Biden’s Boat Parade: Trucker Shortage Exacerbating U.S. Port Congestion

   

The breakdown of the supply chains vital to our economy is finally capturing the public attention. Despite Joe Biden's executive order last week, the Port of Los Angeles is not yet operating 24 hours per day, according to analysts at Bank of America, and on Tuesday there were nearly 100 container ships at anchor waiting to get into port there and at the Port of Long Beach. They may be waiting a while. As we reported at Bretibart News today, there are still 20,000 fewer truckers in the U.S. than there were pre-pandemic. Many truckers who lost their jobs in the initial shutdown appear not to have returned to work. As a result, the average wait time for containers offloaded at the LA and Long Beach ports is five to six days, twice as long as normal. That leaves the dockyards overcrowded, leaving ships with no place to offload. Keeping the ports open longer may not fix things. For one thing, not only are more truckers needed, shipping companies will need to recruit truckers willing to work a 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift. That's going to be difficult and expensive to do while so many other employers are on a hiring spree. Recall that there were over 10 million open jobs at the end of August. What's more, there will need to be workers at warehouses to unload trucks at off-hours. Hard at any time. Probably impossible in a labor shortage. This global disruption puts more strain on smaller companies than larger ones. The biggest retailers charter their own container ships and have more leverage with rail and truck companies to move product across the country. It is the smaller importers who will be strained the most. That will be particularly punishing during the holiday season, when many retailers depend on huge sales volumes to put them into profitability for the year. – Alex Marlow & John Carney Breitbart News Network