Guitar Gear Forum

In many ways.

Prepare. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

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Energy and supply chain crisis is well underway all around the world and winter will complicate it. Over 50 cargo containers just sitting out past the breakwater in the port of Los Angeles. Inflationary factors stacking up. Gas, natural gas, groceries, home essentials will all be affected. Federal and local public health policies will complicate the business-labor and consumer-commerce dynamic.

Panic buying likely at some point. This is not a drill.

Here’s what I don’t get. If the stimulus checks are no longer being distributed, then everyone should be back to work. And if everyone is back to work then that should include truck drivers and longshoremen. So why is there such a shortage of these at one of the worlds largest ports?

I think Bill will be in shortly posting an owl gif.

itchyfingers wrote:Here’s what I don’t get. If the stimulus checks are no longer being distributed, then everyone should be back to work. And if everyone is back to work then that should include truck drivers and longshoremen. So why is there such a shortage of these at one of the worlds largest ports?

Retirements in important industries coupled with institutional and industry generation gaps. It is a crisis across a lot of the infrastructure work. Mine included. The young folk aren't really getting into these jobs anymore. It makes it hard to get new people in and even when you do, it takes years to get somebody up to speed and experienced.

When the pandemic hit, I suspect a lot of the old timers took their pensions and bailed.

Regarding the service industry, I think a lot of people had a long enough break from it that they decided they no longer wanted to be treated like shit every day at work.

TurboPablo wrote:

itchyfingers wrote:Here’s what I don’t get. If the stimulus checks are no longer being distributed, then everyone should be back to work. And if everyone is back to work then that should include truck drivers and longshoremen. So why is there such a shortage of these at one of the worlds largest ports?

Retirements in important industries coupled with institutional and industry generation gaps. It is a crisis across a lot of the infrastructure work. Mine included. The young folk aren't really getting into these jobs anymore. It makes it hard to get new people in and even when you do, it takes years to get somebody up to speed and experienced.

When the pandemic hit, I suspect a lot of the old timers took their pensions and bailed.

My dad's a long haul trucker and they just bumped his pay but nearly 50% to keep him around. People just aren't going into it.

Trucking companies are offering 80k+ starting so I expect things will improve.

_ej_ wrote:

TurboPablo wrote:

itchyfingers wrote:Here’s what I don’t get. If the stimulus checks are no longer being distributed, then everyone should be back to work. And if everyone is back to work then that should include truck drivers and longshoremen. So why is there such a shortage of these at one of the worlds largest ports?

Retirements in important industries coupled with institutional and industry generation gaps. It is a crisis across a lot of the infrastructure work. Mine included. The young folk aren't really getting into these jobs anymore. It makes it hard to get new people in and even when you do, it takes years to get somebody up to speed and experienced.

When the pandemic hit, I suspect a lot of the old timers took their pensions and bailed.

My dad's a long haul trucker and they just bumped his pay but nearly 50% to keep him around. People just aren't going into it.

Trucking companies are offering 80k+ starting so I expect things will improve.

I am not sure it will improve much. These young folk don't even want cars. Self driving big rigs is the more likely outcome.

there are a lot of stupid rules in place that make this worse . I know Long Beach is fixing some of those so the trucks can move through faster . So how much of this is media hype ? For ex the company I work for ordered a shit ton of supplies from China via Ocean as usual and those moved through to us perfectly on time as per the the original ETA given . It just cleared customs and will be delivered tomorrow right on time . No hang ups whatsoever .

TurboPablo wrote:

itchyfingers wrote:Here’s what I don’t get. If the stimulus checks are no longer being distributed, then everyone should be back to work. And if everyone is back to work then that should include truck drivers and longshoremen. So why is there such a shortage of these at one of the worlds largest ports?

Retirements in important industries coupled with institutional and industry generation gaps. It is a crisis across a lot of the infrastructure work. Mine included. The young folk aren't really getting into these jobs anymore. It makes it hard to get new people in and even when you do, it takes years to get somebody up to speed and experienced.

When the pandemic hit, I suspect a lot of the old timers took their pensions and bailed.

In my industry there’s been a skills gap for at least a decade probably more.
US manufacturing has been trying to make a come back but we’ve got a whole generation or two of people that avoided the industry due to off shoring with the old dogs all at or nearing retirement.
It’s really too bad since like your industry education and experience really takes time to build.

That said I’m not complaining about the competition it’s created for engineers like myself. My job let me move across the country and convert to full time wfh just to keep me on staff since I’d be hard to replace and another 2-3 years before a new hire is up to speed enough on our company’s specifics.

Hopefully this drives some people back into these industries but who knows if the jobs will be there by the time people start making shifts.

Exactly. And when it comes to offloading cargo ships, the very last thing you want to have is a new guy running the crane.

fretless wrote:there are a lot of stupid rules in place that make this worse . I know Long Beach is fixing some of those so the trucks can move through faster . So how much of this is media hype ? For ex the company I work for ordered a shit ton of supplies from China via Ocean as usual and those moved through to us perfectly on time as per the the original ETA given . It just cleared customs and will be delivered tomorrow right on time . No hang ups whatsoever .

There is absolutely a supply problem in my industry.
Getting parts is fucking up shipments of equipment. We’re talking about millions of dollars of machine orders waiting for a few missing parts that can’t be sourced elsewhere in many of the electrical components cases.
We’re starting to in house fab anything we can that we normally purchase and can’t get at the moment. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Funny thing is, I've been ordering crap from China and it gets to Long Island, NY fairly quickly.

There is a ton of traffic in the morning and evening while I travel to/from work - it's back to pre-covid levels. Granted, covid fears have many people driving to work instead of taking the railroad, subway or bus.

Supermarkets inventory is back to normal.

Not sure what to expect in the near future.

The real tragedy here is that I still can't get my hands on a PS-100.

The UK, EU, Russia, and China are all having critical oil and natural gas shortages and they’re not producing enough to meet the demands, especially through winter.

We have yet to even begin to see the supply chain shortages, if you think it’s getting weird now. China is already doing shutdowns of parts of their electrical grid during certain hours, Russia that supplies a lot of Europe with natural gas only has enough for themselves to get through winter right now.

Here in the US the fuel shortage is happening but it’s not as bad, but prices will go way up. But that only helps what we make and transport here.

Add labor shortages, for whatever reason, and these public health policies that are forcing some people to quit their jobs, and all of that just gets worse.

You would not be a crazy person to stock up on food and essentials now. Especially before people see store shelves looking like they’ve never seen them. Beat the panic buying and inflation.

Ostinato Rubato wrote:Energy and supply chain crisis is well underway all around the world and winter will complicate it. Over 50 cargo containers just sitting out past the breakwater in the port of Los Angeles. Inflationary factors stacking up. Gas, natural gas, groceries, home essentials will all be affected. Federal and local public health policies will complicate the business-labor and consumer-commerce dynamic.

Panic buying likely at some point. This is not a drill.

Last month was at 65, I heard people saying more like 80. I get satellite images sometimes from some of the carriers I use at work, bunch of green dots scattered all over. What used to take 4 weeks on ocean can now take 12 and that's not even a guarantee. Anything I get shipped from Asia goes air, it costs twice as much as it did a year ago, but it's worth not having to deal with the mess going on at the ports.

Buy your Christmas gifts now if you can, it will get bad. Fedex and UPS are already having delayed shipments, it'll get worse as we get closer to Christmas. The bigger retailers are trying to charter their own cargo ships so they can transport their stuff, but I don't know where they intend to unload it at. Another issue is, all the shipping containers that come out of China are here, China ran out of containers. It was quicker and cheaper to send empty cargo ships to the US to pick up empty ones to bring back.

This is not a drill.

fretless wrote:there are a lot of stupid rules in place that make this worse . I know Long Beach is fixing some of those so the trucks can move through faster . So how much of this is media hype ? For ex the company I work for ordered a shit ton of supplies from China via Ocean as usual and those moved through to us perfectly on time as per the the original ETA given . It just cleared customs and will be delivered tomorrow right on time . No hang ups whatsoever .

I've heard some people tell me that they've had no issues with their ocean freight getting unloaded and clearing quickly. I've also heard other people tell me that they have their parts in ships that have been sitting in the water for 4 weeks waiting to be able to get in to be unloaded. I don't know if anything determines who gets in sooner or it's all a crapshoot.
I was reading an article from a dockworker there, it's pretty interesting to read it from the point of view from someone working there. He was saying there's ferry boats that the people on the ships can use to get back and forth to the land so they can get supplies and food, or if they feel like it, go to Disneyland since they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

I'll survive by eating dirt

Trade wars suck

mortatone wrote:Trade wars suck

lolwat

Did we forget?

Do you guys feel that?

mortatone wrote:Did we forget?

hit me with the tl;dr of how a trade war is applicable to the current supply chain issue.