Thank you, Elmer. That was a great explainer.

I'm wondering how these crews stuck at anchor get provisions. Has a new business sprung up supplying them?

Interesting.

It's a good question chisue and I believe the answer is that the provisioning companies of all types of products at all the important ports have long had delivery vessels to bring their products to ships drifting offshore or at anchor. Watching this guy's videos triggered an interest in me and I enjoy watching his stuff and similar ones produced by others. .

The first video linked below from the same guy shows how when passing the Strait of Gibraltar they stop on the southern (African) sideat the Spanish enclave of Ceuta for fuel (bunkering), then cross to the northern side near Gibraltar to pick up chemicals, fuel additives, and spare parts. Delivered without entering a port. Where what is picked up is probably price dependent.

The second video is from a Pakistani captain and is in Urdu but with English subtitles. Click on the CC (closed caption) icon in the youtube footer and you can turn on the subtitles. This shows a different ship, his ship, receiving a food delivery while offshore Cape Town, SA.

We were joking here about DoorDash on a Dinghy.

It's like that bpath but apparently with the need to order a week or more in advance.

DoorDawdle.

Good videos, thanks for bringing them to our attention. What a different way of life they have than I do, that makes them so interesting.

haha, just had a thought: would they find a video of my lifestyle as interesting? I doubt it!!!

In addition to the port backups, container backlog, and driver shortages, there is also a nationwide shortage of chassis to move the containers from the rail terminals to the consignee and back. Dwell time for containers and chassis at consignee locations has increased due to shortages of workers to unload them. It's a ripple effect that has no end in site.

I suspect there will be a high demand for gift cards this Christmas season. I just ordered a few for my son's upcoming birthday and Christmas.

I'm not sure what the actual state of play is, but I've read that in many developed countries, as in Europe, a high percentage of "cargo" (of all types) is transported to and from ports by rail, rather than with trucks. Much higher than in the US. More rail usage would free up truck equipment and drivers to focus on the last link of the multimodal product transportation system. Also, some ports are more automated. An example is Rotterdam, which has unmanned, robotic container transporters that manage container movements to and from loading areas without needing drivers. This too would free up truck equipment and drivers for the last link rather than harbor movements.

The declining extent and relatively poor condition of the US rail system limits both capacity and train speeds and is not just a recent phenomenon. This limits and discourages more rail use. To be fair, large volume increases of any kind, in any industry, will stretch available resources and limit flow too. That's apparently also a major factor with supply chain congestion.

Most intermodal rail terminals are in larger urban areas where they can serve the most customers with the fewest hours of drayage required for the first and last leg of a trip. Anything moving to a more rural area will usually move door to door over the road. Time sensitive freight and most perishable commodities move door to door by truck and probably always will. Temperature controlled rail cars and containers require trains to make lengthy stops for refueling the reefers adding to transit times and cost.

I will have to disagree that the US rail system is in poor condition though. Railroads put a great deal of their capital expenditures into rail maintenance and upgrading lines every year. Government does not subsidize freight railroads(other than the original land grants), on the contrary they often force mandates like Positive Train Control that cost the industry over 10 billion just in the last decade.

Yes, new freight rail lines are very rare in North America and the existing lines are often run at or near capacity 24/7/365. Tens of thousands of miles of rail lines have been abandoned over the decades. Some due to being unprofitable and others due to redundancy after railroad mergers. Freight rail speeds are governed by the FRA and have been slowly increasing in the last 20 years over many corridors but don't expect the gross velocity to approach highway speeds anytime soon.

LoneJack is correct. Even products made in the US will be tough to get due to a number of factors related to trucking. In addition to driver and new truck shortages, there are shortages of parts to repair existing trucks, tire shortages, and shortages of diesel mechanics to maintain and repair those trucks. Adding to all that are the number of owner operators leaving the industry mostly due to higher fees, costs and over regulation. For every owner operator that leaves the long haul trucking industry, it removes not only a driver but in a majority cases a truck from the long haul trucking industry.

Here is another perspective.

https://www.facebook.com/100038650890317/posts/552471849384507/

functionthenlook,

That is what I am talking about re: the trucking crisis. I didn't even get into the California specific issues i.e. requiring new trucks, prohibiting owner operators, etc. Even if the ships get unloaded, the goods are not going to get picked up.

The video link I posted above said that 40% of US imports in shipboard containers arrive at the SoCal ports. Since California has less than 15 percent of the US's population, a good chunk of that traffic can be presumed to leave the state and travel elsewhere.

In the last few weeks I think I'd posted a link to a newspaper article that said one of the problems contributing to the SoCal port congestion and container backup was the lack of available rail service. Not just on a cross country basis but also locally, for goods destined for distribution centers 70 miles inland, because of inadequate rail infrastructure there and to there from the port area. The result was that most containers need to leave the port by truck. The article also spoke of limited cross country use of rail travel for containers, so I presume a large number of containers arriving by ship also leave California by truck. That or a different article spoke of a transshipment yard outside of Chicago that had to close for a period because it needed to clear what had become an unwieldy accumulation of containers. Clearly the system is overwhelmed at many points.

I know a lot of produce is exported from California and I suspect much of it is in temperature controlled containers, whether a truck or a so-called "reefer" as; you mentioned. Let's restrict the conversation to imported goods that arrive at ports. Large container ships are able to keep "reefers" within a required temperature range for a transoceanic passage. Those boxes are electrically powered and don't need to be "refueled". If that's possible, adding a fewer number of days of passage to cross part of the US shouldn't be a big deal. Are you saying that trains with reefer cars don't run on electricity and so goods in reefer containers can't be transshipped by rail?

What are the reasons why average rail freight speeds are below highway speeds? I think freight trains in Europe travel at faster than US speeds. Why?

The link a few items above to a Facebook page is not accessible for those of us who don't use Facebook. Can someone share what it says? Thanks

Elmer - Yes, premium freight trains can travel close to highway speeds in some corridors but I referenced gross train velocity in my comment. Gross velocity is decreased by stops for crew changes, refueling, inspections, and delays for various reasons like train meets between 2 trains moving in opposite directions on the same track. One of the two trains has to hit a siding. A typical number for gross velocity is in the 20-25 mph range system wide. Premium intermodal service gross velocity may reach into the mid 30s.

I'm not familiar with UPs and BNSFs local operation to and from the LA and LB ports. I do know that my RR interchanges 3 or 4 trans-continental intermodal trains a day from UP at Dallas or Shreveport that originate at one of those two ports and are destined to Atlanta or points further east. A similar number of intermodal trains are heading west to the ports each day. Each train may have 400-500 double stacked containers.

The vast majority of refrigerated railcars are powered by small diesel generators. Just in the last few years UP designed and is building 'hybrid' reefer cars that can run on diesel generated power or stored electricity when available.

Similarly, reefer containers run on electricity but require a source for it. That electricity source is readily available on a vessel but when moving on train or on the highway they must have a gen set diesel generator attached to each container to supply the electricity.

Thus refueling is required for both reefer railcars and containers as well as individual periodic inspections to insure that the proper temperature range is maintained at all times.

Sorry Elmer, I can't help...I don't do Facebook either.

There is most certainly NOT only one reason.

And a container ship can transport hundreds of containers at once, but a truck can only carry one.

Thanks for taking the time to provide the inside info, lonejack.

one if by land, 200 if by sea

it's quite the attack on our economy

Elmer - Customs and Border Protection do have a hand in importation of goods by rail, truck, and sea. I can't speak to truck or sea but both CBP and SAT (their Mexican equivalent) are often a bottleneck for trans-border rail shipments in Laredo, TX. They are just doing their jobs to minimize contraband but it does severely limit the number of trains that can cross the Laredo bridge on a given day.

Each rail car or container must pass by a gamma x-ray device and if anything suspicious is noticed the train is stopped for inspection of the offending car.

Back to the top for a minute - A Ship Chandler is the person/agency who is the one that coordinates, arranges and delivers everything required for the crew and for the ship itself at the ports of call.

A useless piece of information for many but a fascinating field.

Thanks for the added info, blfenton, but let me add to your addition a touch more info that I agree is interesting to some but ultimately of little use, as you suggest. .

As I understand it (also from owning a pleasure boat), a "chandler" is a marine term for a supplier or even a store. When parts, equipment, paint, or whatever was needed for my boat, I'd go to a "chandler". A big one in my area is West Marine.

The merchant marine industry is characterized by a number of large players operating dozens and dozens of ships. While you might say that supplies and stores needed by such ships are procured from "chandlers", I believe all the work for the coordination, arrangements, and placing orders is handled by central offices of the ship lines. Or so such information I've learned from many of these seafaring Youtubers would suggest - they submit their order needs to their company HQs and request deliveries with anticipated arrival times at particular places. Whether for food, fuel, equipment stores, or whatever. I suspect there are multiple suppliers in each location and as with the video I first linked "Stopping the Ship to Re-supply", the featured ship went to one port for fuel, and then another nearby one for spare parts. I suspect both were available in each location and the two stops were occasioned by pricing differences in bids received by the central offices.

Some potentially good news:

https://twitter.com/PortofLA/status/1450268956401537024

That's good news. They have a large backlog to work down. In this image, the orange and yellow dots close together like bunches of grapes, near the beaches, are ships waiting at anchor. The anchorages are full and the overflow are those dots offshore representing ships that are waiting by drifting. Those waters are too deep for dropping anchors. Akin to planes in a holding pattern but these holding patterns last for weeks.

This image of the LA/Long Beach port area (click to enlarge) comes from the site vesselfinder.com. Anyone interested can open the site, drag the image to the area of the world that's of interest, and then zoom in. Similar data showing many waiting ships can be seen off several US East Coast and Asian ports too.

Similarly, click to enlarge, the dots show ships at anchor as of right now currently delayed and waiting

At Houston

And at Savannah

Elmer do you have a map of the Norfolk, Hampton Roads, Newport News shipping area? Major ports there in the Chesapeake Bay zone but there's nothing I can find in the local news about backup problems.

As I mentioned above, go to vesselfinder.com, drag the map to the area of interest to you, then zoom in.

Here's a major congested area, ship movements and those at anchor (the dots) offshore Shanghai, China

Offshore from Rotterdam, Netherlands, which I believe is the busiest port in Continental Europe

I was listening to an explanation today on a stock-market radio channel. What they were saying was that stores automatically reorder goods, items monthly. When the Country shut down, stores stopped ordering because people were not going into stores.

The automatic shipments from China came to a halt. Over the past year, the stores opened and they were trying desperately to replenish their shelves.

China had ships sitting at their docks which had nowhere to go. Their shipping people were dealing with Covid. Many got sick. The ships had nowhere to go.

The bottom line was that by our Country shutting down, messed up the regular shipments of goods.. Now, everything is backed up, not only here, but in those Countries that shut down.

Jane

Chisue, a small boat called a Lighter is used to transfer provisions to boats anchored offshore.

Elmer, nice article. I am just now catching up with several days worth of posts. Will read the ither comments later.

Thx Elmer, Va ports do appear to be in much better shape than most when it comes to back-ups and congestion.

jane, it sounds like there was some misinformation and misunderstandings on the part of the reporters whose radio piece you're describing.

The largest retailers reflect the major market forces, are the ones to look at, are the major buyers of consumer goods and goods from abroad. Three of the biggest, Walmart, Amazon, and Costco, have all had sales increases during the pandemic period. None have closed, none have stopped ordering from suppliers.

Inventory reordering at most retailers, including grocery chains, is autoMATED.. New orders are based on stock on hand and projected sales to determine needs. Nothing new about that, in the pre-automated supply chain days, orders were done with pencil and paper and mental guesswork. For large supply contracts, customers typically give future quarterly or longer buying projections for orders and can only vary actual orders by an agreed percentage. In many sectors, shipping delays more significantly affect the sellers (other than the buyers being short of goods to sell) because oftentimes payment for purchases isn't due until delivery. So it's often the foreign suppliers who are bearing the financial burden of the undelivered products. They've bought their raw materials, paid for production, but have to wait to be paid.

It is true that a variety of compounding problems have caused supply delays, and it's not just delays of fridges, toaster ovens and flip flops. I've tried in this thread to present balanced and factual views. The US supply system has proven to be inflexible, inadequate, and with bottlenecks of unexpected kinds in unexpected places.

Paradoxically, despite all the delays and waiting ships, port cargo processing stats are up considerably from past years.