Fifty Years in Idle Time Seen for Trucks at Two Major U.S. Ports

[OneCrazyDiamond]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-03/fifty-years-in-idle-time-seen-for-trucks-at-two-major-u-s-ports

Trucking trips originating around the U.S.’s busiest ports are showing massive increases in idle time, another sign of the supply-chain logjams plaguing American transport hubs.

From the start of 2018 through October this year, idle time per vehicle has increased by 50%, according to data compiled by Lytx Inc., a San Diego, California-based company whose telematics that monitor vehicles are used by 1.4 million drivers worldwide

So far this year, there is more than a day’s worth of idle time per vehicle, up from 17 hours per vehicle in 2019 and 21.5 hours in 2020. The data found that 50 years in idle time has been wasted this year.

That is awful. We have to do better.

[LT Barclay]

1. That is what industry wants, it should be going straight to rail

[OneCrazyDiamond]

2. Trains are way better, but they still idle.

Electric trains and trucking is the future.

[FBaggins]

3. The ports already have substantial rail traffic

IIRC, roughly a third of containers leave the ports that way.

Take a look at Pier 400 in the Port of LA. There are twelve parallel loading tracks each half a mile long and six more twice as long next to them as storage. Roughly the equivalent of 1000 rail cars loading and another 1000 waiting.

And that's just one pier.

[LT Barclay]

4. Do you know if this is a recent increase? Just asking because I was involved with organizing a

"Marine Transportation System Regional Dialog Session" in LA/LB which was an initiative of Rodney E. Slater, Clinton's Secretary of Transportation. The idea was to facilitate a greater govt./industry partnership to improve efficiency in the ports. At the time, most rail cargo was loaded to trucks and shipped to a railyard only a few miles away to be loaded on rail cars.
So since the ports have become and issue, I've been trying to determine if there has been any change.
As an interesting aside, I ordered a "Flash" mask for my son, which was made in China of course. Well order tracking shows it landed in New Jersey!

[fescuerescue]

5. Nobody wants idle time

literally nobody.

There isn't a single upside to it.

[LT Barclay]

6. Facetious use of wants. Industry minimizes investment

And only wants to maximize profits.
So I really meant this is what they chose.

[fescuerescue]

7. Well sure

But that's just another way of saying what I said.

increasing idle time burns away profits and depreciates the investments already made.

While they may not like making investments. they REALLY hate accelerating the depreciation on investments already made.