Biden hopes fines on lingering cargo ships ease congestion at major U.S. ports
The Biden administration is hopeful new fines imposed on carriers at the nation’s busiest port complex will abate the intensifying logjam of cargo ships.
The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach announced Monday that containers moved by trucks will have nine days before fines start accruing and containers scheduled to move by rail will have three days.
In accordance with these deadlines, carriers will be charged $100 for each lingering container per day starting Nov. 1.
But the problem isn’t the ship’s, it’s the lack of trucks, truckers, yard space to store empty containers, dock space for full containers being offloaded, etc. The bottleneck is on land but the ships will pay the fine.
This is a restaurant charging you more because the kitchen is slow.
You know that will happen?
Ships will leave and find other ports or just stop coming to the US.
This isn’t a fix, this is compounding a disaster.
Honestly, I want Governors DeSantis and Abbott to send people to Panama to help support canal operations and open the Ports of Miami and Houston to Pacific traffic.
It would take less time to navigate through the Panama canal to Miami than to wait for an open spot in California.
That’s what a leader would do.
Biden is just going to fuck it up.
True, assuming “carrier” means ship carrier. The article never says. It’s possible that “carrier” means the truck or rail carrier that’s responsible for the next step of the container.
If that’s what is meant, it isn’t quite so insane.
The way I read it, they fine the container. The containers are often owned my the shipping companies, which is part of the onload offload problem. Empties can’t just be put on the next ship, they have to go back to the same carrier.
The effect will be the same, the carriers won’t send ships to the ports where fines are likely.
I read “carrier” as “shipping company”. Kind of like how cellular service providers and ground shipping providers (e.g. USPS, FedEx, UPS) are “carriers”.
They’ll fine whichever company owns the shipping containers they think sit too long in the yard, based on their completely arbitrary deadlines, at $100/container per diem.
Nevermind that the ship meant to haul the empties away is sitting out in the open ocean because the yard lacks the manpower and trucks to unload the ships currently docked. Not their fault, but they’ll be fined anyway.
From the article: ‘The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach announced Monday that containers moved by trucks will have nine days before fines start accruing and containers scheduled to move by rail will have three days.’
This looks like it’s targeting the trucks and containers, not the ships, as pkoning notes.
It’s still stupid. ‘We DEMAND you fix this’ when they ain’t got enough trucks and drivers.
The headline notwithstanding, based on reading the actual story linked, it appears to me that the administration is not fining the ships, but the companies the containers belong to.
If I’m misreading things, can someone please explain to me how I’m getting it wrong? Thank you.
If I’m not misreading it, then basically the idea is: Both the federal government (Vaccine Mandates reducing driver availability) and the California government (Truck age and emissions standards reducing truck availability) pass laws that make it difficult or impossible for the shipping companies to get their containers out of the port – and then their “solution” for the lack of trucks and drivers is to penalize the affected companies for the impacts of these government policies.
Good idea.
“We’re not going to allow you to do this function, but every day that the function isn’t performed, we’re going to fine you.”
Nope, not totalitarian at all.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves. Signed, The Biden Administration”
Floggings will continue until morale improves.
A more serious fix would be a temporary rollback of emissions rules to allow older trucks to operate in the port areas, pay for a night shift and drop the productivity inhibiting CCP flu restrictions.
Temporary? Screw temporary, get rid of californacators bullshit “laws’.
We routinely pay excess fees and demurrage to other companies based on how many days we keep an extra railcar, or don’t unload a truck, etc. Those extra fees are built into our contract and the money goes directly to the company that is inconvenienced. Basically, if I don’t unload a railcar quickly enough and return it, the railcar owner can’t refill the car and ship it to the next customer. Therefore paying the extra fee is rational and has a real cost basis.
But if the govt. is imposing the fine, then I guess the money goes to, wait for it, the govt.! And any companies, storage yards, shipowners, etc. that are inconvenienced are just SOL. This is taking money out of the economy and making things less productive.
As other have noted, remove the artificial govt imposed restrictions and allow the free market to correct itself. But to any liberal/progressive, there is never any problem that more govt isn’t the best answer.
It looks like the market for ‘surplus’ CONEX containers is gonna’ heat up. It is a business opportunity.
Yes, this is a forced financial redistribution. The govt collects money and can say it’s doing something. Oh, and they did it without ‘raising’ taxes. Guess who will ultimately pay in higher prices? This stupid scheme constitutes a soft tax on goods.
If only Buttygage was not on maternity leave, this would have been solved! /s
J. Kb, I believe that many or most of the container ships in Pacific service are too big for the canal.
Perhaps not any longer, given the recent Canal upgrade.
If you have to sail the USS Stacey Abrams around the Cape because she’s too massive to fit through the Canal, pretty sure most container ships will have to also.
Maybe if we had an actual “Transportation secretary” instead of a professional faggot…
Two viewpoints on the LA Port problem. The first is from the guy that actually runs a logistics company.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451543776992845834.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/14/the-california-version-of-the-green-new-deal-and-an-october-16-2020-epa-settlement-with-transportation-is-whats-creating-the-container-shipping-backlog-working-ca-ports-24-7-will-not-help-here/#more-218447
The ports are overflowing with full containers. The cranes cannot stack anymore containers in the port, so they cannot even unload the ships currently tied up at the port. There is no room to stack full containers to be moved across the country. there is no room for empty containers to be stacked up and loaded on the ships to send back to China either.
The returning trucks have chassis’ full of empty containers, so they cannot pick up a full container because there is no place to store the empties at the port, and California and their cities will not allow them to store empties anywhere else, much less move full containers out of the port and store them elsewhere temporarily. NIMBY California.
Due to the CA laws and regulations, The ports are literally backed up and constipated. California needs an enema.
Eye-opening, rd. Thanks for the links.
Archer,
I got both links from Small Dead Animals that had these stories posted days ago.
Kate McMillan and her co-bloggers have been a personal must read for two decades. If hyou want to know what is happening in Canada and the rest of the world? Read her daily.
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/
And EVERYTHING the first link says to do, is exactly the opposite of what the city/county/state/feds are doing. This clusterfuck is by design, it is NOT a bug/failure. Demoncrats/fascists/communists/rinos/ (I know, redundant) want this country dead. Not weakened, not changed, DEAD.
Interesting. But that makes me wonder about port management. Why would you deliberately create a gridlock? That’s what it is. Running out of space for empties so trucks can’t come in to take away fulls is a resource management error on the part of the port. It also invalidates the notion of inflicting a fine on the trucking company — if you’re not letting the trucks in because you can’t take the empty off the chassis to free it to take away a full container, that container is stuck due to port mismanagement, not failure of the trucking company.
Modern governments are only capable of murder, rapine and conspiracy, so they go with the tools they have. Rapine the companies because the murder/rapine threatening laws don’t allow people to run the port properly.
Biden voters rejoice, since they are commies who celebrate you and yours suffering. If they get to kick your corpse before they take the scraps left by their masters they’ll be even happier.
What they’re doing is the equivalent of issuing a ticket for going too slow to every car stuck in a traffic jam.
A traffic jam caused by a red light the government mandated — on a street with no intersections — and then shut off.
It brings to mind an old “demotivational” poster: GOVERNMENT – If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” Just when you think China Joe can’t possibly make things worse, he says “hold my pudding cup.”