FJB!

California Drove Truckers Out of Business. Now Store Shelves Are Empty Democrat regulations are holding the entire economy hostage.

Fri Oct 22, 2021 Daniel Greenfield 100 comments

After a long cross-country flight, I made it out of LAX and into an Uber. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but the driver was. And hearing that I was a journalist, he wanted to tell me a story. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, but this may have been the most important one I let go.

He hadn’t always been driving an Uber at 11:30 at night. Not all that long ago he used to have his own business with 7 trucks before he was bankrupted by California’s insane regulations.

I listened, but didn’t pay enough attention. The impact of California’s Democrat legislative supermajority on truckers was just another data point alongside what was happening to freelancers of all kinds and a lot of small businesses. Stories like this were everywhere and there was little interest in them even in conservative circles outside the tarnished golden state.

Back then we still lived in a world where you could walk into a thousand stores with fully stocked shelves. People ordered from Amazon and expected its burgeoning last mile delivery service to make products magically appear overnight. Just in time inventory systems were more efficient and any day now products would be delivered by self-driving cars or aerial drones.

2020 and 2021 have given this Big Tech fantasy world and the rest of us a good kicking.

The massive supply chain mess that’s leaving stores empty and orders unfulfilled doesn’t have a single point of failure, but dozens of them. China’s energy shortages, the overhyped predictive powers of Big Data, the fragility of the global economy, fuel costs, and welfare state worker shortages are all players. But California’s truck bans are a key link in the great failure chain.

>>14843371

2/

While I was riding home that night, California trucking companies were going bankrupt at a rapid rate. Few outside the industry were paying attention or understood what that might mean.

2019 was described as a “bloodbath” for the trucking industry with 640 trucking companies across the country filing for bankruptcy in just the first half of the year. Thousands of truck drivers were left unemployed. Many went into the expanding last-mile delivery business, some as contractors for Amazon. But California truckers and businesses had their own special woes.

Two years ago, Governor Newsom signed the Democrat supermajority's Assembly Bill 5 into law. While AB5 was billed as a crackdown on Uber and Lyft, forcing the companies to treat l freelance contractors as employees, the gig economy companies pushed Proposition 22 so that they were the only ones exempt from the law. (A Democrat judge has since illegally blocked the approved ballot measure while falsely claiming that it was unconstitutional.)

AB5 however was less about Uber than it was about outlawing freelance employees in order to force them into unions. The union power grab inconvenienced Uber and Lyft, but crushed freelance workers in a variety of fields including journalism. One of the fields was trucking.

Over the summer, the California Trucking Association actually went to the Supreme Court to fight AB5 and allow owners and operators to use independent contractors. The CTA listed 70,000 owner operators. In the years since AB5, Ubers have become scarcer and more expensive, which is what the law was actually designed to do, but the consequences to the trucking industry have been far worse albeit invisible to most people until now. While truckers are still protected from AB5, many in the industry are not willing to bet their future on SCOTUS.

AB5 was not only the assault on the trucking industry by California Democrats who were aggressively trying to unionize the industry and to impose environmental regulations on it.

Last year, the California Air Resources Board issued a press release boasting that it had taken a "bold step to reduce truck pollution". The bold step required switching to electric trucks.

"We are showing the world that we can move goods, grow our economy and finally dump dirty diesel," Jared Blumenfeld, California’s Secretary for Environmental Protection, sneered.

Jared and California certainly showed the world something.

While the ultimate truck ban was scheduled for 2045, an initial phase-in of 5% to 9% begins in 2024. Last year, California's DMV began refusing to register thousands of trucks with an estimated 100,000 trucks under threat. With "green" trucks costing $70,000 more, this was a non-starter for already troubled independent owner-operators and even larger companies.

That was part of the plan.

>>14843375

3/

That was part of the plan.

California Democrats and their environmentalist special interests had set out to crush the state’s ports and trucking industry. Had everything gone as planned, this would have been a slow and gradual process. Costs would have crept up and deliveries would have fallen off without an immediate catastrophic impact. But then the pandemic and its consequences arrived.

Business at California’s ports dropped during the pandemic. The loss of traffic convinced trucking companies and owner operators who were already battered by AB5 and the green truck ban that it was better to just downsize or pull out entirely. And when port activity rebounded, there was a huge hole in the delivery infrastructure that backed up the entire system.

Biden called for ports to operate around the clock, but that’s not going to magically bring back thousands of trucks or truckers. California Democrats still haven’t changed their regulations and without that, there’s no incentive or even legal structure that would allow trucks to operate.

The resulting disaster is likely to accelerate the ongoing shift of shipping from California ports. Democrats imposed their green shakedown not only on truckers, but on shipping. With companies moving to Texas, Houston was already becoming a more appealing alternative. It’s now at capacity as everyone is looking for alternatives to the California economic disaster area.

But much of our imports and exports still depend on the California bottleneck that begins with Communist China and ends in Communist California. The red-to-red pipeline has savaged our economy and wrecked imports and exports. Newsom’s survival and the Dem legislative supermajority which passes more extreme leftist regulations every session means that things will only get worse. A radical party that actively seeks to dismantle the economy is in power in Sacramento and its regulations have the ability to hold our entire economy hostage.

What happens in California unfortunately doesn’t stay there unless it’s waiting on a ship.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

>>14843381

4/

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/23/as-expected-joe-biden-pledge-to-speed-up-california-ports-amounts-to-absolutely-nothing/

As Expected Joe Biden Pledge To Speed Up California Ports Amounts to Absolutely Nothing

October 23, 2021 | Sundance | 4 Comments

''In a rare act of journalism NBC actually followed up on the October 13th grand proclamation of Joe Biden to speed up California ports. What they found is exactly what everyone suspected, the grand prose from the White House was a political pantomime – absolutely nothing has changed. ''

WATCH:

https://youtu.be/RtDjKG55azc

As noted, and as previously outlined, the issues with the backlog of the California ports have absolutely nothing to do with rapid unloading of ships and container vessels. The issue is the inability of California truckers to move those containers. The problem is a shortage of CA emission compliant internal transportation trucks to move the containers out of the port and into the U.S. mainland.

As a result… the politically expedient goal to get rid of the optical problem (the ships) by offloading containers into a California port system, that is already overwhelmed with tens-of-thousands of containers, is only making the original issue exponentially worse. More people are now starting to understand the internal issue that has been created by recent California laws, rules and regulations.

Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine has a solid outline of the emission compliance issues and the problem of independent truckers not being able to work in California:

>>14843371

Front Page Magazine – […] Over the summer, the California Trucking Association actually went to the Supreme Court to fight AB5 and allow owners and operators to use independent contractors. The CTA listed 70,000 owner operators. In the years since AB5, Ubers have become scarcer and more expensive, which is what the law was actually designed to do, but the consequences to the trucking industry have been far worse albeit invisible to most people until now. While truckers are still protected from AB5, many in the industry are not willing to bet their future on SCOTUS.

>>14843375

>>14843381

>>14843412

>In a rare act of journalism NBC actually followed up on the October 13th grand proclamation of Joe Biden to speed up California ports. What they found is exactly what everyone suspected, the grand prose from the White House was a political pantomime – absolutely nothing has changed.

>WATCH:

>https://youtu.be/RtDjKG55azc

Despite Biden Pledge To Address Supply Chain Crisis, “Not Much Has Changed,” Still At “Crisis Level” -

1,550 views Oct 23, 2021

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137K subscribers

>>14843428

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/16/as-expected-containergeddon-is-getting-worse-bidens-political-solution-to-clear-the-ships-from-los-angeles-ports-only-making-things-worse/

''As Expected Containergeddon is Getting Worse – Biden’s Political Solution to Clear The Ships From Los Angeles Ports Only Making Things Worse==

October 16, 2021 | Sundance | 464 Comments

This is a follow-up to the original explanation of the epicenter of the supply chain backlog issue, ie “The Clog“. {GO DEEP https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/14/the-california-version-of-the-green-new-deal-and-an-october-16-2020-epa-settlement-with-transportation-is-whats-creating-the-container-shipping-backlog-working-ca-ports-24-7-will-not-help-here/ }

You need to review the years-long and building background issue to understand the fubar that Joe Biden has just made worse.

From the White House perspective, the problem at the California ports, specifically the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), was visible due to hundreds of container ships sitting in a queue off the coast of Los Angeles awaiting their opportunity to offload their cargo. The media was reporting on the backlog of ships and Joe Biden was under fire.

The team behind Joe Biden wanted the optics removed asap. Hence, the White House meeting with the heads of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero, respectively.

The continuing supply chain crisis of empty store shelves, missing parts and component goods that are backlogged at the California ports may be politically represented by the optic of those floating vessels. However, that’s not the problem.

The problem is a shortage of CA emission compliant internal transportation trucks to move the containers out of the port and into the U.S. mainland.

As a result… the politically expedient goal to get rid of the optical problem (the ships) by offloading containers into a California port system, that is already overwhelmed with tens-of-thousands of containers, is only making the original issue exponentially worse.

With hundreds more containers being offloaded hourly, the port infrastructure needed to load trucks long-sitting in the queue to pick up containers that arrived weeks ago is collapsing.

Truckers are waiting for over 8 hours to pick up their freight because the yards are swamped with containers. As each hour passes, more containers are offloaded into the port that can no longer deal with the scale of the problem. Each individual container is now buried in an avalanche of more containers, and that is making the limited compliant trucking resources even more problematic….. “containergeddon“.

>>14843444

Long before the ships started lining up offshore, many massive multinational corporations could foresee what was happening. They diverted their contracted freight into alternative ports (outside California) and began setting up new transportation arrangements. Two things happened:

(1) The alternative ports started getting backed up due to the redirected cargo arriving; and

(2) The shifted Trucking and Railroad system priority now meant resources were pulled from California.

With trucking companies redirecting resources away from California, this exacerbates the California backlog. Suppliers and retailers then enter a bidding war for priority distribution to get their stuff and avoid the clogs. This is a perfect storm of disruption in the supply chain aptly called “containergeddon.” However, not all ports can offload ships with thousands of containers. Not all ports have massive gantry cranes that can efficiently offload the cargo.

Back in California (where POLA and POLB do have the gantry cranes), now you have Los Angeles port workers saying we are offloading ships at maximum productivity, and truck drivers saying they’ve been sitting around for hours, some even days, waiting to pick up their containers. Meanwhile, other ports outside California are under pressure from the rerouted backlog of container vessels, and a limited amount of resources, trucks and railroad shipments to clear their arrivals.

Port workers are saying it’s not their lack of offloading that creates the problem, and the truckers are saying it ain’t us… “we’re sitting here waiting”.

♦ Few people are paying attention to what actually created the crisis in the first place.

The backlog all comes from California West Coast ports. It’s the issues with the new California emission regulations {Go Deep} that created the regional bottleneck in the distribution pipeline. The growing issue started becoming visible several months/years ago when the California Air Resource Board (CARB) announced the new environmental regulations.

As a direct result, several massive multinational corporations, with specifically concerned supply chain and logical operations specialists, immediately recognized the issue they would face if 50+ percent of the diesel fleet (writ large) would be blocked from entering California ports. That’s why months ago massive corporations began exclusive shipping contracts to avoid the California created crisis:

>>14843451

REUTERS – […] “The dry bulk cargo ship has been drafted into the service of retail giant Walmart, which is chartering its own vessels in an effort to beat the global supply chain disruptions that threaten to torpedo the retail industry’s make-or-break holiday season.

[…] Other big retail players, such as Target, Home Depot , Costco and Dollar Tree, have said they are chartering ships to deal with the … slowdown of sea networks that handle 90% of the world’s trade.” (link)

It costs more money, a lot more money, to move an entire supply chain for billions of tons of goods coming. The increases in shipping costs are passed along to the consumer.

Hence, we see prices climbing as a result of increased transportation costs being factored in to the new logistics. Did you hear about massive increases in container shipment prices? Well, THAT’S WHY.

The entire supply chain from Asia to the United States was being modified from the closest port (California), which was cost effective, to the ports where internal transportation would not be an issue.

Ships from China and SE Asia were being diverted away from California, some through the Gulf of Mexico into Texas, Louisiana, Alabama ports or inland waterways. Some even headed to the East Coast. However, any shipment diverting from the West Coast has to go through the Panama Canal into the Gulf of Mexico. It takes twice as long and costs twice as much, if not more. Hence, massive shipping price increases per container.

Back in Washington DC, Joe Biden’s solution was to get rid of the ships floating off the coast of California by piling their cargo into Los Angeles ports that are already overwhelmed with cargo they are trying to organize. The emission compliant truck drivers are now charging the ports for their time sitting around waiting for the dock workers to locate their freight.

The more containers they pile into the port, the longer it takes a limited number of trucks to move them.

The California ports are running out of places to store containers full of goods that are getting off-loaded. Hundreds of thousands of them are piling up. The central issue is the inability of emission compliant heavy transportation in California to move those containers full of goods to manufacturing, warehouses and distribution points.

This California bottleneck has been building, and building and building for years, until now it has reached a crisis point.

FUBAR.

>>14843456

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/14/the-california-version-of-the-green-new-deal-and-an-october-16-2020-epa-settlement-with-transportation-is-whats-creating-the-container-shipping-backlog-working-ca-ports-24-7-will-not-help-here/

The California Version of The Green New Deal and an October 16, 2020, EPA Settlement With Transportation is What’s Creating The Container Shipping Backlog – Working CA Ports 24/7 Will Not Help, Here’s Why

October 14, 2021 | Sundance | 744 Comments

Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog. So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details, and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand. The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media, and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand. This has nothing to do with COVID-19.

The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot, and Target all had taken actions years ago -long before COVID- because they knew this day would come. It was not accidental that those companies showed up at the White House to discuss the issue because there’s now a full-court press to hide it.

There is one very specific regional issue driving the problem. Read on:

The trucking issue with California LA ports, ie the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), is that all semi tractors have to be current with new California emissions standards. As a consequence, that mean trucks cannot be older than 3 years if they are to pick up or deliver containers at those ports. This issue wipes out approximately half of the fleet trucks used to move containers in/out of the port. Operating the port 24/7 will not cure the issue, because all it does is pile up more containers that sit idle as they await a limited number of trucks to pick them up. THIS is the central issue.

On October 16, 2020, the EPA reached a settlement agreement [DATA HERE] with California Air Resource Board (CARB) to shut down semi tractor rigs that were non-compliant with new California emission standards:

>>14843469

On October 16, 2020, the EPA reached a settlement agreement [DATA HERE] with California Air Resource Board (CARB) to shut down semi tractor rigs that were non-compliant with new California emission standards:

2020 SAN FRANCISCO – “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced settlements with three interstate trucking companies imposing $417,000 in penalties for violating the California Air Resources Board’s federally enforceable Truck and Bus Regulation, Drayage Truck Regulation and Transport Refrigeration Unit Regulation.

“As trucks are one of the largest sources of air pollution in California, EPA will continue to ensure these heavy-duty vehicles have the needed pollution-control equipment and operate in compliance with the rules,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator John Busterud. “These companies have agreed to bring their trucks into compliance and operate more cleanly in all communities they serve.”

Transportation is a primary contributor to the high levels of air pollutants in Southern California and the Central Valley. Diesel emissions from trucks are one of the state’s largest sources of fine particle pollution, or soot, which is linked to health issues including asthma, impaired lung development in children, and cardiovascular effects in adults. Many of these trucks are older models and emit high amounts of particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

[…] California Truck and Bus Regulation and Drayage Truck Regulation have been essential parts of the state’s federally enforceable plan to attain cleaner air. California requires trucking companies to upgrade vehicles they own to meet specific NOx and PM performance standards and to verify compliance of vehicles they hire or dispatch. Heavy-duty diesel trucks in California must meet 2010 engine emissions standards or use diesel particulate filters to reduce the diesel particulates emissions into the atmosphere by 85% or more. (read more)

In effect, what this 2020 determination and settlement created was an inability of half the nation’s truckers from picking up anything from the Port of LA or Port of Long Beach. Virtually all private owner operator trucks and half of the fleet trucks that are used for moving containers across the nation were shut out.

In an effort to offset the problem, transportation companies started using compliant trucks (low emission) to take the products to the California state line, where they could be transferred to non-compliant trucks who cannot enter California. However, the scale of the problem creates an immediate bottleneck that builds over time. It doesn’t matter if the ports start working 24/7, they are only going to end up with even more containers waiting on a limited amount of available trucks.

Yesterday, in an effort to obfuscate and actually hide the epicenter of the issue, the White House put on a performance to provide political cover. In a grand pantomime, Joe Biden met with the heads of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero, respectively), and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

The publicized meeting and White House conference was sold as Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg showing actions they are taking to address delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain in Southern California.

As a result of the meeting, the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) announced that it will join the Port of Long Beach (POLB) in expanding to 24/7 operations. POLA will add new off-peak nighttime shifts and weekend hours, nearly doubling its hours of operation. The ILWU said its members are willing to work those extra shifts to add needed labor capacity.

That publicly promoted action event was a complete political farce. No amount of extra productivity in working the docks to off-load ships will solve the issue of trucks that cannot pick up the containers and distribute them toward manufacturing or warehouses.

>>14843485

As I noted, the issue started becoming visible several years ago when the California Air Resource Board (CARB) announced the new environmental regulations. Several massive multinational corporations, with specifically in-tune supply and logistics operations, immediately recognized the issue they would face if 50+ percent of the trucking fleet would be blocked from entering California ports.

Yes, years ago the private sector predicted this would happen, and they started taking actions to protect their supply chains. What these massive corporations did to reduce their exposure to supply chain disruption was to immediately formulate plans to divert their goods to other ports. This was a very expensive shift in supply chain and logistic efforts for these massive corporations, which includes: Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target.

A long time before and during the era of the Trump administration, those massive multinational corporations knew they would need to redirect their import cargo quickly to avoid the bottleneck caused by California’s new emission standards. They began organizing new destination ports for their products and began setting up new hubs and distribution networks to avoid the predictable California port bottlenecks.

Obviously, for politically correct reasons; and in an effort to avoid the woke mob of environmentalist jackboots, the corporations didn’t publicly share any of the issues they could foresee coming – they just worked independently and quietly to avoid the issue.

However, it costs more money to move an entire supply chain for trillions of tons of goods coming. Hence, we saw prices climbing as a result of increased transportation costs being factored into the new logistics. Did you hear about massive increases in container shipment prices? Well, THAT’S WHY. The entire supply chain from Asia to the United States was being modified from the closest port (California) to the ports where internal transportation would not be an issue.

Ships from China and SE Asia being diverted from California into the Gulf of Mexico or East coast have to go through the Panama Canal. It takes twice as long and costs twice as much, if not more. Hence, massive shipping price increases:

Unfortunately, small companies and small brokers of import goods do not have the control over their part of the supply chain from Asia to the West Coast. They don’t contract for entire cargo ships with thousands of containers. Those wholesalers, brokers and smaller companies that feed raw material and parts supplies to manufacturing and smaller retail outlets are stuck waiting for their containers to get through the trucking issue in California.

The bottleneck at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach run by Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero is not caused by a lack of longshoremen and dock workers to off-load the vessels. The bottleneck is caused by half of the previous trucks used to enter the ports and pick up containers not being allowed. Factually, it doesn’t make a tinkers damn worth of difference if the port works 24/7/365. The ports are simply running out of space.

The ports are running out of places to store containers full of goods that are getting off-loaded. Hundreds of thousands of them are piling up. The central issue is the inability of emission-compliant heavy transportation in California to move those containers full of goods to manufacturing, warehouses, and distribution points.

This California bottleneck has been building, and building and building for years, until now it has reached a crisis point.

If you want to know how long this has been taking place, take the time to watch this video of a trans-continental shipment belonging to Amazon Inc from China. As you watch this really good discussion, think about how long Amazon Inc. has known about the problem in order for them to have put such a massive solution into place in order to avoid California.

Yeah, this California emissions issue has been identified for years, and Amazon has been planning to avoid it for years. WATCH:

https://youtu.be/gsBIQIBavms

>>14843500

https://youtu.be/gsBIQIBavms

Amazon Prime's Container Ship: From China to Texas | What's Going on With Shipping?

47,270 viewsOct 8, 2021

Yesterday I rented a boat and took the leader of one of Flexport's partners in Long Beach on a 3 hour of the port complex. Here's a thread about what I learned.

First off, the boat captain said we were the first company to ever rent his boat to tour the port to see how everything was working up close. His usual business is doing memorial services at sea. He said we were a lot more fun than his regular customers.

The ports of LA/Long Beach are at a standstill. In a full 3 hour loop through the port complex, passing every single terminal, we saw less than a dozen containers get unloaded.

There are hundreds of cranes. I counted only ~7 that were even operating and those that were seemed to be going pretty slow.

It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It’s a true traffic jam.

Right now if you have a chassis with no empty container on it, you can go pick up containers at any port terminal. However, if you have an empty container on that chassis, they’re not allowing you to return it except on highly restricted basis.

If you can’t get the empty off the chassis, you don’t have a chassis to go pick up the next container. And if nobody goes to pick up the next container, the port remains jammed.

WIth the yards so full, carriers / terminals are being highly restrictive in where and when they will accept empties.

Also containers are not fungible between carriers, so the truckers have to drop their empty off at the right terminal. This is causing empty containers to pile up. This one trucking partner alone has 450 containers sitting on chassis right now (as of 10/21) at his yards.

This is a trucking company with 6 yards that represents 153 owner operator drivers, so he has almost 3 containers sitting on chassis at his yard for every driver on the team.

He can’t take the containers off the chassis because he’s not allowed by the city of Long Beach zoning code to store empty containers more than 2 high in his truck yard. If he violates this code they’ll shut down his yard altogether.

With the chassis all tied up storing empties that can't be returned to the port, there are no chassis available to pick up containers at the port.

And with all the containers piling up in the terminal yard, the longshoremen can’t unload the ships. And so the queue grows longer, with now over 70 ships containing 500,000 containers are waiting off shore. This line is going to get longer not shorter.

This is a negative feedback loop that is rapidly cycling out of control that if it continues unabated will destroy the global economy.

Alright how do we fix this, you ask? Simple. And we can do it fast now,

When you're designing an operation you must choose your bottleneck. If the bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn't choose it, you aren't running an operation. It's running you.

You should always choose the most capital intensive part of the line to be your bottleneck. In a port that's the ship to shore cranes. The cranes should never be unable to run because they're waiting for another part of the operation to catch up.

The bottleneck right now is not the cranes. It's yard space at the container terminals. And it's empty chassis to come clear those containers out.

In operations when a bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn't design for it to appear, you must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK!

Here's a simple plan that @POTUS and @GavinNewsom partnered with the private sector, labor, truckers, and everyone else in the chain must implement TODAY to overwhelm the bottleneck and create yard space at the ports so we can operate against

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451543776992845834

https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834

https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451545533928157186

>>14843526

2/2

1) Executive order effective immediately over riding the zoning rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck yards to store empty containers up to six high instead of the current limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days.

This will free up tens of thousands of chassis that right now are just storing containers on wheels. Those chassis can immediately be taken to the ports to haul away the containers

2) Bring every container chassis owned by the national guard and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and loan them to the terminals for 180 days.

3) Create a new temporary container yard at a large (need 500+ acres) piece of government land adjacent to an inland rail head within 100 miles of the port complex.

4) Force the railroads to haul all containers to this new site, turn around and come back. No more 1500 mile train journeys to Dallas. We're doing 100 mile shuttles, turning around and doing it again. Truckers will go to this site to get containers instead of the port.

5) Bring in barges and small container ships and start hauling containers out of long beach to other smaller ports that aren't backed up.

This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don't need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas.

We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports working again. I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if the ports don't work. Every company selling physical goods bought or sold internationally will fail.

The circulatory system our globalized economy depends has collapsed. And thanks to the negative feedback loops involved, it's getting worse not better every day that goes by.

I'd be happy to lead this effort for the federal or state government if asked. Leadership is the missing ingredient at this point.

• • •