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Flexport's technology had nothing to do with this, though. The CEO literally took a boat ride around the bay and looked at what was happening + talked to some p

Flexport's technology had nothing to do with this, though. The CEO literally took a boat ride around the bay and looked at what was happening + talked to some people. He did the thing everyone assumes public officials do, but who clearly are not doing.

mzs 5y ago
I'm pretty sure the CEO knew beforehand and crafted a narrative.
- dmingod666 5y ago
  Better than being in a position to solve it and doing nothing..
- beerandt 5y ago
  I'm with you. He impressed me until the list. Stacking containers and finding more storage space is smart, but I think he also went pretty far outside his knowledge domain when he started talking about messing with train logistics and mobilizing the military (other than maybe using federal land/ depots for storage). I don't know his background, but I do know trains are all about throughput, which isn't significantly improved by reducing the distance empties get hauled temporarily. You can recruit all the traction you can find, but those tracks have a fixed limit on outbound capacity. If anything, making a line a temporary one-way long-haul line would improve the throughput by getting rid of trains waiting on sidages to take turns going different directions. Or if dual track, run running both tracks east for some blocked amount of time. Pull in new engines from other lines/directions, as needed. But the bigger point is the guy appears (to me) to be talking out of his ass on at least half of his recommendations, no matter what his title and experience.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    > I don't know his background He’s the CEO of Flexport - if he’s not one of the foremost experts on logistics in the country, it’s only because they all work for him.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Which is why he got the benefit of the doubt until he opened his mouth. Being a CEO doesn't necessarily mean fully understanding the technical aspects of your companies work, and it certainly doesn't mean understanding technical aspects of adjacent industries, like railroads, or understanding military logistics or operations.
- SilasX 5y ago
  Why is everyone "suspecting" this? The blog post starts by laying out that that was exactly what he did (knew beforehand and put it into a plausible but made-up narrative). See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032229
  - djrogers 5y ago
    The blogger doesn’t know any better than the rest of us if that’s what happened.
    - SilasX 5y ago
      Even so, they should at least phrase it as "I agree with the author that..." rather than making it look like it's some brand new theory they're introducing to the discussion rather than the entire premise of the blog post.
indymike 5y ago
> ... looked at what was happening + talked to some people. He did the thing everyone assumes public officials do, but who clearly are not doing. I've lost count of the number of times that I've been able to solve what was thought to be impossible by just talking to people.
erlapso 5y ago
But the CEO has a different level of understanding of logistics compared to the major. They may be looking at the same port, but they see different things. The CEO saw bottlenecks like Neo sees the Matrix
- kaesar14 5y ago
  Why doesn't the mayor of a city with one of America's most important ports call in experts like this the second trouble started? It was this easy and he never bothered to ask the experts?
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    Because in this case the "solution" doesn't solve the rest of the problem: that their aren't enough truckers or locomotives to haul the cargo inward to their domestic destinations due to the unprecedented demand for shipped goods, which is why containers were piling up in the port in the first place. This just solves the problem of allowing slightly more ships to offload their cargo before they run out of space again. But as there are 100+ ships currently waiting to offload, this expanded "buffer" still isn't big enough. EDIT: left out of the one-sided linked article: the city of Long Beach had been planning to waive the stacking requirements for a while prior to the Flexport CEO going on his rant due to pressure from the White House dating back to this summer. Container storage near (not in) the ports actually falls into 3 separate jurisdictions: the ports of LA and Long Beach, and the cities of Long Beach, LA, and Wilmington, and required coordination between all these agencies, coordination with the logistics companies operating at the ports, and coordination with the domestic shipping companies that would be moving containers out of the container storage areas (via truck or train).
  - mcguire 5y ago
    What interaction does the mayor (or the administration) of a city normally have with the ports? I mean, beyond keeping an eye on the wear to road surfaces of port traffic.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
SilasX 5y ago
The first section of the blog post goes to great lengths to say "oh this is actually something he figured out after extensive research, and he's making his advice seem more credible by framing it as 'aw shucks I just noticed this on a quick boat trip where I heard [what is actually his own understanding] from Legit Experts It's Okay To Trust' and thus reduce popular resistance to considering it".

mzs 5y ago

I'm pretty sure the CEO knew beforehand and crafted a narrative.

dmingod666 5y ago
Better than being in a position to solve it and doing nothing..
beerandt 5y ago
I'm with you. He impressed me until the list. Stacking containers and finding more storage space is smart, but I think he also went pretty far outside his knowledge domain when he started talking about messing with train logistics and mobilizing the military (other than maybe using federal land/ depots for storage). I don't know his background, but I do know trains are all about throughput, which isn't significantly improved by reducing the distance empties get hauled temporarily. You can recruit all the traction you can find, but those tracks have a fixed limit on outbound capacity. If anything, making a line a temporary one-way long-haul line would improve the throughput by getting rid of trains waiting on sidages to take turns going different directions. Or if dual track, run running both tracks east for some blocked amount of time. Pull in new engines from other lines/directions, as needed. But the bigger point is the guy appears (to me) to be talking out of his ass on at least half of his recommendations, no matter what his title and experience.
- djrogers 5y ago
  > I don't know his background He’s the CEO of Flexport - if he’s not one of the foremost experts on logistics in the country, it’s only because they all work for him.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Which is why he got the benefit of the doubt until he opened his mouth. Being a CEO doesn't necessarily mean fully understanding the technical aspects of your companies work, and it certainly doesn't mean understanding technical aspects of adjacent industries, like railroads, or understanding military logistics or operations.
SilasX 5y ago
Why is everyone "suspecting" this? The blog post starts by laying out that that was exactly what he did (knew beforehand and put it into a plausible but made-up narrative). See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032229
- djrogers 5y ago
  The blogger doesn’t know any better than the rest of us if that’s what happened.
  - SilasX 5y ago
    Even so, they should at least phrase it as "I agree with the author that..." rather than making it look like it's some brand new theory they're introducing to the discussion rather than the entire premise of the blog post.

indymike 5y ago

> ... looked at what was happening + talked to some people. He did the thing everyone assumes public officials do, but who clearly are not doing. I've lost count of the number of times that I've been able to solve what was thought to be impossible by just talking to people.

erlapso 5y ago

But the CEO has a different level of understanding of logistics compared to the major. They may be looking at the same port, but they see different things. The CEO saw bottlenecks like Neo sees the Matrix

kaesar14 5y ago
Why doesn't the mayor of a city with one of America's most important ports call in experts like this the second trouble started? It was this easy and he never bothered to ask the experts?
- gamblor956 5y ago
  Because in this case the "solution" doesn't solve the rest of the problem: that their aren't enough truckers or locomotives to haul the cargo inward to their domestic destinations due to the unprecedented demand for shipped goods, which is why containers were piling up in the port in the first place. This just solves the problem of allowing slightly more ships to offload their cargo before they run out of space again. But as there are 100+ ships currently waiting to offload, this expanded "buffer" still isn't big enough. EDIT: left out of the one-sided linked article: the city of Long Beach had been planning to waive the stacking requirements for a while prior to the Flexport CEO going on his rant due to pressure from the White House dating back to this summer. Container storage near (not in) the ports actually falls into 3 separate jurisdictions: the ports of LA and Long Beach, and the cities of Long Beach, LA, and Wilmington, and required coordination between all these agencies, coordination with the logistics companies operating at the ports, and coordination with the domestic shipping companies that would be moving containers out of the container storage areas (via truck or train).
- mcguire 5y ago
  What interaction does the mayor (or the administration) of a city normally have with the ports? I mean, beyond keeping an eye on the wear to road surfaces of port traffic.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago

SilasX 5y ago

The first section of the blog post goes to great lengths to say "oh this is actually something he figured out after extensive research, and he's making his advice seem more credible by framing it as 'aw shucks I just noticed this on a quick boat trip where I heard [what is actually his own understanding] from Legit Experts It's Okay To Trust' and thus reduce popular resistance to considering it".