I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis”

[SVPete]

I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End

https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91

I’m a Class A truck driver with experience in nearly every aspect of freight. My experience in the trucking industry of 20 years tells me that nothing is going to change in the shipping industry.
Let’s start with understanding some things about ports. Outside of dedicated port trucking companies, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers. There is a reason for that.
Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers. Think about the lines. Except at a port, there are at least THREE lines to get a container in or out. The first line is the ‘in’ gate, where hundreds of trucks daily have to pass through 5–10 available gates. The second line is waiting to pick up your container. The third line is for waiting to get out. For each of these lines the wait time is a minimum of an hour, and I’ve waited up to 8 hours in the first line just to get into the port. Some ports are worse than others, but excessive wait times are not uncommon. It’s a rare day when a driver gets in and out in under two hours. By ‘rare day’, I mean maybe a handful of times a year. Ports don’t even begin to have enough workers to keep the ports fluid, and it doesn’t matter where you are, coastal or inland port, union or non-union port, it’s the same everywhere.
...
The ‘experts’ want to say we can do things like open the ports 24/7, and this problem will be over in a couple weeks. They are blowing smoke, and they know it. Getting a container out of the port, as slow and aggravating as it is, is really the easy part, if you can find a truck and chassis to haul it. But every truck driver in America can’t operate 24/7, even if the government suspends Hours Of Service Regulations (federal regulations determining how many hours a week we can work/drive), we still need to sleep sometime. There are also restrictions on which trucks can go into a port. They have to be approved, have RFID tags, port registered, and the drivers have to have at least a TWIC card (Transportation Worker Identification Credential from the federal Transportation Security Administration). Some ports have additional requirements. As I have already said, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers with a 100 foot pole. What we have is a system with a limited amount of trucks and qualified drivers, many of whom are already working 14 hours a day (legally, the maximum they can), and now the supposed fix is to have them work 24 hours a day, every day, and not stop until the backlog is cleared. It’s not going to happen. It is not physically possible. There is no “cavalry” coming. No trucking companies are going to pay to register their trucks to haul containers for something that is supposedly so “short term,” because these same companies can get higher rate loads outside the ports. There is no extra capacity to be had, and it makes NO difference anyway, because If you can’t get a container unloaded at a warehouse, having drivers work 24/7/365 solves nothing.

Something is strangely missing from this litany of the systemic bottlenecks ... something near and dear to California-Haters' confirmation bias. One reason just might be that the problem is nation-wide, not confined to just one state, and a large part is due to Federal regulations. It would be interesting to learn what Federal regulations affect ports' offloading and loading capacity and the availability of container-capable trailers.

[Eupher]

I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End

https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91

Something is strangely missing from this litany of the systemic bottlenecks ... something near and dear to California-Haters' confirmation bias. One reason just might be that the problem is nation-wide, not confined to just one state, and a large part is due to Federal regulations. It would be interesting to learn what Federal regulations affect ports' offloading and loading capacity and the availability of container-capable trailers.

I recently read that about 33% of the inbound container traffic comes in to LA and to Long Beach. Given that what this trucker is saying is true, I'll buy the argument that the problem is a federal issue and not a California issue.

That said, since roughly one-third of the container traffic coming in this country happens via LA and Long Beach, California is guilty by association. It ain't fair, but that's the way it is.

There are other ports on the Left Coast -- Portland, Seattle, San Diego, Bremerton (if you can get around the U.S. Navy) and a lot more I probably don't even know of.

This looks to me like the feebs have once again tried to solve a problem and now are dealing with the unintended consequences. 

[thundley4]

I think Kalifornia does bare some responsibility,

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/cash-flow-corner/meeting-california-truck-regulations

[SVPete]

Undoubtedly. My point was that in a nationwide situation that has been simmering for decades and that involves port offloading facilities, equipment availability nationwide, and the nationwide rail system, AB-5 and the diesel engine standards that have been cut in over a decade or so are merely two of many causes, not THE prime causes. However much fun bogey-bashing might be, if AB-5 and CA's diesel engine standards had magically disappeared in March 2020, courtesy of Covid, things would be little - if at all - different.

I'm not defending AB-5 - I voted for a proposition that relaxed it and would gladly vote to flay and eviscerate it - or the standards, which are based on "research" from a fraud.