from Hacker News

Chaos Strikes Global Shipping

by donmcc on 3/6/21, 4:57 PM with 21 comments

• by Shank on 3/6/21, 9:11 PM

  As soon as the pandemic started, airmail services stated to shut down. Normally, airmail packets “hitch a ride” on commercial airliners already making the trip. But when those ceased, airmail service stopped. So what happened? All of the pending airmail got switched to “surface mail,” which is code for shipping on a boat. I had several packages go from an ETA measured in days to an ETA measured in weeks and months.

  I imagine that the whole thing cascaded from that. Online orders that would normally take a plane trip got redirected to the surface, and then the pipeline kept backing up. Until the world is connected and back to normal, bottlenecks like this will probably still exist.

• by js2 on 3/6/21, 7:44 PM

  > Since they were first deployed in 1956, containers have revolutionized trade by allowing goods to be packed into standard size receptacles and hoisted by cranes onto rail cars and trucks — effectively shrinking the globe.

  If you want to know more about this, there's a pretty good book on it: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

• by cwwc on 3/6/21, 5:10 PM

  > Every container that cannot be unloaded in one place is a container that cannot be loaded somewhere else.

  Never thought of it in this sense as a zero-sum game — but it does make a lot of sense why this is pushing the stock up for companies like Triton International.

• by ampdepolymerase on 3/6/21, 6:47 PM

  Where's Flexport when you need them? Weren't they supposed to disrupt this space?

• by WJW on 3/6/21, 9:01 PM

  I have been watching too many Warhammer 40k videos on youtube and completely misunderstood the title of this article at first glance.

• by cmehdy on 3/6/21, 5:31 PM

  Interesting that the conclusion has to do with the type of consumption, because as I was reading the article I was unable to figure out whether there had been an increased consumption or "just" a lack of availability of containers and workers. But the article ends with:

  > Some experts assume that as vaccinations increase and life returns to normal, Americans will again shift their spending — from goods back to experiences — reducing the need for containers.

  Beyond masks, is it really the case that consumption of goods dramatically increased? Is it only a North America issue? A US issue?

• by elzbardico on 3/8/21, 10:26 AM

  It's almost obscene how people refuse to ignore how much china benefit from all this histeria and the unscientific lockdowns

• by xyst on 3/6/21, 7:48 PM

  if businesses would not abuse cheap labor that china and other third world countries offer, we wouldn't be in this mess (or at least it wouldn't be as impactful)

  besides labor costs, it doesn't make sense that an item that is bought in from X company with an HQ in Y country has to be manufactured in Z country and shipped thousands of miles to the consumer.

  the amount of carbon generated from our reliance on third world countries must be ridiculously high, and wasteful.