Chartered ships that offer valuable cargo space and can sidestep the container terminals play a critical role in this second pandemic holiday season, particularly for time-sensitive goods like Christmas sweaters that won't sell if they arrive too late.
That capitalist verticalization though
Noticing a lot of supply chain problems lately. Almost makes me think that this system might be more unstable than it's been sold as.
particularly for time-sensitive goods like Christmas sweaters that won’t sell if they arrive too late.
Just the stupidest fucking system doing the stupidest shit.
Disclaimer: Sex toys
spoiler
It's gotten so bad that I saw even a website that sells imported sex toys domestically in the US make a blog post about how they're having to resort to exorbitant shipping costs of commercial air shipping because they literally cannot even get far enough in the queue for cargo shipping to pay to rent out containers, which have apparently skyrocketed in price by like 150%+ in the last year. They also mention that Fedex service in the US is rapidly degrading in reliability, with packages getting literally lost, routed in the wrong directions around the country, or tracking information completely falling out of sync with the actual movement of packages, and they expect it to get far worse as holiday season nears.
.
Combine this with tons of reports of 18-wheeler shops reporting critical shortages of regular maintenance items leading to gigantic backlogs of trucks sitting in lots, waiting for service, and it seems like everything is just slowly grinding itself to the nub trying to stay in motion. Frankly I'm hoping that things don't get so bad that food can't be put on shelves and this stays limited to doohickeys and luxury items, but there's a bit in the back of my head that worries we're heading toward at least a temporary lockup of the supply chain.
You should not dropkick your packages into the ocean unless they contain old car batteries.
