Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ports are full of goods, they are not being released

Plywood - record DIY sales. People are cooped up at home, no where to go. May as well remodel. Mild winter has housing starts still strong. It's being sold as soon as it hits the shelf and at record prices.

Last week there were 20 ships anchored off LA/Long Beach from Asia - ready to unload. There's finite capacity to do so, not even talking about COVID reductions in capacity due to illness. The spot rate on a box from China to the West Coast is about 3800 bucks, it's doubled since June. Spot rates from China to Europe are up 30% over the same time. It's 10lbs of crap in a 5lb bag and price is how you make sure you're in the bag. 3800 is base rate, it's really costing about 6k to get a container, single container, from China to the West Coast right now.

Right now, there's 40k less drivers available for work than there were in January due to the drug clearinghouse. High insurance rates have also taken carriers out of the market.

Rejection rates from shippers to carriers - 25% nationally right now. 1 in 4 loads offered to carriers at contract prices are being turned back to the shipper. Carrier either has better paying freight from someone else or they don't have the truck to move it even if they wanted it. That's been above 20% the last 130 days straight. Some markets are as high as 70% rejection. I know of one load that moved 400 miles and the shipper paid 11,000 dollars to do so.

Ocean shipments are up 12% yoy, with volume of containers up 63.9% - realize that for a March/April - almost nothing was moving. Amazon alone has done 17.1 thousand containers in the last 30 days - imported to the US. 13.5k of those hit LA and Long Beach alone.

There's a ton of freight - it's the greatest bull run I've ever seen and capacity, absolute capacity can't keep up for a myriad of reasons.

I bought a sheet of 7/16 OSB for $23. Less than a year ago it cost about 7 or $8.

I bought a sheet of 7/16 OSB for $23. Less than a year ago it cost about 7 or $8.

This is what I'm seeing as well. Containers are not moving out of the ports, not just because of a lack of trucks and container chassis, but because there's not enough storage / handling / shipping / transit capacity away from the docks. Nowhere the put the boxes. I normally pay in the $ 2.00 a mile range to haul feed in from Indiana, last month one quote was nearly $6.00 a mile.

My thought is that people used to spend about 30 to 40% of their income on entertainment (travel, sports, dining out, movies, etc). Little of that is being spent, so people have money to buy STUFF. And stuff takes trucks, and boats and planes, and there are no trucks to be had. Driver pay is shooting up for the first time in a decade, with drivers with good, solid, accident free records are asking and getting pay packages well above $80K per year. Top guys are doing over 100K a year.

And don't even talk to me about airfreight. I've got an airfreight shipment coming in on Friday from Asia, we usually pay $7 to 8K, this one will come in at over 20.

Right now, there's 40k less drivers available for work than there were in January due to the drug clearinghouse.

I'm not familiar with the drug clearinghouse, what does that mean?

I went into my local Lowes yesterday, and walked through the lumber section. 6 months or so ago, there was no treated lumber, and when they did get in a shipment, it was double or more that normal. Yesterday the store was fully stocked of lumber, and the prices were just about in the normal range. I didn't look close at plywood, but I didn't see any empty shelves.