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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCost of shipping between China and U.S. plunges
The cost of shipping between China and the U.S. plunged this week after hitting record highs in early September as the off-season approaches, a power crunch slows Chinese manufacturing and speculators rush to sell their hoarded shipping spots.
An executive with a Shanghai freight company said Thursday that the cost of shipping a 40-foot container from China to the U.S. West Coast dropped nearly half in the previous four days, going from about $15,000 to just over $8,000. The spot rate for shipping to the East Coast had fallen by more than one-quarter from over $20,000 to less than $15,000.
Prior to the pandemic, the rate was usually around $1,500. The cost of shipping has skyrocketed since the start of the pandemic. On the demand side, U.S. consumers stuck at home spent more on durable goods, such as gym equipment and furnishings.
However, congestion at ports around the world led to a dearth of containers and speculation by scalpers looking to make a profit from rising prices.
In the last week of September, the shipping rate on a route between China and the West Coast almost halved, Caixin learned from freight forwarders. The route is operated by Matson, one of the biggest U.S. container freight companies.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Cost-of-shipping-between-China-and-U.S.-plunges
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)Im not sure how much a difference this will make in the short term, but it is nevertheless good news.
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)Throck
(2,520 posts)I understand there's a shortage of professional drivers so they can't get the stuff off the docks.
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)With little up-front investment, drivers most of them independent contractors who owned their own trucks could make a decent living squeezing the last miles from dilapidated big rigs that werent suited for the open road.
In October 2008, that changed dramatically in southern California, home of the nations busiest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach. State officials, fed up with deadly diesel fumes from 16,000 outdated trucks, ordered the entire fleet replaced with new, cleaner rigs.
Suddenly, this obscure but critical collection of trucking companies faced a $2.5 billion crossroads unlike anything experienced at other U.S. ports.
Instead of digging into their own pockets to undo the environmental mess they helped create, the companies found a way to push the cost onto individual drivers, who are paid by the number and kinds of containers they move, not by the hour.
There are 800 companies regularly operating at the LA ports. Almost all of them turned to some form of a lease-to-own model, some without thinking through the consequences, said industry consultant and lobbyist Alex Cherin.
https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/
Another legislative screw-up in Sacramento.
2naSalit
(86,048 posts)How it is that anyone who finds a way to make a buck, no matter how polluting and unsafe it may be, is sanctified by some unwritten edict of capitalism?
I understand they made it their living but if you are skirting regulations where your actions result in harmful conditions, why is it that when you are curtailed by regulation, you get to whine about it so that you can continue. Like the ranchers who run their cattle on public lands and trash the environment by putting more animals on allotments than is allowed, then whine about some of them dying from something on the landscape like larkspur of wolves or bears. They aren't paying shit to run cattle on public lands yet they demand a host of subsidies so that they "can survive" in business.
I have been around the docks in and around those ports as a truck driver, most of the trash heaps that pull containers around the LA basin and elsewhere shouldn't leave the parking lot. They never travel far enough to need to cross a scale where they will be inspected and they are abominations in many ways on a safety level.
If you can't afford decent equipment, maybe you should find another way to make a living. Same for the ranchers, if you don't have a yard big enough for your cows, maybe you don't need to have so many cows.
DanieRains
(4,619 posts)By monopolies.
Let's raise prices 1,000 Percent, because we can!