Crate Congestion
November 17, 2021
By Charlie Hex
News Editor
For the past few months, ports around the world, such as our very own in Long Beach and Los Angeles, have been experiencing major amounts of congestion. This is mainly due to loss of staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, the vast increase in consumer spending, equipment shortages amongst other things, said the Long Beach Business Journal.
Nataly Ramirez, QUEST junior, says that she ordered a shirt for her friend’s birthday in Sept, and she still hasn’t received it. There is a considerable probability that this will not be a one time occurrence, and many gifts may be late for the holiday season.
LBUSD Warehouse Supervisor Jose Hinojosa said to the Corydon that there have been many delays in supplies such as ink cartridges, paper, and textbooks coming into schools. The orders that are able to be accessed are usually incomplete.
Mario Cordero, Executive Director of the Port of Long Beach, told Long Beach Business Journal “We are having capacity issues due to the unprecedented number of containers waiting to move off the terminals, while warehouses have little to no room to accommodate this ongoing spike in cargo moving through our port.” The ever growing queue at the Long Beach Port has been causing an array of problems around the city. Corporations aren’t able to restock their supplies, and customers are growing upset that they aren’t able to get what they want. With the holiday season coming, both of these parties are fretting that they won’t be able to get what they need on time.
Mario Cordero also stated in the Long Beach Business Journal that, “We are working with state, federal, local and industry partners to address issues with the entire supply chain that have finally caught up with us”.
Both companies and individual consumers can only hope that the port traffic will dissipate before the holiday season.
Photo Courtesy of Bloomberg article “Long Beach Port Chief: ‘Shop Early’ as Snarls to Last All Year” written by Micheal Sasso, Oct 21, 2021, 1:53 PM PDT
Photo depicts container ships anchored by the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Ava Sedillo • Dec 5, 2021 at 9:23 pm
In issue 2/2021 (published Novemeber 17,2021), Charlie Hex wrote an article titled “Crate Congestion”. The article talks about how as of recently both the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports have been experiencing major congestion mainly due to the loss of staff caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to reading this article, I had some knowledge of the ports being backed up and the reasoning behind it because of my dad since he happens to work at the the Long Beach port. He said that out of the 24 years that he’s been working at the port he has never seen it get as congested as it is now, he once said “take a look at the water at night, there are so many ships out there it looks like a whole other city out there.” From what he’s told me, the main reason for the congestion is in fact the loss of staff due to the pandemic because there are mainly people over the age of 50 who work at the ports and they don’t want to risk getting sick in the midst of this pandemic so they just chose to retire. The congestion affects everyone from someones amazon package not arriving on time to the stores being out of some brands of food because it hasnt come in. How do they plan on fixing this issue? If it’s possible, I would love to have seen an interview with one of the workers to see how this congestion has affected their daily work schedule and how they deal with it. Thank you for informing others about this issue!