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Just under half a tank full when I passed a local station this morning with only four cars on the forecourt so I filled the tank up. Passed again this afternoon and the queue was fifty plus vehicles.
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The mass panic was due to a lot of drivers walking off the job and securing other employment. BP have subcontracted its transport to hoyer, now this is a normal everyday move for big producers to out source transport. BP Stations are not owned by BP they are independent franchises, and in the contract BP guarantee them delivery or they get the delivery for free if they fail. This is something passed on to the sub contractor they are bound by the same terms, any failed deliveries incur a fine of £500 per failed delivery and they have to transport the load for free. Hoyer massively undercut the contract in order to win it, this meant drivers wages were cut right back, to give you an idea the starting salary for a dedicated BP driver was £42,000 per year with hoyer your lucky to start at £32,000. Now with other companies offering up £45,000+ its easy to see why people have jumped ship. The media are to blame really, this is a localized issue with one company not all of them, Shell Texaco, Esso, Total and others report no shortages and no problems with supply or delivery...... well until the media hyped it up and everyone panic bought fuel this then swung the balance of the supply chain and resupply network out of whack. A typical busy forecourt gets two deliveries per day totaling 64,000liters of all fuel types which is more than enough to sustain it for 24 hours without hitting into the reserves. Sadly because of the media hype and spin put on the balance has shifted simply because people are buying in excess of what they need and the tankers cannot keep up. |
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The reality of ships lined up waiting to get into port I can well believe, on average a containership should be able to turn around in 48 hours (even the 24,000TEU ones) But without dock space they cant offload, and if the warehouse space almost full they end user cant receive goods either so the port becomes a holding yard which ties up the container for its reload and re shipment. With regards to truck drivers I can see defiantly the USA and Canada have a problem with recruitment and retention, same as Europe. This has meant a softening of immigration rules for truck drivers in both Canada and the USA. When we talk about social security and welfare systems, quite frankly they are correct in a way, anyone on social security will not be able to afford to obtain a license, in Canada its around $8-10,000 and in the USA on average its $4-5,000, in the UK £3-4,000, no one living on welfare could afford that. In the 1980's the UK addressed the shortages by using a government subsidy program allowing unemployed to obtain licenses with government help, many of those who took up that offer remained in the industry (some still are in it) but now these people are coming up to or are already at retirement age. |
Feed corn and other animal feed has doubled in price this time last year
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with the price high it also means transport costs have to become lower, MB to AB runs were ranging in the early part of 2020 $58 per MT now there at around $45MT Now with fuel up at its high because the oil price is high WTI $74.98 per barrel that sort of costs per MT is not sustainable and indeed causes the transport companies a loss over all. What that means is companies diverting to other goods or not operating |
Some of the projects that I bid on take months to go through the approval process but my vendors are becoming more and more reluctant to commit to prices that far in the future. Makes it tough to put together a quote that will still be profitable by the time the contract is finally awarded.
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The german SPIEGEL writes:
"Traffic jams at petrol stations, panic buying: the fuel crisis in the UK continues. The nerves lay partly bare. The sticking point remains the lack of truck drivers. Fuel is available – there is a lack of drivers who bring it from the depots to the petrol pumps. At the weekend, Prime Minister Johnson announced that he would issue 5,000 visas for foreign drivers. But in this parking lot in Warsaw, the offer does not meet with enthusiasm. Jakub Pajka, truck driver: "No thanks, Prime Minister. I will not take this opportunity. No driver wants to move for three months just so that the British can really celebrate Christmas." The UK is estimated to be missing about 100,000 truckers. 25,000 mainly Eastern European drivers have left the UK because of the restrictions on foreign workers in the wake of Brexit. They have returned to their home countries – including Jacek Rembokowski. Jacek Rembokowski "There was a lot of uncertainty about how we would be treated afterwards, whether Brexit would upset the whole industry and whether drivers would continue to be welcome. I then made the decision to resign. Because of the money and because I wanted to go home again. Now I only drive in Poland." But the fact that Brexit is supposed to be the main cause of the fuel crisis is not liked being heard in London. According to the government, the main reason is that so many driving lessons and exams have been cancelled or postponed due to the corona pandemic. Now soldiers are to help with the gasoline deliveries. This should provide relaxation in the next few days." Also "Because of the bottlenecks at UK petrol stations, criminals may be used to drive trucks. "We have let prisoners and criminals work on a voluntary basis and unpaid," said Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Dominic Raab of The Spectator magazine. "Why not let them do paid work when there are bottlenecks, if there is an economic and social benefit?" I take it while corona (and related border delays) and ageing truckdrivers are one thing internationally, brexit is the reason for UK problems being a bit 'different' in comparison. |
Here they are taking about the coming Christmas crisis.
Here are a part of a Danish article about this shortage problems " A Christmas crisis with more expensive goods can no longer be avoided The pandemic has created bottlenecks in the world's oceans. This has led Ikea to deploy trains that can pick up goods from the Far East. Logistics manager at Ikea Denmark Peter Langskov must choose between kitchen knives or utensils. He can not fit both on board container ships and trucks and must therefore prioritize what is to arrive and what is to be sold out. - The situation is the wildest I have tried. It was impossible to predict that the pandemic would hit us this way, he says. - Right now we actually do not know when many of our goods will come home. Normally, 45 trucks with goods arrive at Ikea's department stores throughout Denmark - at the moment we are experiencing days where only 35 arrive, says the logistics manager. Container ships are queuing up on the Pacific Ocean The shortage of goods is due to consumers around the world turning up the purchase of furniture and consumer goods, as the closure prevented people to spend money on travel and services. In other words, demand is at a record high. The number of containers transported on the world's oceans has increased by about six percent compared to the level before the pandemic, explains Peter Sand, a shipping analyst at the interest group Bimco. "Especially the Americans have taken many more goods out of the Far East than they usually do," he says. " Markus |
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The City of Long Beach has made available several dozens of acres of land to take in the overflow from the Port of L.A. s a means of freeing up off load space; even with that, there still isn't enough space for all that's sitting off the coast; the unions are indeed a big pain and, as expected, they are trying to take advantage of the backup to force management and/or the Port authorities to give them more than the union's contracts provide, all with no real assurance the union workers will step up the flow of cargo in return; its been a long standing situation and has just gotten worse... An added drain on the number of big rig, long haul, driver pool is the increase in hiring by the big box chain stores and the mega online retailers for their own delivery systems; truckers who were fed up with lower pay, erratic work schedules, and other hardships of long haul and some who were affected by a decrease in some sectors of trucking caused by Covid's effects on some businesses sales, are flocking to the higher compensation, better benefits, stable work hours, and other attractions of companies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. ... <O> |
These crises were caused by *us* - you, me, and everyone else who allowed governments to get away with making terrible decisions on a variety of things - taxes/tariffs, immigration, subsidies, regulation, lockdowns, and the list goes on.
When you make it so that foreign "refugees" have an easier time getting a commercial driving licence and that are willing to take vastly lower pay, your own citizens are less likely to take up or stay in the driving career. When you lock down entire nations based upon scientists with a losing track record of computer modeling so that you can be seen to "be doing something" to try and stop an unstoppable pandemic, while simultaneously paying people not to work, there outcome is predictably fewer employed taxpayers with less disposable income. When Biden's press secretary makes the claim that when businesses pass tax increases on to consumers, it would be "...absurd and unfair...," proving she has no understanding of basic economics, it pretty much sums up the complete lack of competence or qualification of most government employees - that utter incompetence being what drives a nation's economic policies. The outcome will be predictable, especially since inflation has already cut the average person's buying power. Until every modern nation eliminates the people currently running their governments and oligarchical businesses from positions of authority, we'll continue to be in a depression with shortages and rationing. We're *already* in a depression but no one is willing to admit it. |
FIAT money. Always drops back to its intrinsic value: zero.
Money that has no bartering value attached by the market, but by politicians, is no money, but betrayal. Counterfeit money. And the fraud now gets exposed. Only money in kind, commodity money, uncontrolled by state and governments, is money worth to be called "money". And central banks? Are the meaniest manifestation of the organised finance mafia. This ride we now see beginning, will become a brutal one. Because the stage is set to make it all a perfect storm. I am not certain that we get through in one piece. Nor am I certain that I will. They say its all short lasting, and compensation for reduced VAT during corona, and all that. I say: be prepared to see these effects not only lasting much longer than they want to make you believe, but to worsten significantly. Be afraid. You have reason to be. Beware those glorified ETFs. They soon will become the driving power behind more doom to come. Or has anyone seriously believed that if there is a years-long trend of excessively buying ETFs, this does not change the rules of the game? My biggest concern is the state and the EU/ECB. Amongst all, the state and the EU/ECB are the worst of all my enemies. Against market turbulence, I could and have prepared. Against wanted criminal misdoings and brutal tyrannic acts by the state, I am powerless. The threat is not abstract, but material, and real. Paper is patient. Dont trust it, in no format. |
Germans in England received mail to drive trucks :o
https://www-faz-net.translate.goog/a...&_x_tr_pto=nui Well, why not. |
"At times it seems as if the British government is still in the middle of the Brexit campaign. Any problems are blamed on external enemies. Even calamities that were only caused or exacerbated by the exit from the EU are blamed on external powers, for example in the case of migration. It is true that there is a shortage of workers everywhere, because many EU citizens no longer want to work in Brexit Britain, but at the same time the government is busy preventing the arrival of migrants across the English Channel.
The tough interior minister, Priti Patel, has already thought about the most absurd plans to achieve this goal: one remembers her idea of using discarded oil platforms as prison islands for asylum seekers, or the proposal to use wave machines to bring boats back to France to force. Everything has been discarded, for obvious reasons. Two weeks ago, Patel came up with what she saw as the simplest solution: France should ensure that no more refugees came to the island. Whoever manages it anyway will be transported back to French waters by the British border guard. Of course, the French government has already indicated that Patel's latest plan is also a dead bullet." https://www-freitag-de.translate.goo...&_x_tr_pto=nui A wave machine to expel immigrants from the english shore. "In a dossier labeled Brexit Opportunities , she announced that she would throw dozens of EU regulations that still have to be complied with overboard in order to make life easier for citizens and companies. So it should soon be allowed again to put the so-called crown stamp on beer glasses. Motorists should also receive a digital driver's license. In addition, sellers are again allowed to indicate their goods in imperial units instead of struggling with the decimal system prescribed by the EU. In the future, fruit traders will be able to sell their strawberries in ounces again - provided, of course, that strawberries can be bought at all." Operation cocksure :doh: |
Fuel issues persist in south but 'over' elsewhere.
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Whenever someone says "they did this" or "I'm sorry, that's the policy of this institution/company" what they really mean is "someone or someones decided that this would be how they decide to do something, enact law, run this business." We need to stop blaming nameless, faceless organizations, and start blaming and holding accountable those who run them. |
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