Thread by @stevehwen

1/ This country is in the middle of a supply chain crisis, largely caused by a major logjam at the Ports of LA & Long Beach.

What if I were to tell you there's an efficient & easy solution that no one is talking about right in front of us? 🧵Let me explain 👇:

2/ As @pdberger says in this @WSJ article (and detailed by @typesfast), the major bottleneck at the Ports of LA & Long Beach is caused by a shortage of chassis (a wheeled trailer that truckers use to transport shipping containers).
wsj.com/articles/a-sim…

3/ The solution's a simple, efficient process called Dual Transactions: a truck must bring an empty container back to the port, thus freeing up their chassis, and at the same time they pick up a loaded container. This saves hours of waiting time & never causes an unused chassis.

4/ Lack of space in the ports is well detailed & Dual Transactions are the right solution. Because they are a 1 container in, 1 container out trip, they never add to the # of containers. This leads to less trucks, less traffic & allows more trucks to pick up more containers.

5/ Dual Transactions seem simple enough and the obvious way to run the port and incentivize efficiency, right? Well, less than 20% of pickups at the ports are Dual Transactions.

So, why are Dual Transactions not the obvious norm at the ports?

6/ Because container deliveries today are coordinated & delivered by dispatchers who are working by hand. Without a Dual Transactions, this same process takes 2-3 trucks and multiple trips to the ports.

7/ In a world of amazing logistics software used by companies from @FedEx to @Uber, the entire country’s supply chain is clogged up by manual dispatch of trucks picking up & dropping off shipping containers using 3+ trips to do the work of 1 well-coordinated Dual Transaction trip

8/ This causes all of our port issues: traffic jams, unavailable chassis w/ empty containers on them & worst yet, a problem you haven’t heard:

An impending shortage of empty containers not being sent back to Asia that will cause an even more massive shortage in a few months

9/ If we don’t solve this now, a few months from now, ships in Asia won't have enough empty containers to bring any goods to the US & we'll go from delays & higher prices, to no items at all.

No Barbies, No TVs, nothing, because there won’t be containers in Asia to put them in

10/ So, what can we do?

If we want to solve this problem and build actual scalability into our ports and supply chain, we need to incentivize truckers & ocean carriers to promote this type of Dual Transactions. We need to use the carrot, not the stick.

11/ I recommend that the Ports of LA & Long Beach be compelled to implement the 3 simple changes below to incentivize Dual Transactions. These will actually fix our supply chain & better utilize the ports that are now open 24/7, w/cranes & trucks sitting empty because of logjams.

12/ My recommendations are:
#1) Allow truckers doing a Dual Transactions to go into the port without an appointment.

Right now, a trucker needs to make a pre-scheduled port appointment to pick up/drop off a container. Appointments are hard to book & are missed ~30% of the time!

13/ Recommendation #2-
All port terminals in LA/Long Beach need to create a separate entrance/line for Dual Transactions so these truckers are not waiting in the same line as others who are waiting for chassis for hours.

14/ Recommendation #3
My final recommendation, & this will require an executive order from @POTUS or Gov @GavinNewsom, we need to allow all chassis, regardless of owners, to be able to do Dual Transactions, since the chassis will be immediately reused to bring a container out

15/ Note: While all chassis are the same & can be used w/ any shipping container, many chassis are contractually only able to pick up/return containers from certain port terminals. Meaning these chassis are just stored & waiting for the corresponding ship to come into port 🤦‍♂️

16/ So, if the Ports of LA/Long Beach were to incentivize container pick up/drop off via Dual Transactions, by my calculations at even at 70% rate of dual transactions, the logjam at the ports could clear in as little as a few months!

17/ Please spread the message. We need to stop putting small band aids on a BIG problem that will only lead to larger bottlenecks (like no empty containers in Asia).

We need to use technology & incentivize efficient systems like Dual Transactions to solve our issues now.

Now more than ever, we need the leadership of local leaders. @MayorOfLA @joebuscaino @supjanicehahn @robertgarcia @repbarragan @replowenthal @stevebradford @sengonzalez33 to urge POTUS and Gov. Gavin Newsom to focus on solutions that can be implemented now.