick Savvides 22/10/2021

Maersk’s forwarder move could be abuse of its dominant position, says Clecat – The Loadstar

UK forwarder turns the tide on container lines with direct China-UK service – The Loadstar

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Posted in Logistics, Shipping, Strategy

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