Toymakers race to get products on shelves amid supply clogs

@proxy, read a blog called "gCaptain", and two websites, Maritime Executive and The Loadstar. The latter is broader in that it covers all supply chain news. Forget "you heard". The heresay is wrong. Read these and learn the truth. No lanes are shut down but what is true is that some container ports in China closed for a period of weeks after as few as one worker tested positive for Covid-19, backing ships up outside Chinese ports and forcing many shippers to find other ports to unload and load from (which is harder than you think if the freight you intended to pick up was outside of Ningbo and instead you go somewhere like Qingdao or Shanghai). There are not enough ships to load all the containers being shipped from places like China and Vietnam and containers are in short supply too. Instead of shipping in containers Coca-Cola and Walmart are shipping freight the old fashioned way in break bulk ships and avoiding container ports this way. Costco and Amazon are chartering their own ships to move their freight. Amazon is loading containers on bulk cargo ships, which is crazy. The port of LA is unloading over 1 million containers per month, an all time record and Long Beach isn't far behind at something close to 800,000 cans per month. Railroads are struggling to move the amount of freight coming out of West Coast ports for the Midwest and East Coast and rail yards in the Midwest are out of chassis to move the containers when they arrive. They lack the equipment and space to stack and store containers waiting for an empty chassis so loaded rail cars have to sit until they can be unloaded. And all because everyone is sitting at home ordering stuff on line.

We don't celebrate Christmas. Overdone by most who do.

To each his own, but I over-do Christmas every year and thoroughly enjoy it.

I didn't used to, I'm an atheist and don't go in for the religious stuff. But I've got two young kids now and giving them a good Christmas is pretty much the highlight of my year. Covering the house with loads of garish lights, setting up a tree with hundreds of decorations, buying obscene piles of presents - I live for that stuff now.

Mind you, its just a fleeting bit of fun in my life. By the time they are teenagers the magic will likely have dissipated and I won't look forward to it as much. It'll start to feel more like an obligation, and I'll stop putting the same effort into it. Slowly the light shows will be scaled back, the tree kept up for shorter periods, fewer presents will be under it. By the time they are in their twenties the day will barely register.

But then they'll get married and have kids and OH YEAH I GET TO DO IT AGAIN WITH GRANDKIDS! Whoo-hoo, that gives me something to look forward to, I hope.

I hear it will be 2023 until shipping recovers. Some routes are being complexly shut as shipping companies are moving all resources to the routes where they can make the most money. I have heard that all container shipping routes from Vancouver to the Indian sub-continent are shut. Vancouver is a complete mess. Some inbound sea cans are sitting for 90 days in port. The company that cleaned sea cans has closed so nothing can get out. Boats of empty containers are going back to Asia and container exports are basically shut off out of Vancouver. Bulk shipping is also a mess. People have moved in beside bulk terminals that have been in operation for 100 years and complaining about noise. People in Vancouver Island are complaining about their landscape views being soiled by ships at anchor waiting to get into Vancouver. Great opportunity for the PNW to pick up all of the shipping business from Vancouver and put everything on BNSF mainline to parallel to the Canadian border to Chicago. All they need to do is run a few spurs across the border.

The top photo of the ship is excellent!