Over the past years, I’ve noticed Christmas “creep” where things are marketed for the holidays earlier and earlier. In retail stores, pre-Covid, they were swapping the pumpkin toys and ghoulishly decored candy for candy canes and Santa dolls the day after Halloween. Not saying this isn't happening now (perhaps it is), as I get most stuff shipped to me via Amazon these days.
Last night at work, we ended operations earlier than I expected, despite us being a week out from Thanksgiving. I’m new to this job as a supervisor, but it has me a little worried. Why hasn’t the Christmas rush begun?
I think there are a number of reasons.
One is this…
It’s the port of Los Angles, where a substantial amount of goods, sourced from China and elsewhere in the East, come off container ships. Wikipedia quotes World Bank and HIS Markit’s claims that this port and the neighboring port of Long Beach are the least efficient in the entire world. This port is horrendously backlogged with cargo and running out of space to put things.
I watched a CBS 60 Minutes episode that tried to untangle the situation, where angry finger-pointing was going on between the Long Shore Union, the Port of Los Angeles, the ocean freight carriers, the truckers, and others.
And it was a mess. Exorbitant fees charged by some parties that could put the small people out of business, truckers unable to obtain containers because the empty ones they were bringing in were “the wrong color” (a means the freight yards are using to reduce congestion in their yards), tractor-trailer beds sitting idle, containers ships waiting off port for weeks before unloading (see picture above, near the horizon) despite 24-hour operations by the dockworkers and the truckers.
And so, the smaller customers, as evidenced by this segment of the 60 minutes episode, have empty warehouses right before the Christmas season…
CBS – 60 Minutes, “Freight Expectations.” November 14, 2021
At the Post Office, these smaller customers (and obviously many large ones) make up a lot of our business.
If the congestion at our busiest port in the United States has put our country at a logistical stand still, that means that companies can’t accurately predict when they’ll be able to get their goods, because they can’t stock their warehouses and distribution centers, throwing a wrench into the whole Just-In-Time delivery system they have come to depend on, and any algorithms they use to forecast required supply to meet predicted demand.
It also means they can't reliably predict when things will be available to ship, and what to market and promote such that they don't have angry customers with orders they can't fulfill.
And while I’m more than happy to go home from work on time, it must be worrying to people dependent on overtime pay, and on the consumer end, will be concerning for parents looking to fulfill holiday wish lists over the next weeks.
This is all coming from a layman whose only sources of information are YouTube and The Google, and who is a greenhorn in the world of operations and logistics and in a low-level position at the post office.
But it’s a bit concerning (for a guy who is constantly concerned about everything).