Waiting on the water

One of the evolving stories of the operational impacts of the pandemic has been port congestion. We (collectively) have been ordering more stuff — shifting consumption from services to goods — and that has meant more work flowing through the nation’s port. This is particularly true for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. That has meant that there is a long, floating queue of cargo ships waiting to unload — as this WSJ video explains.

An interesting side bit here is the impact of the ever-increasing size of container ships. Oversized boats played a role in the Ever Given saga in the Suez Canal. The relevance here is that bigger boats take longer to unload. That is, wicked big boats are efficient at schlepping containers across open water but make life hard when they hit a port.