Global Supply Chain Crisis 2021: Megathread - A cozy thread for watching the supply chain fall apart just in time for the holidays

[derpherp2]

Alongside this trucking crisis there's also the port crisis.... crisises.... crises.
For some dumbfuck reason I'm too shut-in to give a shit about, the Port of California is fucking overloaded. Which feeds directly into the Trucking Problem.

 

[Kiwisee]

It’ll be fun to watch the outcome from another country.
Let’s see where this leads

 

[Milkis]

Now you will witness the power of obesity. The hamplanets will emerge from this winter rail-thin and healthy, having not eaten in 6 months

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

Huge raises for truck drivers in Texas? @Sped Xing is this all true?

 

[Xarpho]

When I was discussing this earlier I was informed (but have not researched) that the trains were apparently largely dismantled a few years back? There's still some along the coasts and a bit in the center of the country, but someone (I forget who) convinced many of the railroads to pick up the rails (environmental issues).

Washington Post article about it.

No, not really. There were a lot more rail lines in the 1950s but disappeared over the next half-century largely because of redundancy. So I know the area between Houston and Waco pretty well. One line, the International & Great Northern, got chopped in late 1960s in favor of a direct line that their new company Southern Pacific owned, as the line swung out to several tiny towns, and the section in Brazos County that got abandoned was a parallel line but substantially hillier.

In Houston, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas line had a line that went through parts of Houston that jogged through several neighborhoods with some tight right of way and dangerous crossings; it was similarly abandoned in favor of a more direct line.

The freight industry has had its ups and downs, there was a strike in the 1980s and the late 2000s recession had a lot of cars idle on sidings.

The passenger rail is a different beef, they built Amtrak, a nationalized passenger railroad line but it only really works in the Northeast, everywhere else it's an overpriced (despite massive subsidization), seldom-used system (and uses the railroads of the freight railroads).

 

[Titos]

Wait, 14k a fucking week, for just driving shit around? What the fuck am I doing working my shitty ass job, can't be that hard to qualify as a trucker.

 

[libRT]

Too much panic over shortages. They sucked when we had to wait for plants to grow but now profitability takes care of most.

Especially this shortage, as its artificial. Just drop the chips.

 

[Overly Serious]

Start your Christmas shopping now. Food and toys both going to be scarce on the shelves, apparently.

Other than some drought in Taiwan the entire set of societal disasters we've faced over the last couple of years seem to be self-made. Are we currently in WW3 but it's an information war and the general disorder is just the visible part of that?

 

[The golden neckbeard]

Labor shortages everywhere across all age groups....Almost like the jab is killing everyone

Nah

Karl denninger found 1.5 million missing workers under 40 in official BLS statistics and that number is accelerating

 

[Mooger Meng]

Wait, 14k a fucking week, for just driving shit around? What the fuck am I doing working my shitty ass job, can't be that hard to qualify as a trucker.

It's good money, but the problem is, of course, being a trucker. If you don't have a life, it averages out being kinda shit; if you do have a life, it's fucking miserable. Or so I've heard and briefly seen from one of my brothers doing that gig for about a year.

 

[Lone MacReady]

They shipped all those Afghanistan people here for some reason.

Literally niggers and post-Bongo reign pajeets the only truck drivers I see anymore, and they are fucking everywhere. No driver shortage around me, if anything this collapse needs to happen to keep the imported shitums fucking Away at this point.

 

[Titos]

It's good money, but the problem is, of course, being a trucker. If you don't have a life, it averages out being kinda shit; if you do have a life, it's fucking miserable. Or so I've heard and briefly seen from one of my brothers doing that gig for about a year.

I don't have a life and my current job is one of those that people would probably rather suckstart a shotgun than do if they were offered the job. If I can make anywhere close to 14k a week driving and listening to podcasts that sounds like a fucking dream compared to my current one.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Wait, 14k a fucking week, for just driving shit around? What the fuck am I doing working my shitty ass job, can't be that hard to qualify as a trucker.

From what I've heard it's a job intended to weed most interested people out since the first few years you don't make much and are expected to work like 50-60 hours a week and companies find ways to fuck you over and fire you.

 

[Mooger Meng]

I don't have a life and my current job is one of those that people would probably rather suckstart a shotgun than do if they were offered the job. If I can make anywhere close to 14k a week driving and listening to podcasts that sounds like a fucking dream compared to my current one.

Get some good sunscreen for your left side, then.
No, seriously. With the amount of drive time you'll have you won't be at liberty to get out and rotisserie the other half of you that's not at the window.

 

[Sped Xing]

Huge raises for truck drivers in Texas? @Sped Xing is this all true?

I wouldn't mind. I get emails constantly for 90k + a year company driver jobs, but I like my cushy gig.

I also haven't gotten vaccinated, but more due to laziness than thinking it's microchips or something. Laziness is natural in a trucker. It's an easy fucking job even at entry level, and after a year or two you can choose your path-- work "hard" and try for 100k or more a year, or find a really comfy job that isn't likely to disappear any time soon. I chose the latter.

From what I've heard it's a job intended to weed most interested people out since the first few years you don't make much and are expected to work like 50-60 hours a week and companies find ways to fuck you over and fire you.

It's intended to weed out retards. Don't work for a company that expects you to "pay them back for training costs." That advice applies to all jobs everywhere, but for some reason the dumdums who get CDLs think it's reasonable to make 30k a year for the first year because they're getting paid in exposure or something.


This job is a "steering wheel holder" position. If you're a NEET, be a NEET in a truck. Now you can have no GF in every city in the CONUS.

 

[tulskij_tochnyj]

This should be the last hoorah of every trucker getting fired over vaccine mandate A C C E L E R A T E:

 

[Ed Special]

Been telling people to stock up their pantries with foodstuffs of long shelf lives and keep them stocked up because hell is on the horizon since Feb. last year. Everybody fucking laughed at me, "It'll never leave China, look how good a job they're doing at containing it"
Time and time again, I've been vindicated. Feels good being the only one mostly unaffected by all these shortages so far, man.

 

[Miss Chance]

The online tech community (think Hacker News, Ars Technica, the less gay (but still gay) part of Reddit, etc.) has been saying for years that trucks will soon be automated and that truckers won't be necessary.

Well for one that hasn't happened yet. It's not even close. But second of all, there's something called 'the last mile problem,' in which something like 90% of the work is done in the last mile of delivery. Even if you can automate a truck going in a roughly straight line on an interstate across the country, you either need to automate that last mile too (a problem that can't be solved with current technology) or just use a human for it, and if you need a human for that last mile, you're ultimately not solving any staffing issues with automation. Depending on the other factors, automating the rest of the route might not even be worth it.

The technology that enables one man or woman to transport a large amount of goods in a straight line has existed for a long time, it's called a 'freight train'. The problem is the unloading and distribution. Automating lorries won't solve a thing.

 

[Blake Chortles]

I have a friend who owns 10 trucks. 3 are sitting in a lot waiting for those fucking sensors and its been weeks.

 

[Wine em Dine em 69 em]

‘Elites’ lol.