Posted on 09/13/2021 2:55:19 PM PDT by blam
UPS, one of the world’s largest delivery companies, expects global supply chain woes to carry into 2022. The disruption to the complex web of airports, seaports, and land ports, cargo freight and container shipping lines, and trucking companies that move goods worldwide remains strained and is expected to leave a permanent scar on globalization.
Scott Price, president of UPS International, told FT that multinational retailers and manufacturers are regionalizing their supply chains:
“A lot of companies are coming to us saying ‘where is the best place to put manufacturing and assembly?'” he said. “There’s an understanding that reliance on stretched supply chains puts you at risk.”
Price, who manages the company’s international businesses, said the pandemic downturn of the travel industry had made it challenging for companies moving large amounts of cargo in the belly of passenger aircraft.
He forecasted recovery in the air travel industry may take until 2025.
Price expects multinational companies to reshuffle their factories in Asia to North or South America to shrink supply chain footprints.
“One of the reasons it [supply chain regionalization] accelerated is companies were surprised how little optionality existed during this period,” he said.
Shipping prices for the Atlanta-based logistics company said annual price increase for customers would be about 2.8%, well below the 10-year average.
In a separate interview, Price told AFP News that:
“I half-jokingly tell people’ Order your Christmas presents now because otherwise on Christmas day, there may just be a picture of something that’s not coming until February or March.'”
A few weeks ago, UPS’ competitor DHL made a similar warning about congested transpacific shipping lanes.
“We do not expect freight rates to stabilize in the near term,” according to Karsten Michaelis, head of ocean freight at DHL Global Forwarding Asia Pacific.
“The combination of a year of disruption, lack of containers, port congestions and a shortage of vessels in the right positions is creating a situation where cargo demand far exceeds available capacity.”
Last Friday, new data from ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, showed vessel congestion was at a record high.
The latest word from top shippers on the frontlines is that supply chains disruptions are not waning anytime soon and have pressured producer prices higher. The Labor Department’s August Consumer Price Index print will be released on Tuesday is expected to remain elevated.
That’s only one of many lost lessons.
When “just-in-time” isn’t.
What I have been observing for the last few months is that containers are just not moving off of the container yards. They are full. They are so full that ships are literally drifting along at sea as slowly as they can go, because there is no place practically to offload containers.
I had several conversations today with others in the shipping industry. You will hear commentary about not enough trains. That makes no sense to any of us in the industry. What are hearing is that containers are piling up at distribution centers and warehouses, still on the chassis.
You have to understand to move a container from point A to point B, you need to load the container on a chassis, the big “trailer” if you will that the container sits on to be driven from a container facility or rail yard to its destination. The current story I'm being told is there is a shortage of chassis to move containers the last miles to stores. This also doesn't make sense.
Over the winter months in the northern hemisphere we receive a lot of our fruits and vegetables via shipping container. Think about this for a minute. If containers are taking four to six weeks longer than normal to get from point of origin to destination, what happens to the fruits and vegetables we eat during the winter months that come from over seas destinations? The answer is that we won't these food items. The food will rot in the containers either on ships or on the container yards.
Looking at history, when we want to destabilize a foreign country, we destabilize or influence communications and information. We also destabilize logistics and supply lines. It seems we are seeing both of these things happen simultaneously.
What's the big picture? What is really causing this supply line problem all over the planet? These things don't happen purely by coincidence.
What say you Freepers who have some insight?
I've been here with FreeRepublic since the earliest of days. This is the first time I've felt compelled to really dig in and comment.
bump for later
It would be great if they moved from China to Guatemala and Honduras. Maybe those illegals would migrate back.
Now fire 30% of the workforce for not being vaxed. Talk about bringing the country to it’s knees. This includes the food chain.
Gosh, the gov’t needs more money to take care of all these problems....so says the gov’t
For the fruits and vegetables: I know it has been darn near impossible to get aluminum cans. If they don’t have cans, what are they going to do with the produce?
Appreciate your insightful comments. Seems like a perfect storm of not enough containers. Not enough dock workers and not enough truck drivers. Almost every single place I go to now is significantly short staffed. Seems things are at the breaking point. Workers are stressed because they are shouldering 1.5 times the daily work load. Businesses are stressed because they cannot find workers. It seems like it’s getting harder and harder to finds parts or anything. Long waits if you can get something.
Bottom line is think this is primarily due to not enough labor all the way around which is leading to the supply chain issues.
This is one of the reasons why I believe businesses will not jump on the mandatory vax nonsense. They simply cannot risk having employees, many likely good, long-term employees, jumping ship and walking out the door. The labor shortage is very real and near the point where I believe the whole economy is becoming imperiled because of the lack of workers. No way big businesses risk an already tenuous situation and invite catastrophe as an ongoing enterprise.
It amazes me that on FreeRepublic -- of all places -- you can criticize JIT without mentioning that it was government interference that caused the problem.
It was the government, for Pete's sake.
Trump was correct about manufacturing stuff HERE.
Keep in mind that a Berkley PHD graduate was quoted as saying::
We need to get rid of all the farmers....The grocery stores have all the food anyway......
When Covid first started, the Fed bureaucrats were choosing what was ‘Essential” & what was NOT essential.
Suddenly, there were NOT enough containers to put processed milk into. The jugs we buy milk in at the grocery store.
Milk was thrown out by dairy producers.
After 2 weeks of throwing out milk, 2 dairies here in N Nevada took 660 perfectly good productive dairy cows to slaughter because of the NO CONTAINERS issues.
Those dairies must start all over due to having to sell their 2 herds.
Shelby Foote is one of my favorite authors.
Try some of his novels.
The man can write. Not just history.
One part of the complex problem is we have so many empty containers here in the U.S. and no one wants to ship empties back to the Asian side of the Pacific Rim trade partners.
It really is an odd situation that has many of us who have boots on the ground and are in mid to upper management scratching our heads as to where the real bottleneck exists. In a very practical sense, we are going to be in a world of hurt for some time to come. There is no easy explanation and no simple fix. It is almost as if this is all orchestrated.
When China catches its economic cold due to corruption, cooked books, bad loans (the hide them in provincial banks) the world will definitely go into recession. I am estimating 12 months or less. China is not an economic powerhouse. It’s a the card monte. The cheat lie steal. The implosion will be spectacular. 12 months. Maybe 18. The will lose control internally and externally we will feel it by a factor of 2.5X. Welcome to the jungle. No. Auto parts, appliances, all the little things we take for granted. Also they will lose another 20-40 million people Maybe much more.
That’s my crystal ball.
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. — 1600
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the Free Traitors — 2021
Capitalism + globalism = suicide for the USA.
Capitalism + nationalism = prosperity for all in the USA.
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