Port strike and the carpet kings

The first indication that the strike was real was not from the news, but from the absence of the morning email from a large multinational carpet manufacturer. This email includes order numbers, origin, destination, shipment details and purchase order numbers.?

The purchase order number is important, boxes and containers get swapped around all the time at the port of Savannah but the forwarder will shuffle things around and get you the right pickup number. You need the pickup number, because it’s tied to the purchase order number, and a box or container, depending on who you ask.

No pickup number, means no truckload order, which means that the drayage carrier couldn’t get a box to take back to the warehouse, where it gets transloaded into my truckload order.?

In a normal world, this trucking version of divine trailer transubstantiation, the container box comes off a ship, which a longshoreman helps move to a stack of boxes. Later, a drayage carrier comes to pick up a box and take it to their warehouse, where 40 feet get converted into a 53 foot dry van trailer.?

No box, no truckload order, no email from shipper, no load for my small fleet of regional drivers who haul things from Pooler GA, 13 miles west of Savannah, to the carpet mills in northern Georgia between Summerville, Dalton, Calhoun and Adairsville.?

We now have a problem, one bigger than me getting yelled at for not having any freight. The carpet mills depend on inbound shipments, but the store normally handles the carpet rolls that are imported from overseas. Depending on the shipment, these plants may shut down, causing a cascade effect for those whose jobs it is to haul things.

For example, that lack of a drayage load, means I have no inbound load from Pooler to Adairsville. Adairsville, now has no outbound load going to Fairfield, which is now a bigger problem, if the distribution center in Cypress, CA was waiting on that shipment from Fairfield OH.?

Sure, you could re-route to the port of LA but now need to cover the extra volumes coming into the Cypress, CA distribution center, and if your Georgia plants are starved of raw product, must now expedite it.?

That ship has sailed, with a decision like that needing to be made months in advance.

It’s a domino effect, which takes days to be felt, but weeks to correct itself. I don’t miss it, because those Georgia fleets who depend on the carpet customers and brokers for shipments are now up the creek without a paddle.

For the longshoreman, now is a great time to plan a strike, with crane and terminal access automation making its rounds among trade publications and industry conferences. For the ILA dinosaur, their problem is too little too late, like feeling the heat from the automation asteroid and finally trying to run away.?

The last time the longshoreman had a strike was 1977, when they were 165,000 strong. Ten years later by 1987 that number fell to fewer than 60,000. If you ask the ILA’s website they say 85,000 but the writing is on the wall if they don’t fight for concessions.?

Dinosaurs may be extinct but they weren’t dumb. For the American Labor union, when labor negotiations feel like a losing game of musical chairs, sometimes the best option is to throw your hands in the air, kick down all the chairs, then storm out of the room.?

For the supply chain and professionals who rely on them, Tuesday October 1st will be a huge headache.?

For the carpet kings, a prolonged strike will unravel an already beleaguered sector struggling to compete in the global stage. The one with the last laugh is a plant manager at a carpet mill in Tianjin, 2 hours southeast of Beijing, who thanks the ILA for striking.?