
Mega ships bring benefits and challenges to ports of L.A. and Long Beach - adventured
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mega-ships-20160101-story.html
======
Animats
18,000 TEU. Wow. So big it has its own container cranes. And LA just had a
15,000 TEU Mersk ship. The rail transportation corridor out of LA's ports can
handle only about 12,000 TEU a day, on double-stacked trains. There's not
18,000 TEU of storage space in the entire port, let alone one of the subports.
(The Port of Los Angeles is a landlord, not an operator; there are about a
dozen private businesses with their own docks and container handling
facilities cranes there.)

Sorting is a huge problem. Some containers go on truck beds at the port, and
can head for a destination. The ones that go on trains may need a further
sort; some of that happens inland, Fontana, CA and Coulton, CA being major
transfer points.

~~~
bkor
Adding: A container ship doesn't unload and load everything in one go. It goes
to multiple ports. Else instead of 18.000 you'd be looking at 36.000 (unload,
load.. any trade discrepancy is offset needing to bring back empty
containers).

Don't have any experience, but heard that US terminals usually are really
slow. Unions not looking out for employees but instead to show off their
influence/power. Resulting in lower performance.

Searching a bit more I noticed one source
([http://www.apmterminals.com/en/news/press-
releases/2014/12/a...](http://www.apmterminals.com/en/news/press-
releases/2014/12/apmt-los-angeles-pier400-setting-ulcs-call)) mentions that
"11,200 containers handled during 56 hours of port operations, including one
shift of nine cranes at 29 gross moves per hour.[..]APM Terminals Pier 400 Los
Angeles was ranked first in productivity for North American ports in 2014 in
the JOC Group’s annual productivity report".

I don't consider those stats impressive (the 29). Note that the 11,200
containers mentioned is not a TEU. Could be around 18000 TEU; but then over 56
hours.

Regarding the need to sort and maybe sort twice: Any decent terminal should've
starting making/initiating improvements various years ago. Yard
moves/shiftings and the distance travelled should be one of the standard
measures that's looked at IMO.

Port itself should make long term plans for this. It is not like these things
are unpredictable or unexpected.

~~~
steve19
> Unions not looking out for employees but instead to show off their
> influence/power. Resulting in lower performance

You might write off the above comment as the opinion of someone who does not
like unions, but as someone who has worked for a shipping company, I assure
you it is not. The myths surrounding them are not myths, they are a reality.

Dock unions are terrible. These unions (or at least many of them around the
world) impose regimes of intimidation, violence, sexism, property damage and
theft.

It is not possible to disrupt them. If you built a port and staffed it with
high paid non union staff, I can assure you that dock workers around the world
would (possibly illegally) refuse to unload the cargo of ships coming from
this port or they would, more subtly, damage the goods unloaded (drop
containers to hard onto the ground etc.) until then nobody wanted to use your
port anymore because the cost was to high.

The international cooperation they have going is fascinating. It's a pity
collectism like this (minus the violence and bullying) is not used for good
instead if lining the pockets of a few.

~~~
ju-st
Nice post, thanks. So apparently it wouldn't even be possible to disrupt them
with automation/robots.

~~~
mc32
I thought there was a previous discussion[1, found it] on HN where the port of
Rotterdam was automating portions of its operations...

Perhaps to disrupt (improve) port operations you'd need to do it on both ends
of a balanced high throughput lane [to avoid the international unions
cooperating on sabotage]

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409226)

------
mojoe
We've come a long way from the days of unloading individual items from ships
by hand. The NPR Planet Money podcast had a great show on the invention of
shipping containers:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/04/248883212/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/04/248883212/episode-500-the-
humble-innovation-at-the-heart-of-the-global-economy)

~~~
ghaff
Levinson's The Box is also a great read on the topic. Many of the issues
associated with adopting containers such as standards and existing workers
apply to many areas of technology as well.

~~~
gregpilling
The Box was an excellent read

