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Supply Chain: What Would Trump Do?
This business of the supply chain being “broken” is a joke. The supply chain is not broken. It is being deliberately crippled by the man-boy governor of California, who has forbidden independent truckers or union truckers driving trucks more than three years old (as I understand data from other Ricochetti) from taking loads away from the piers to local distribution points. With the number of union truckers driving new rigs being finite, Mr. Xiden’s “24/7” claims are useless.
This is easily remedied. A real president would jawbone the man-boy governor of California into suspending the regulations for the good of his state and his nation. If this failed, a real president would go on national TV and announce that due to the State of Emergency he had just declared, he was suspending the regs, that he was authorizing the Secretary of Commerce (who would actually be at work, not trying manfully to breastfeed a baby) to seize control of all rigs from Austin to Walla-Walla, that he was diverting the Coast Guard to line the 70 waiting ships up to be offloaded, that he was ordering the Secretary of Defense to divert military resources to the area to assist, etc.
Please don’t argue about the details. The details don’t matter for my purposes; the will to succeed does. Mr. Trump would pull out every card in his capitalist Rolodex to find the right people to do this, would sic his house counsel on finding a legal way to do it, and would find the manpower and trucks. It would get done, just like we got WuFlu vaccines, an embassy in Jerusalem, Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, and an end to ISIS.
Mr. Xiden just makes a pronouncement, which means nothing.
Published in General
The possibility exists that this is the exact point of stopping the flow of goods, to invoke the army and navy to run the ports and move the goods.
I miss Donald Trump in the presidency. It was a wonderful vacation.
Seems to me the easiest way to un-do the silly PRC regulations etc, is to point out that this involves INTERSTATE COMMERCE!
The Army and Navy cannot respond until the mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion “training” is completed and all the shots have been administered.
The California ridiculousness needs to be fixed, but this won’t fix the whole problem Not all ships docking in California have their cargos transferred directly to trucks; in many cases, the containers go onto rail flatcars and are unloaded thousands of miles away.
At present, there is a huge traffic jam of trains waiting to be unloaded in Chicago, and the reason why the unloading facilities are tied up is that trucks aren’t showing up promptly to pick up the containers.
https://www.railwayage.com/intermodal/bnsf-to-stb-on-maintaining-supply-chain-integrity-during-periods-of-heightened-volumes/?RAchannel=home
It certainly appears that there is a nationwide problem with the supply of trucks and drivers.
I imagine that there are several things Trump could have and would have done to address this problem. Maybe there are some military drivers with experience on relevant equipment who could be temporarily released or reassigned for civilian service. And how long would it take to actually increase the driver supply?…I believe one can get a Commercial Drivers License in about 2 months. What if a President had called for more CDLs and maybe even subsidized the training.
Note that the BNSF CEO’s letter linked above was written on August 4, and it’s clear that the Surface Transportation Board was aware of the problem even earlier than that. There has been time to take some action, if anyone in the federal government had been inclined to do so.
My wife and I drove from Knoxville to Lexington for the Bourbon Trail Meetup. Almost every truck we passed had an “Now Hiring Drivers” sign on it.
And Mayor Pete slinks away to play peek-a-boo with the tykes.
As far as I’ve heard, the containers are not transferred directly from ships to rail flatcars. What I’ve read is that the short-haul trucks do that too: taking the containers from the ship terminals to rail terminals. But PRC isn’t allowing the owner-operator short-haul trucks any more.
I am so aggravated by this post (good post) that instead of leaving a measly comment, I am compelled to create a post to further your subject! UGH!
Here’s a description of the intermodal operations at the Port of Los Angeles:
https://www.portoflosangeles.org/business/supply-chain/rail
I *believe* this implies that 26% of the cargo moves thru the on-dock rail system, which would involve only the transfer cranes of the port itself…can anyone clarify this, one way or the other? That would leave 74% of the rail-destined containers to go to the ‘near-dock’ railyards, presumably by truck.
This applies only to the 35% of the traffic handled by the Port’s own rail network, the majority being handled by separately-owned facilities such as APM Terminal (subsidiary of Maersk Lines)…so hard to tell what the overall mix is.
And PRC shot itself – and the rest of us – in the foot again, by banning the independent non-union owner-operator trucks which did most of that, using older trucks that PRC also no longer allows which are most cost-effective for short runs where the trucks can be inspected and maintained more frequently since they never leave “home.”
David Foster;I *believe* this implies that 26% of the cargo moves thru the on-dock rail system, which would involve only the transfer cranes of the port itself…can anyone clarify this, one way or the other?
What I think you are describing is the “Alameda Corridor” – a rail system under Alameda Street that connects the two ports and the Downtown LA nationally connected Rail station complex. From Wiki, the Alameda Corridor carried 33% of port traffic to Downtown Station in 2013 but I believe traffic has been declining on this system. Btw, this Alameda Corridor project soaked up almost all of the transportation funds for LA County for about fifteen to twenty years and has been a disaster for LA traffic.
From Wiki:
The Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile (32 km) freight rail “expressway”[1] owned by the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (reporting mark ATAX) that connects the national rail system near downtown Los Angeles, California, to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, running below Alameda Street.[2]
The project includes the Mid-Corridor Trench, a below-ground, triple-tracked rail line that is 10 miles (16 km) long, 33 feet (10 m) deep, and 50 feet (15 m) wide,[3] shared by the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad (UP)[1] via trackage rights. One important use of the corridor is to carry cargo containers to and from the ports. Fifteen percent of the nation’s container traffic travels through the corridor according to the Transit Authority.[4] The corridor has a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h).
The Alameda Corridor allows trains to bypass 90 miles (140 km) of early 20th-century branch lines and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway‘s historic Harbor Subdivision along a high-speed grade-separated corridor, built mainly on the alignment of a former Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) line, avoiding more than 200 street-level railroad crossings where automobiles previously had to wait for lengthy freight trains to pass.[5]
A section of the Alameda Corridor trench in the city of Compton.
The Alameda Corridor Transit Authority maintains more than 65 miles (105 km) of freight rail track, with 125 turnouts, 10 rail bridges, signals at 48 locations, 7 grade crossings, and several storm water pump stations.[6]
The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles completed the purchase of SP’s Alameda Corridor line for $235 million in December 1994 ($410 million adjusted for inflation).[8][9] The line began operation on April 15, 2002, and reached a peak of 60 train movements per day by October 2006.[10] It is credited with significantly relieving congestion on the Long Beach Freeway (I-710) and elsewhere in the region. In 2007 the line carried 17,824 trains carrying 4.7 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of containers.[10]
In 2013, the railroad carried 33% of the freight traveling to and from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.[11]
How long does it take to get a union card in California? Do you have to have the right contacts and/or bribe the right person? Does the union limit the number of drivers in order to keep wages high? I have no idea the answer to these questions, but would be shocked if the only hurdle to getting more drivers was simply getting more people licensed. It’s a union, after all.
Well, the People’s Republic of California does have other problems including perhaps having the highest share of people who don’t get driver’s licenses: they think it’s more civilized to rely on other licensed drivers, including uber etc, and even the very same trucks. Trucking companies want to get CDL drivers who already have a good record of not having road rage, etc.
But don’t underestimate PRC’s new restriction on older trucks. The companies want to use new(er) trucks for long-haul routes where mechanical reliability is more important. Older trucks get put on shorter local routes including from ports to warehouses, because they are at “base” every day for inspections, possible repairs, and even if there is a breakdown that means maybe 10 to 50 miles to get it back not maybe 500 or more.
A Trump-type President would address these factors also…he might not succeed, but guaranteed he’d give it a good try!
I read about the union problems at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angelos years ago, so none of this is a surprise to me.
If I were advising a president, I’d recommend he do roughly the same thing Reagan did with the PATCO union after the air traffic controlllers went on strike.
There are differences. PATCO was composed of federal employees conducting an illegal strike.
The members of the ILWU work for private employers, and breaking that union’s hold on the west coast ports would take more imagination. It would probably take a Republican president, and it would be helpful if there were a Republican controlled congress, though probably not necessary.
It would probably take more time than we have.
There are other more immediate suggestions in the posts above that may or may not work.
Doc, I understand your frustration, but what authority would President Trump have to override a state law?
There might be something. This would be a matter of interstate commerce, so Congress could override the California law. It is possible that there is an emergency-powers statute that would allow a President to take the action you suggest. I’m just not sure.
I’m also not sure about assigning blame specifically to Gov. Newsom. My impression is that there is a California law imposing these requirements. As governor, he would have a duty to enforce that law. Though even if this is correct, I don’t know the timing of the law. If he signed it, he would share the blame. But the California legislature would also be part of the problem.
In fact, Newsom and the legislature would not be the main problem. The main problem is the people of California. They voted for these officials, by very large margins.
It is very annoying that their foolishness has ripple effects on the rest of us.
Yep, as I pointed out in #3, it’s actually interstate commerce, not only like the Left CLAIMS damn near everything to be “interstate commerce” so they can regulate or ban.
Turnabout is fair play.
A side issue – what happened to all those NAFTA truckers from Mexico? Do their trucks no longer qualify as well?
I’m thinking the Mexico truckers aren’t union, and might often be owner-operators as well as being more than 3 years old.
Do they get an international exemption?
Well those are California things, they might get to do things their own way even if NAFTA says otherwise, like they can have their own stuff in other ways. Kowtowing to both PRCs.
Is NAFTA back in force?
I think Trump negotiated a new one, didn’t he? If it was approved by Congress then it would be in force.
Man, my memory is going. But yeah, I think it passed congress and has the force of law.
Of course, that wouldn’t stop Biden. Nothing does.
It’s a global issue, apparently.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/shoppers-facing-empty-shelves-and-rising-prices-as-global-supply-chain-crisis-tipped-to-worsen/news-story/74cf57af179a794cb5f34a8ad2fa0a73
Why would there be a supply chain issue under a pro-America Trump presidency, COVID notwithstanding?
fuel would be available at good prices, citizens would be working and loving it, and the Roads Must Role! And Superman would still stand for the American Way!
Biden/Potemkin shelf stocking
Cue Victor Serge on the original Totalitarians and the society they created: