You can tell a loaded container well from unloaded by spring depression; it may be less obvious than on heavily-loaded cars like coal gons but still noticeable.
jeffhergert Well, I had the benefit of a train list. Visually, look at the doors for a seal or locking device of some kind. Empties normally don't have them. Jeff
Well, I had the benefit of a train list. Visually, look at the doors for a seal or locking device of some kind. Empties normally don't have them.
Jeff
An eastbound train of loaded international containers sounds a bit different than they do empty westbound.
jeffhergert There were a lot of ocean boxes going west. Most empty but a fair number of loads.
Visually, how can you tell a loaded container from an empty one?
Still in training.
charlie hebdo On the UP West mainline, I have noticed more ocean containers eastbound and entire trains of empty spine cars of various types for stacks westbound. Perhaps that's one solution to the logjam? Jeff could expand on that?
On the UP West mainline, I have noticed more ocean containers eastbound and entire trains of empty spine cars of various types for stacks westbound. Perhaps that's one solution to the logjam? Jeff could expand on that?
I really couldn't say. I did have to relieve a west bound long pool stack train the other day. There were a lot of ocean boxes going west. Most empty but a fair number of loads.
I did notice an eastbound intermodal within the last week or so that had about 20 or so containers on chassis riding on spine cars. You see a container on a chassis every now and then, but that's the most I've seen in one train. Maybe the chassis shortage isn't just at the ports?
MidlandMikeWouldn't it cost more that $250 (plus the cost of shipping?) for a replacement container in Asia for the next shipment?
Well, at least one community in Texas has found a productive use for derelict shipping containers, think of the added fuel savings not having to send the unwanted containers back to the west coast, empty.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/shipping-containers-being-used-to-stop-illegal-crossings/?utm_campaign=NewsNation-trending-now&utm_source=wane.com&utm_medium=newsnation-cross-brand
Ajsik Your forgetting the time it takes to back into and get out of the dock plus move the next truck into the dock. That right there is a minimum of 30 minutes per truck plus the assignment of the unloading of trucks to the workers. If my driver's are going into a well run warehouse we allow a minimum of 2 hours total time to get them empty. If they are going to the normal grocery warehouse say Kroger Jewell Foods Safeway SuperValu any of those places we break out the detention clock and normally bill around 6 hours. Why they refuse to streamline the process to get trucks in and out faster. Wal-Mart for all their flaws as a company has the logistics side figured out 24 hours a day they take deliveries into their warehouses. The other places listed only take them for at most 12 hours and try to unload everything in that timeframe and bottleneck up the drivers. Also Walmart has different docks for their shipping side and receiving sides. That means one side takes it in sorts it out the other side ships it out. Shadow the Cats owner Some companies expect to unload 200 trucks in just 8 hours when they only have 20 docks to receive goods in. That is 6 minutes a trailer to unload count and move the goods into their warehouse. I'm not sure I'm getting your math. If there are 20 docks to serve 200 trucks, doesn't that mean each dock serves ten trucks in eight hours? That seems to work out to 48 minutes each, not six. I'm not trying to poke holes in your idea. I read these forums to learn from the experts on here and I'm missing something in this case. Thanks
Your forgetting the time it takes to back into and get out of the dock plus move the next truck into the dock. That right there is a minimum of 30 minutes per truck plus the assignment of the unloading of trucks to the workers. If my driver's are going into a well run warehouse we allow a minimum of 2 hours total time to get them empty. If they are going to the normal grocery warehouse say Kroger Jewell Foods Safeway SuperValu any of those places we break out the detention clock and normally bill around 6 hours. Why they refuse to streamline the process to get trucks in and out faster. Wal-Mart for all their flaws as a company has the logistics side figured out 24 hours a day they take deliveries into their warehouses. The other places listed only take them for at most 12 hours and try to unload everything in that timeframe and bottleneck up the drivers. Also Walmart has different docks for their shipping side and receiving sides. That means one side takes it in sorts it out the other side ships it out.
Shadow the Cats owner Some companies expect to unload 200 trucks in just 8 hours when they only have 20 docks to receive goods in. That is 6 minutes a trailer to unload count and move the goods into their warehouse.
Some companies expect to unload 200 trucks in just 8 hours when they only have 20 docks to receive goods in. That is 6 minutes a trailer to unload count and move the goods into their warehouse.
I'm not sure I'm getting your math. If there are 20 docks to serve 200 trucks, doesn't that mean each dock serves ten trucks in eight hours? That seems to work out to 48 minutes each, not six.
I'm not trying to poke holes in your idea. I read these forums to learn from the experts on here and I'm missing something in this case.
Thanks
This sounds like "perfect world" thinking. What I've seen is plenty of "friction" arising to upset the best laid plans. Technology is great when it works, but oh boy, when it breaks down. Got to have a tried and true back up plan.
There is a difference between what the technology makes possible and how a corporation uses or abuses it for 'economic' reasons.
The discussion I was following involves effective ways to strip and stuff loads, and it is reasonably easy to batch-unload a container or trailer load to 'release' the physical vehicle, then pick, sort, and move the contents quickly and with reasonably good parallel access. There is a bit more time involved in a staged loading, but I'd note that one of the current patent 'roller floors' will greatly reduce the physical time required.
Most of the interesting stuff Amazon was doing a few years ago involved how a very large number of LTL pallets were moved to dwell and then retrieved for forwarding with limited physical crossdock space. That too is not a technically different thing to optimize... provided you standardize the elements involved and have reasonable procedures for 'exceptions'.
Playing devil's advocate, I think detention time ought to start 30 minutes from when the vehicle doors come open... and the vehicle owner should start being billed in six-minute increments if the vehicle is not actively being moved after the 31st minute. Exceptions for emergencies, of course...
Then arrange for government to subsidize the penalties both ways, to speed implementation and acceptance of course. Can't have them mandating it, can we?
Shadow the Cats ownerOne thing that could help free up the supply chain crisis is instead of trying to unload all your trucks in an 8 hour window go to 24 hour receiving. This is at major warehouses not at the store level of course. Some companies expect to unload 200 trucks in just 8 hours when they only have 20 docks to receive goods in. That is 6 minutes a trailer to unload count and move the goods into their warehouse.
One of the things that caught my attention in the last video I posted - while the Terminals may be working 24/7 the ocean carriers shore based terminals are for the most part only working 16 hours a day on a M-F basis. Doesn't do that much good to get the box off the ship, only to have it wait up to at least two days to have available to be checked out of the terminal area.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Amazon in the last year or so has been under fire by their delivering carriers for holding trucks that still have product on them. They were at one point refusing to fully unload trucks that where at their warehouses. Why they could claim the stock had not be received by them as long as it was on the trailers or containers yet and they did not have to claim it as inventory for tax purposes. However carriers hammering them with millions in Detention Time fees got their attention in a hurry. I know Prime billed them over 8 Million dollars for one month alone for some of the crap they where pulling at some of their Whole Food warehouses. Needless to say that stopped in a hurry and now they just try to unload 200 trucks in 8 hours without much sucess like most other places. There is no way to do that people. On a normal load frozen meals for a store there could be several different types in the trailer each will require a different pallet. No way can that be done in under 6 minutes. Even a straight pull of say starwberries or bananas takes a minimum of 30 mins to unload.
One of the things that made Bezos so rich was extending Sam Walton's idea of computerizing POS into actual computerized warehousing and shipping. If you were to adopt even fairly rudimentary standards for pallet ization and modular dunnage, with appropriate combination of RFID/machine-readable coding with human-recognizable markings and procedures, very rapid bulk unloading, cross-dock prestaging, and rapid assisted loading, on-the-fly dunnage, and load balancing become pretty simple, with pretty bulletproof handover at shift changes. That in turn allows an increase in permitted cross-dock effectiveness for both aggregating an effective loadout from multiple arriving sources and least-time break-bulk of 'LCL/LTL' to ongoing distribution down to last-mile.
The point being that much of the true expense of innovating the approach, designing and producing the capital equipment and operating paradigms, and costing-down production has already been done.
One thing that could help free up the supply chain crisis is instead of trying to unload all your trucks in an 8 hour window go to 24 hour receiving. This is at major warehouses not at the store level of course. Some companies expect to unload 200 trucks in just 8 hours when they only have 20 docks to receive goods in. That is 6 minutes a trailer to unload count and move the goods into their warehouse.
charlie hebdo Euclid was dependent on the reliable over-the-ocean supply chain. Hardly a revelation. And what made it work, I recall Greyhounds saying long ago on mentioning a book, was how cheap transportation had become. Clearly that has changed. How cheap container transport will be after recovery (which has already started) is unknown.
Euclid was dependent on the reliable over-the-ocean supply chain.
Hardly a revelation. And what made it work, I recall Greyhounds saying long ago on mentioning a book, was how cheap transportation had become. Clearly that has changed. How cheap container transport will be after recovery (which has already started) is unknown.
A viewpoint other than rail based.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86yOssW8EAg
Backshop, you're right and they did do a good job - aided by deregulation
This would actually be USRA 3.0. 2.0 created Conrail and did a decent job.
Is there an internet symbol for "Sarcasm Follows?" ?
Turns out there is. I should have inserted an upside down smiley face. "Commonly used to convey irony, sarcasm, joking, or a sense of goofiness or silliness."
https://emojipedia.org/upside-down-face/
Something I'm gonna have to remember from now on.
Anyway, by all accounts the USRA was a disaster (standard designs excepted) and I don't think USRA 2.0 would be any better, despite Biden's claims the Feds are going to fix everything at the ports in time for Christmas
BEAUSABRE BaltACD USRA actions would have no affect on the foreign flagged container ships that are the genesis of the supply waiting to enter the US. But don't you see? It would clear the ports of the cargo that is clogging them, allowing those ships to enter and discharge their cargo, eliminating any problems due to ocean shipping. QED
BaltACD USRA actions would have no affect on the foreign flagged container ships that are the genesis of the supply waiting to enter the US.
But don't you see? It would clear the ports of the cargo that is clogging them, allowing those ships to enter and discharge their cargo, eliminating any problems due to ocean shipping. QED
So your USRA action is going to give container terminals additional ground to land the boxes by stealing the land from the owners that adjoin the container terminals.
You could have every intermodal car in existance double stacked out of LA/LB and you would still have vessels waiting their turn to dock.
BaltACDUSRA actions would have no affect on the foreign flagged container ships that are the genesis of the supply waiting to enter the US.
BEAUSABRE"This is congestion on a classic scale" We've been here before. It's time for a democratic president to follow the example of his predecessor a century ago during another crisis. Nationalize, except not just the railroads this time, the whole dang transportation industry. Yes, the USRA lives !! What could possibly go wrong with the all wisw government running things?
We've been here before. It's time for a democratic president to follow the example of his predecessor a century ago during another crisis. Nationalize, except not just the railroads this time, the whole dang transportation industry. Yes, the USRA lives !! What could possibly go wrong with the all wisw government running things?
USRA actions would have no affect on the foreign flagged container ships that are the genesis of the supply waiting to enter the US.
Euclidwas dependent on the reliable over-the-ocean supply chain.
"This is congestion on a classic scale"
tree68The USS Nimitz (CVN68) has just over 1000' of anchor chain on each anchor, as an example. There are several spots well off LA/LB that would permit anchoring, but there are spots that ore over 1,400 feet deep...
The rule of the thumb is that the scope of the anchor chain should be six times the depth of water, so the anchor doesn't pull out of the bottom as the ship drifts. Thus 1000 feet of anchor chain will allow you to anchor in 200 feet of water - at that point, all the chain is out - "at the bitter end" as the squids put it.
"bitter end (plural bitter ends)
The bitter end means the very end.The bitter end is a nautical term. The bitt end (or bitter end) refers to the final part of the anchor rope near to where the rope is fixed to the ship’s deck. Usually marked with coloured rags, the bitter end gets its name from the bollards (or bitts) on the deck to which the anchor rope was tied. When the sailors lowering the anchor came across the rags on the bitter end, they knew there was no more rope left, meaning the water was too deep to set anchor. To go to the bitter end means to go to the very end (i.e., right to end last few yards of the anchor rope)."
The modern US Navy paints the last shot (90 feet - 15 fathoms) of chain red and the next to last yellow as warnings to the anchor detail
The rule of the thumb for the scope of an anchor chain is that it should be at least five times the depth of water to avoid pulling the anchor out of the bottom as the ship drifts. So 1000 feet of chain lets you anchor in 200 feet of water. At that point the chain is all the way out - "at the bitter end" as the squids put it
"bitter end
Perhaps something like this was in the plans, all along? Not to build a tangent, so much as a hypothetical parallel, but I think back to how inexpensive natural gas was back when a majority of residences were still heating with coal. Gas was trying to build market share. Once coal was dispatched as the first choice, then the escalations of gas prices followed.
Perhaps we were wooed into a "garden of earthly delights" with cheap transportation that no one intended to be the permanent business model. The low prices were just a transition phase anomaly?
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