Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Dan from Madison Disney must have done a great job advertising the new mini series “Get Back!” featuring the Beatles. I say that because I don’t watch much TV but somehow the ads found me. I’m sure it was through football games.
My daughter has a Disney Plus subscription (i.e. I’m paying for it) so I considered it a sunken cost and decided to go for it. I have been a Beatles fan since I was in high school so it wasn’t too hard of a decision.
I was happy and relieved at the verdict yesterday in the Rittenhouse trial. Of course you have plenty of ridiculous takes on the trial out there like this:
America today: you can break the law, carry around weapons built for a military, shoot and kill people, and get away with it.
That’s the message we’ve just sent to armed vigilantes across the nation. https://t.co/yiVLN2v718
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 19, 2021
I have spent an inordinate amount of time following this trial and spent my evenings watching the proceedings. Which reminds me that we need to start having cameras in federal courtrooms, but that is a different subject.
It’s breathtaking how none of the screaming loons like Newsom looked at one minute of these proceedings, looked at not one exhibit of evidence or even bothered to look at all of the video that is out there everywhere. Why are there even sides on the right to defend yourself?
This is a great time to have conversations about prosecutorial misconduct, the Constitution and self defense and instead it is just all rank bullshit. Imagine all of the innocent poor people rotting in jail because they took the deals due to prosecutorial misconduct. Kyle had people setting up defense funds or he would be there too. Especially if there wasn’t video.
The left in this country are absolute trash. I hope Kyle is able to somehow get on with his life and live it in a somewhat normal fashion after this all blows over. Oh and also after he is done suing everyone who called him a white supremacist, murderer, and all the rest. He could start with “Biden” but there is probably lower hanging fruit out there for some quick settlements. I’m sure there are a lot of people scrubbing their social media as I write this, but the internet never forgets. Just ask Nick Sandmann.
LTL means “less than load”. For those not in the know, a “load” means a full truck. Full trucks in the USA can be those huge 53 footers, or something smaller.
In industrial distribution for most products, we utilize LTL for the majority of our inventory. It’s a serious disaster right now.
I have been carping for the better part of a couple years about the issue. As with most things, there are several factors at play.
1) No new entries in the truck driving industry – we simply have a driver shortage, and have for a very long time. From what I am reading we are around eighty thousand short and the problem is only getting worse. All trades have this same issue. Kids growing up simply don’t want to do actual work, and would rather spend time making their money in front of screens or doing “soft labor” as I call it. Not that “soft labor” such as cutting hair or being an accountant are necessarily bad in and of themselves, mind you.
2) Nobody gives a f – this is harsh, but there it is. The work that is getting done, when it gets done in LTL is slow and sloppy. We have record amounts of damage and missing freight. It is absolutely maddening when you wait with these extended lead times for a specialized piece of equipment, and it finally arrives with a fork passed through the center.
3) I firmly believe that the cops, Teamsters and insurance companies have teamed up into a strange cabal to “slow roll” driverless vehicles. This is a bit of tinfoil had stuff I will admit but it is a theory I have had for a while. If we had driverless trucks a lot of these problems would be solved almost overnight, however there would be no speeding tickets to write, labor contracts to negotiate or premiums to collect. Well, virtually none anyways. This wouldn’t solve the issue of a lack of mechanics to service the vehicles, but that is grist for another post.
4) Lack of sense of urgency in government. As I have pounded the table on before, we need a “port team” or “transportation team” to get industry experts together, and start solving problems. Flying into LA and waving a magic wand over the ports, like has been done so far, is getting less than nothing done.
So the result is that we have this insane mess across the whole country. I have been trying to figure out ways to pick up freight that is within a reasonable range and trying other ideas such as even partnering with competitors or people outside of my industry to come up with a full truck to get a non stop delivery to the area.
A few anecdotal stories to end this rant.
I have a manufacturer that is 45 minutes from one of my stores. They sent out five pallets of stuff to me last Friday and it still isn’t here. The reason is that the trucking company has it parked at some sort of re-sorting facility as they lack drivers and need to consolidate their shipments. Meanwhile, people are getting cold.
This is an interesting article I spied the other day about a local chocolatier waiting forever for a skid of chocolate. I would bet a large amount of their extended lead time is transportation. It affects everything.
I am taking some (well deserved) time off around the Holidays, and would like to read up on the German occupation of France during WW2. I know it is a big subject but just let ‘er rip. Thanks in advance.
Ginny provided an excellent link to a discussion about the port mess on the West Coast. I read the entire (long) thing and the comments and had a few things to add here.
I doubt that some guy (although he is a logistics company CEO) could rent a boat, put out a few tweets and change a municipal rule. It isn’t like the guy has millions upon millions of followers. I suppose it could have happened but sounds doubtful (8 hours is what it took). And while it is great that they can stack containers higher, that isn’t going to solve the overall problem.
As many others (including me) have pointed out the problem didn’t happen overnight and won’t be fixed overnight. The problem needs a team of people to come up with a game plan that is realistic, and a bunch of rules will need to be changed if the issue is going to be fixed. Mayor Pete is clearly underqualified and probably doesn’t care, as evidenced by his extended time off to play mom. While taking time off to take care of a child in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, taking off so long is, of course, ridiculous and a bad look. Full disclosure – when my wife bore my two children I think I took off one or two days for each.
I have said before that there needs to be a Port Team, or something on the federal level and they need to get with the state and local governments as well as the unions and fix the archaic rules that everyone is playing under, and come up with some out of the box solutions. I figure this would take the team around a month to come up with, and I would involve everyone, including the army logistics people, or anyone else I could think of to help.
This will not happen.
So, back to reality. In the world of industrial distribution, things are somewhat like they have been for the past year and a half. Anything imported is completely crazy and unpredictable as to when it will arrive. Everyone is more accepting of substitutes, as sometimes there is no choice – and many times the substitutes are much more expensive. But if the choice is “heat” or “no heat”, it makes things easier. Winter will have no mercy on facilities or homes that don’t have parts or units that work to keep them thawed. I get very little time off, but I have no choice right now as we need stuff and I have to do whatever it takes to get it.
There are some holes in the inventory but nothing too tragic, with the notable exception of imported finished goods such as ductless mini split systems, all of which are made “over there”. That industry is pretty much tanked. Domestically made products are doing much better, although the continuing labor shortages and problems with getting certain raw materials such as plastics and foam (we really didn’t need that Texas freeze on top of all of this) hurt lead times.
It is still pretty wild with some things, but overall, it isn’t the end of the world unless you are relying on imported stuff. LTL continues to be a major issue and I expect problems with food chain eventually. We need autonomous trucks and fast.