Shortage Of Truck Chassis In Los Angeles? Relevance To Global Economy? -- November 18, 2014

We spend a lot of time in southern California, San Pedro, specifically, across the freeway from the Port of Los Angeles and across the bridge from the Port of Long Beach; my wife's family settled there some years ago. The two ports, in San Pedro Harbor, have always fascinated me. 

The Los Angeles Times is reporting. First the background:

In recent years, the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, which combined handle about 40% of all containerized freight for the nation, have faced rising competition.

A widening of the Panama Canal will allow larger ships from Asia to bypass the West Coast and deliver more goods straight to the East Coast.

In preparation, a number of ports on that side of the country are undergoing major expansions. The Jacksonville, Fla., port authority, for example, said recently that its Asian container shipments grew 20% this fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

Local officials estimate that about one-third of the incoming cargo gets distributed in Southern California, while another third travels along networks of rail lines, highways and warehouse facilities in the region before it begins its journey to other parts of the U.S.

The last third of the cargo is known as “discretionary”—it isn’t tied down to the Los Angeles-Long Beach network and might just as easily enter North America through other ports. Local leaders have been working hard to keep that last third.

It turns out for that recently there has been a "traffic jam" in the harbor and the ports:

For more than a month, a rotating cast of about a dozen container vessels, bulk ships and tankers has sat anchored just outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, some waiting as long as eight days to berth.

A year ago, no ships waited in line. “Until the middle of October everything was humming along nicely,” said Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which keeps tabs on vessels arriving and departing and directs ship traffic.

Officials blame the congestion on a variety of issues: larger ship sizes that strain the capacity of the ports’ unloading resources, near-record volumes of goods trying to squeeze through the facilities as the economy improves, a shortage of truck chassis to haul away the cargo, and snarls caused by a reconfiguring of the local rail system.

Again, the four reasons cited:

• larger ships that strain the unloading capacity;
• near-record volumes of goods arriving at the ports;
• a shortage of truck chassis to haul away the cargo; and,
• snarls caused by a reconfiguring of the local rail system.

Of the four, the third one caught my attention.

Within the last few weeks, I forget when, I posted a note that a truck manufacturing facility on the west coast was rumored to be going to "mandatory overtime" due to the number of orders backlogged. The company specializes in specialized trucks and chassis.

Interesting.

The company also had a significant military contract for trucks.

The company's trucks are also seen in the Bakken, though a relative rarity compared to other names of which I am more familiar.

Maybe none of the dots connect. On the other hand maybe they do.

(By the way, I didn't pay much attention to the story or read more of it other than the headline, but I understand the Japanese stock market recovered today following the announcement that was going to delay the scheduled increase in the nation's sales tax. I think there were similar stories about a possible Chinese recovery with government stimulation.)

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At Least It's Hard To Catch

ABC just tweeted:

New York City health officials investigating death of woman on Ebola monitoring list; authorities say woman did not have symptoms at last check.

New tweet:

Young woman, well below the age of 50; in perfectly good health; athletically fit sitting in beauty salon, slumps over due to heart attack.

Yeah, that happens.

[Uh-oh: I added the "new tweet, yeah that happens" at 6:38 p.m. November 19, 2014. Then I did a few other notes, and then came back to infowars and found this at 6:58 p.m. November 19, 2014:

NYC Woman on Ebola Watchlist Dies Bleeding From Mouth, Authorities Say “Heart Attack” Are suspected Ebola cases being covered up?

Something tells me the CDC is going to be all over this. The initial Ebolavirus test came back negative. Indeed, if she ... well, I'm not a conspiracy theorist ... a lot of 40-year-old women in perfectly good health in beauty salons keel over every day from heart attacks. Stuff happens. Gruberized. Scream loud and carry on.]