I will not bore you with all the pictures and the discussion of how many ships are off the coast of LA waiting to get unloaded. If you are reading this, you already know that fact. What I do want to discuss is the real problem with supply chains and the root cause of this mess.
My fear is everyone is attributing everything to covid-19 and covid-19 certainly did not help. Covid-19 dramatically changed the buying patterns across the world (from experiences to things) and that impacted supply chains tremendously. However, like a lot of things related to covid-19, the impact merely accelerated a trend which was already growing. My thesis is this: The infrastructure of global supply chains was cracking and breaking and Covid-19 sped it up. What is included in infrastructure:
- Driver capacity
- Lack of investment in highway infrastructure (just look at the trucks parked all over every night)
- Lack of investment in port infrastructure
- Lack of connectivity in systems (i.e., you book a container to come to the US but the people on the ground don’t know when or even if it is coming)
- Lack of a cohesive strategy on chassis management
- Massive disruption and economic distortion with “on again and off again” tariffs.
- Lack of investment in real assets. A lot of money going into apps and other systems for visibility etc. but what we need our trucks, drivers, trailers, containers and ships.
Source: https://10xlogistics.blogspot.com/2021/10/this-is-not-just-covid-supply-chain.html
- All
- apps
- Assets
- blood
- BP
- Building
- Buying
- Cause
- caused
- chassis
- coming
- Commerce
- Connectivity
- Container
- Containers
- Covid
- COVID-19
- deal
- develop
- DID
- Disruption
- dollars
- Economic
- etc
- Experiences
- Federal
- Federal government
- Global
- Government
- Group
- Growing
- head
- High
- hold
- House
- How
- HTTPS
- idea
- Impact
- industry
- Infrastructure
- investment
- issues
- IT
- money
- national security
- network
- open
- Other
- People
- picture
- ports
- pressure
- private
- project
- Reading
- security
- ships
- States
- Strategy
- supply
- supply chain
- Supply chains
- Systems
- tariffs
- Technology
- temporary
- the world
- Trucks
- United
- United States
- us
- visibility
- What is
- White House
- WHO
- world
- years