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| ▲ | Animats 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes. The Port of Los Angeles had a huge problem with empties when Hanjin went bankrupt. Everybody thought the South Korean government would bail out Hanjin, one of the largest shipping lines. There was no bailout. Port of LA finally shipped most of the empties to Fontana, CA, an inland city which exists mostly to move freight around. Three freeways, two rail lines, Amazon and WalMart plants, and an auto mall that's all truck dealers. If you want a used 20' container, they're under $1000 right now in the Fontana area.
Probably much less in quantity. | |
| ▲ | metalman 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | which then leads to negative values for the cans, and makes it profitable for some trucking outfits to run "tiltload" container trucks, that can autonomously off load an empty can ,somewhere convienient
or other wierdness where filling a can with
an otherwise unprofitable comodity ,like hay, then drives a whole industry driven by water cost and the return value of cans, or scrap metal, and who knows what else, "half cut" cars, etc. | | |
| ▲ | namibj 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Dropping containers at the consumer end isn't that bad, at least when they're empty they're not that hard to move back on a truck and there are plenty of uses above scrap value for a container in seaworthy condition. It's actually strange that we don't seem to have any system for just dropping containers at the destination until the contents have been processed, instead of the current system that essentially mandates unloading the container rapidly as soon as it shows up because an entire truck+driver is waiting for the unloading to complete. For palletized loads it's easy to unload them into temporary space in the building they're delivered to, but not everything is palletized. | | |
| ▲ | Animats 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > It's actually strange that we don't seem to have any system for just dropping containers at the destination until the contents have been processed. There are big forklifts for taking containers off trucks and stacking them.
Some recipients buy in bulk, store for later use, and stack their own containers.
But most distribution centers want to get the contents into pickable inventory and start selling it. The US military does a lot of container stacking, because they want reserves, not a "just in time" supply chain. "Moving Mountains", by Gen. Gus Petronis, covers this. He handled logistics for the Gulf War. |
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