With the bottleneck of container ships at the ports are all you intermodal modelers now running empty well cars? Enquiring minds want to know ! Just a little model train humor....carry on...
Just thinking about this. I believe a passenger jet can't take off if there is no place to land at the destination. I wonder if you can't send an empty unless there is room to receive it?
The reason I ask is.... I saw a whole train of empty well cars heading west through Flag the other day. Maybe there are containers waiting for trains somewhere. My understanding is that its getting the people at the ports to load em...hmmmmmmm.
Drove out to west Texas a couple of weeks ago. There are hundreds of empty well cars parked out there in sidings, being stored. I've seen some solutions to the congestion problem where railroads will bring containers a few hundred miles inland where they can then be classified and sorted. But I'm sure the railroads won't be interested unless it's at least a 1500 mile haul.
Basically the result of a "perfect storm", here are some web links to several interesting articles about the ongoing supply chain crisis. https://www.businessinsider.com/pho...ach-shipping-supply-chain-tour-expert-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/supply-chain-crisis-when-it-will-be-over-end-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/shipping-containers-line-streets-in-california-neighborhood-2021-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/lack-of-truck-chassis-supply-chain-crisis-biden-tariff-duty-2021-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-has-trucks-to-ease-supply-chain-chaos-wrong-place-2021-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/truckers-wait-outside-backlogged-ports-8-hours-without-pay-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-is-running-out-of-cardboard-supply-chain-crisis-2021-10
So, in my retierment I should move to the west coast and become a crane operator? Don't tempt mte. 'Blind crane operator sends loaded container back to China." No, that does not read well.
Yes but one heck of a climb to reach those control cabs. Then some precision touch at the controls not to mention good depth perception.
Indeed! When I lived on terminal island I got used to the occasional crashing sound of a container being dropped in the early morning hours. After a while it became the lullaby that kept me asleep which came in handy later on when I was assigned to a ship.
This topic invites another question. What is done with empty containers? Are they loaded with other products and shipped elsewhere; end up in the great garbage dump in the middle of the ocean; recycled into other products; shipped back empty to the originating country; become housing in third world countries; welded together to make retaining walls or used for storage as is with trailers that are no longer road worthy or some other use?
Most often, they are returned to service once emptied. Most of the west bound container rail traffic is empties, to be loaded onto the same container ships that just brought a load of full ones from Asia. There is also a pretty good market for used containers, to be used as outdoor storage buildings, or remodeled into shop space and even houses (multiple containers stacked/arranged and remodeled as needed). A friend of mine bought a few of them to store farm equipment and hay for his bison herd, on his remote acreage until he could retire and build a permanent home and barn out there.
And then there are "One Trip Containers"... https://www.containerdiscounts.com/new-one-trip-shipping-containers#:~:text=A one-trip container is pretty much what it,is why it is called a one-trip container.
So the toilet paper we were screaming about in 2020 is still out to sea So why would they head this way knowing they can't unload them? I actually find this kind of interesting. I mean they are built to only handle so much correct? Who's paying them while they sit there in the area of the port for a month or so?
Get a bidet. You will never use toilette paper again. 80% of the world uses bidets. We like to kill trees.
