Stealing your own air freight at O’Hare: air freight chaos

[Tradd]

This is so over the top! Forwarders are going into the airlines with their own forklift and crew and paying off airline employees to get their freight.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/stealing-your-own-freight-ohare-cargo-delays-force-drastic-measures

[Tradd]

Air frt used to be available 6 hours after a flight landed, pre-covid.

[razz]

Interesting reading, Tradd.

[Teacher Terry]

That’s really interesting.

[jp1]

Geez. Our fall into third world nation status is happening faster than I expected.

[Tradd]

Geez. Our fall into third world nation status is happening faster than I expected.

More freight than has ever come in before is what the majority of the problem is, plus lack of workers. A lot of people don’t get the unprecedented amount of freight. Even if covid hadn’t happened and we still had this amount of freight, there would still be major problems. The system is way over capacity. People keep saying to build more ports, for example. They don’t get that it takes many years, plus rail and road infrastructure needs to be considered.

[jp1]

I wonder what caused this purchasing binge? And are other countries also gorging on stuff and causing their ports to be overwhelmed?

[Tradd]

Google it. Plenty of stories out there.

[jp1]

Interesting. Apparently people
ARE buying lots of stuff. I would’ve expected the opposite once things started opening up, that people would go back to spending money on restaurants amd trips and baseball games with $12 beers, etc and not as much on stuff as they did during the pandemic.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Interesting. Apparently people ARE buying lots of stuff. I would’ve expected the opposite once things started opening up, that people would go back to spending money on restaurants amd trips and baseball games with $12 beers, etc and not as much on stuff as they did during the pandemic.

yea I actually bought less in the pandemic, I felt bad for people even working and being exposed at work in the pandemic, so I'd put off yet another purchase etc. (except my shoes all wore out and so I got shoes and listened to the woes of the shoestore which had no business due to pandemic etc.). I can no longer shop happily ... Perfect? Nah. The fricken pandemic, even the worst unvaxxed parts of it was L-O-N-G, long and stressful and hard, there was no perfect.

But I guess I've had a tiny mini-binge after vaccines since the whole darn thing is less fraught with death and disease everywhere. Anything I need my own forklift for? Oh heavens no. Just readily available stuff.

Maybe in some sense the economy is overstimulated, at least for those with money to burn anyway, not so much low wage workers finally getting a raise in the first time in forever, that's just about time they did.

And the restaurants and bars and so on are STILL strained. Because noone really knows where we are in pandemic/non-pandemic land, with Delta, talk of vaccine becoming less effective over time or with Delta, masking requirements, major outbreaks but mostly in the South, etc.. Better than it was yes, but how it used to be? No. I go to a restaurant now and everyone is eating outdoors, and I decide to eat outdoors too, indoors is available, and largely empty.

[happystuff]

I wasn't much of a purchaser before the pandemic and my not spending continued through the pandemic. There isn't much I care to buy and I wear out what I have until the very end. So far, it works for me.

[Tradd]

New article this morning

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/business/supply-chain-shortages.html?referringSource=articleShare