Interesting talk on radio today. Truck drivers and industry officials said early cause of Calif port back up partly due to Green New Deal in Calif which prohibits “older” trucks from picking up freight in ports. Older means over 3 years. Even “rich companies like Coke or Walmart don’t replace all vehicles after 3 years. Driver/owners and small firms certainly don’t.

In addition, over 1/2 the states closed their DL testing offices during pandemic, as well as as many driver schools being closed.

If true, then we gotta love Calif and of course the press for failing to report.

Need to establish some ports in TX and FL. Now.

CTH (Conservative TreeHouse)agrees w OP

https://theconservativetreehou...s-worse/#more-218528

The central issue is the inability of emission compliant heavy transportation in California to move those containers full of goods to manufacturing, warehouses and distribution points.

This California bottleneck has been building, and building and building for years, until now it has reached a crisis point.

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
Need to establish some ports in TX and FL. Now.

Governor Desantis got on the news this past week and said just that. He said to the the shipping companies, "Our ports are open, bring your ships here."

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
Need to establish some ports in TX and FL. Now.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ports in MS. and Alabama are open as well. I am guessing it the greater distance that the container ships must travel to TX and FLA.

Years ago I used to occasionally haul a container or two out of Long Beach. Then CA decided that you could no longer carry a 40ft container on a step deck because you could no longer overhang three feet. Never mind you can hang other freight 13ft. Only CA has this rule. Then, when I started pulling a regular flatbed, I hauled them again. Then the Feds decided I needed a TWIC card that costs $150, takes three months to get, and must be applied for (at the time) only at a port. So I stopped. Later, when I finally got a TWIC card, I again occasionally took a container. Then they said I needed a drayage sticker which costs another $300. To get that sticker, I practically needed a brand new truck, but that truck would only qualify for a few years, and then I'd need another new truck. It made no financial sense.

I've never been back to the port again. I will never even make an attempt to meet their requirements. I am only one of thousands of truck owners who have been down this road and no longer will even consider container freight. Right now this douchebaggery is in the ports. Soon the hyper-enforcement of emissions controls will be the whole state of California. These ass clowns think they can just dictate whatever they want, and that the market will just comply. Well you have your answer.

They should expand the port in Vancouver, WA, if they can. I don't know if the terrain or waterway will accommodate it, but it would bypass all of these problems that California has created.

I just read an article the truck drivers are blaming the crane operators at the ports. They said the cranes are intentionally running slow and only loading a few trucks an hour. Drivers are waiting hours and days to be loaded and not getting paid. If they complain the crane operators will skip them and load another truck. If they complain more the crane operators will throw them out of the port. They claim the operators union is so strong there is nothing that can be done.


https://www.washingtonexaminer...-crisis-truckers-say

Lets play a game - Lets call it "Anything to obfuscate the truth."

Seriously,
Is it the truckers Union blaming the Crane operators?
Is it the lack of training facilities?
Is it the drivers staying home collecting stimulus checks due to "Covid"?
Is it stupid Green policies banning nearly all trucks?
Why are fuel trucks not able to keep the local gas stations full?

There simply aren't enough truck drivers. We have spent the last few decades regulating the piss out of truckers. From ELDs to the drug clearinghouse, and everything in between, it is not something that anybody wants to do. Adding to the problem, I have heard for the past ten years about how all truck drivers will be replaced with automation. Do you think this makes a young person want to enter the profession?

When there's a shortage of drivers, the shittiest stuff goes first. This is CA and port freight. BTW, there are no significant trucker's unions which can influence the industry.

California rules and regulations aren't helping this situation, but the California Green New Deal has not passed yet. This shit sandwich can't be passed whole in a state with a super majority of Democrats, but they vow passing pieces of it in other bills.

https://www.capradio.org/artic...-bills-that-advance/

We can agree on one thing:

Joe Biden giving "orders" to private business to speed things "or else" is not going to accomplish anything. They have to do something substantive to help fix the problem.

So let's do "everything" - remove all restrictions on emission levels for trucks that service the ports, temporarily suspend union control of the ports, activate all national guard members that are qualified for a CDL and let them drive, remove restrictions on drivers (extend daily hours, etc.) and so on. Subsidize extra pay for all drivers.

This is not rocket science. Break the bottlenecks wherever they are, eliminate the rent seekers.

California thrives on failure

It’s the only thing they are good at.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Joe Biden giving "orders" to private business to speed things "or else" is not going to accomplish anything. They have to do something substantive to help fix the problem.

Unfortunately, the Secretary of Transportation being out on paternity leave isn't helping things.

quote:

Originally posted by holdem:

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
Need to establish some ports in TX and FL. Now.

Governor Desantis got on the news this past week and said just that. He said to the the shipping companies, "Our ports are open, bring your ships here."

The problem is, it's a huge expense (fuel/time) due to the additional distance and the cost of going through the Panama Canal that does not make it worth it for shippers and shipping companies.

I'm not sure where to put this, so I'll drop it in here.

Tractor Tires. Farmers are running short of tractor tires.
LINK if you want to eat...

A new and unexpected problem has emerged in America’s collapsing supply chain that is making it close to impossible for some farmers to continue growing food.

Spare tires for tractors are now in dangerously short supply thanks to the government’s never-ending Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) fascism.

For whatever reason, critical farming equipment and parts are either not getting produced anymore or not getting delivered to where they need to be, leaving farmers across the heartland in a major bind.

“You try to baby your equipment, but we’re all at the mercy of luck right now,” says Cordt Holub, a fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer in Buckingham, Ia, who now locks his machinery up inside his barn every night after thieves robbed hard-to-find tractor parts from a local Deere & Co. dealership.

Tractor tires, semiconductors and other vital components needed in the industrial farming sector are just not available like they once were, which threatens the ability of farmers to not only continue planting food but also harvesting it.

When equipment or machinery breaks, many farmers are now having to scramble to find some kind of workaround. Local welders and mechanics are often called on to try to rig something up just to get the job done, even if it is not a long-term solution to the problem.

Because machine tires have become so difficult to find, growers looking to buy used equipment are also asking for close-up photos of the tires to see how much tread is left. Those that are bare are often skipped over in favor of something newer.

“As harvest ends, we will see farmers at equipment auctions not for the machinery – but for parts,” says Greg Peterson, founder of the Machinery Pete website, which hosts farm equipment auctions.

“We’re already hearing from guys talking about buying a second planter or sprayer, just for parts.”

Is the American government intentionally trying to starve out the country?
Before the Fauci Flu was even a thing, the American government was already targeting the farming sector with obliteration by forcing tractor manufacturers to start building the machines with built-in obsolescence.

Much like a smartphone that turns into a “brick” after a certain number of software upgrades, the tractor industry was told by Big Brother that all new tractors must be made virtually impossible to fix. This forces farmers to have to keep buying new tractors, assuming they can find any.

Fast-forward to now and it seems obvious that this is a planned destruction of the farming sector. It is unclear how much longer the charade can go on before the entire industry collapses, leaving Americans starving without food.

Even irrigation supplies are in short supply, which means some farmers are no longer able to get water to their crops. Keep in mind that much of the country is still suffering under historic drought conditions.

“We were in the middle of a drought up here,” says Rami Warburton, who owns a small welding shop in western Washington.

Warburton says that she and her husband Bob have barely been able to keep up with all the orders coming from farmers who need something repaired, whether it be new fittings for irrigation systems or a new bucket for a bulldozer.

“At that time, they couldn’t wait to water their fields for a month. The crops will be dead by then.”

Since most products used in America these days come from China, all thanks to the globalist policies that Americans have been voting in for decades, the supply chain can now be easily weaponized, which is clearly what is happening.

The latest news about the engineered collapse of the global economy due to “covid” can be found at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

Reuters.com

NaturalNews.com

I work in logistics. If starting right now, there were NO more ‘hiccups’ it would take 2-3 years for things to return back to normal. What I’m seeing in the trucking industry is not good and other than self driving trucks, don’t see much being done to fix these issues. The US was 100,000 trucks short of where we should be BEFORE the virus. I’ll echo the above post…the trucks that break down are seeing huge delays in finding parts and tires.

quote:

Originally posted by holdem:

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
Need to establish some ports in TX and FL. Now.

Governor Desantis got on the news this past week and said just that. He said to the the shipping companies, "Our ports are open, bring your ships here."

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
California thrives on failure

It’s the only thing they are good at.

Yes, but I think this is all on purpose. They want to bring our economy down to push their agenda.

quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:

Unfortunately, the Secretary of Transportation being out on paternity leave isn't helping things.

Actually that might be a good thing.