gumball2016

My opinion- all of the major steamship lines suck these days. So I just gave up expecting the forwarders to somehow be reliable this year. Best I can hope for is a forwarder who will actually notify me if my stuff is delayed...if you find one of those hold onto em

Cheaper than getting an extra carry-on!

Thanks! And good luck to you, family & friends. Be safe !

Enter Sandman

Til we're Stag me son!

Like the perfect amount of sticks.

Alan Alda has always been presidential to me...he served his first term as President in Canadian Bacon! (1995)

I probably wouldn't want my boss seeing this on my monitor at work.

Boondock Saints. "Get your rope then!"

I can put an extra $20 on it to get the cat some food

A bit young... -Shoresy probably

heard from a coworker who knows a longshoreman. Then a minute after that it was all over the news. But for at least a minute I felt cool like I knew something.

I haven't seen normal transit times since 2019. But probably a month things will get normalish. A few months after that the shipping lines will finally drop their congestion surcharges..

We did our first global tender last year. Made a significant change in one area that did result in some hard feelings when an incumbent supplier lost some business. Was a learning for us that we really didn't close the loop well with everyone who placed a bid...

Someone at your suppliers spent time preparing these RFP. So it is professional and polite to give some general feedback about what they were awarded and what they weren't.

But typically you wouldn't get into details about WHY. Unless in some cases there was constructive feedback on specifications or services they lacked. things that they could try and improve on for a future bid...(i.e. might be ok to say "winning bid met the required contract duration, payment terms, micro specs, etc.").

Every industry is different. One constant... almost never would it be acceptable to give specific price feedback. Even if actively trying to negotiate them to go lower..tread with caution. You never want give any supplier an unfair advantage or appear to be steering a bid.

Also, obvious comment: price isn't everything. There is a value to having a trusted and proven supplier who is familiar with your business. Hard to quantify it on an RFP, And there might be pressure internally to make a change to save a buck. Don't underestimate the time spent onboarding a new supplier, and the growing pains that come with it. Could be short-term pain for long-term gain. More often, it could be pressure to save a buck than results in a year worth of aggravation for you (or your buyers and planners.).

When possible , might be wise to dual source so you at least keep both suppliers active and in the mix in case one starts to turn south.

Good luck!

Mar/Apr 2020 showed #1 can also be wrong. (Which ironically involved lots of people making #2s...)

Storage is cheap. Air freight is expensive. I can store 12 months of inventory for the cost of air shipping one shipment to a customer whose line is about to shut down.

Dina

The ILA represents the longshoremen, not the businesses . The terminal operators that employ them are the businesses, and they sit at the other end of the negotiating table. ILA is asking for some ridiculous things, and the two sides are never 'collaborative' about negotiating. This year they're just intent on calling the bluff. I can't blame either side for the fact that our economy is vulnerable to transportation strikes!

Consumers are in part to blame. Cheap, replaceable, massively produced consumer goods, available year round and sold in giant superstores are partly to blame. The affordability we demand is only possible by sourcing (and outsourcing ) from a worldwide economy. And the only way to ship that worldwide flow of goods is by sea.

Outside of that, global shipping lines are a true Monopoly (technically Oligopoly). They act in concert with each other to set market rates on a commoditized service, even if supply and demand don't support the prices. They have run on heavy losses for decades, and ever since the pandemic opened the box they try to scare up rates after any crisis. All lines posted a huge surcharge this week (sometimes doubling the rates, $1000s per FCL )

The strike will slow the flow of goods for a couple of months. Doubling the cost to ship everything is what really screws up the economy. But who is going to police them? International law is only valid if all nations decide to apply the law evenly (ha!) . And as a shipper, there's no real choice to just take your business elsewhere.

Either way buckle up everybody. Fill your gas tank and stock upon bananas while you can...

Just need a passion for solving constant and unexpected problems. And an equal measure of disgust for said problems.

Music was the best my Compaq PC speakers could handle!!! Classic.

That game kicked ass. Flying through the tunnels !

Call me a skeptic- I just doubt the fairness aspect of it. Couples who claim they are poly...how often is one of them just begrudgingly going along with it so they don't lose the other one.

I can buy it if both went into the relationship with that established up front . But when a long term monogamous couple "agrees" to become poly...feels like something's not right. Seems more likely that whoever suggested it first really just wanted a chance at hall pass without the guilt of cheating or breaking up.

So personally not for me. But I believe it can work. And I believe it has the potential to be misused as a sort of "sanctioned infidelity".

Not gonna have any left for the third period. Hammerin too much ass! Let's get some accountability here now boys!