Cargo ships from CHINA

Costco has joined Home Depot in renting its own container ships to prevent delays and keep costs down as the global shipping crisis rages on.

In a call with analysts Thursday, Costco CFO Richard Galanti said the company had chartered three ships to import products from Asia to the US and Canada. This would help Costco avoid spending six times the normal price on shipping or containers through a third party, he said.

Each ship could carry between 800 to 1,000 containers at a time, he said. The company had also leased "several thousand containers for use on these ships," he said.

Costco expected to make about 10 deliveries over the next year using these ships, accounting for around 20% of its imports from Asia, he said.

The big-box chain is among a large group of retailers grappling with an ongoing supply chain crisis that's causing delays and shortages.

Falling demand in the first half of 2020, followed by a surge at the back end of the year, has led to delays, port traffic jams, and blockages. A lack of containers and dock workers has made the situation worse.

At the same time, retailers are being hit by truck and driver shortages, leading to further delays and higher costs.

"As I discussed on last quarter's call, inflationary factors abound," Galanti said. "Higher labor costs, higher freight costs, higher transportation demand, along with container shortages and port delays ... It's a lot of fun right now."

Costco's standard rollout time for new products in its stores had doubled in some cases, he said, adding that furniture, toys, computers, video games, and appliances had the biggest delays.

Edited by steve(ill) - 27 Sep 2021 at 2:29pm

All those jumbling of words is just what they need- I guess, all in all its narrowing down our dependence on foreign stuff !!!!

Costco has a fleet of trucks already wouldn't be hard to add some as needed just need to build their own port to get around the longshore Union that's bottling up everyone's shippment

Sorry JohnCO
Seems ALL US ports with container handling equipment are bottled up.
Covid restrictions, manpower issues(as in no new applicants).

Some
Blame trucker shortages, others blame rail line cut backs, ever more blame the dock workers, COVID sickened, but it seems there is not a one answer fits all except the most prevalent Elephant in the room

Workers, applicants, those that perform the unloading, hauling, emptying of containers and stocking the stores that are in evidence of NOT THERE.

Thank Bite Me and Pissy for that.

Can hardly wait to See what happens when US farm Exports cannot leave as nobody to haul, load, or place in ships to feed the rest of the world, famine, disease, will become horrific at best.

Edited by DMiller - 28 Sep 2021 at 4:24am

GOOGLE looks like SEATTLE is the only port in the US that is keeping up and has no backlog.

DMiller wrote: Won't last long as the BNSF is the major rail service to haul the CONEX boxes out and back in and are OVERWHELMED.

Even he cannot buy employees out of the current stock.

I’ve heard that John Deere is getting into the grain loading business. It would make sense. When Carter tanked grain prices with the Russian grain embargo, he singlehandedly put a lot of farmers out of business and many more didn’t buy new machinery.

Great! (not), Was wondering when that would happen...

Last thing I saw on the situation was that ships from certain countries or companies were getting unloaded with no problems.  It would seem Costco and/or Walmart would not have any problem getting their ships unloaded.  If they get their boxes switched onto their ships they could get them unloaded and moved.  It also seems like the unloading companies have every thing they need for ships from specific locations!  I don't believe this is a company strike.  This is a move by the companies to cause problems with the retailers across the country.  It started with the truck industry not moving enough trucks.  Now it has moved up a level.  I'm not sure where all of these people are getting unemployment from but somebody is rigging the system or providing funds to people not to work.   It's been way too long for the working public to be able to remain unemployed with no other assistance coming in, they shouldn't even be eligible for UI any longer.  Where are they getting funds to even be able to live at their current addressed?  This is all way to confusing to be happening in our country!

There are not enough truck drivers.. not enough fast food workers... nobody working at restaurants...department stores... EVERYWHERE.... just LOOK !  10 MILLION NOT WORKING !

Edited by steve(ill) - 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08pm

sho-man1 wrote: There is not a chip shortage. We have not missed a beat during the plandemic on production of chips...now demand for chips for automobiles has increased alot...The chinese can make chips faster and cheaper than everyone else but they can not make "automotive" chips reliably, meaning zero fails over a fifteen year life cycle. That's why china wants Taiwan so bad, to get ahold of TSMC, tsmc can build reliable chips.. It takes 18 weeks to 3 months to manufacture integrated circuits that are reliable for automotive use once they are queued up for production. The specifications for automotive chips is much more stringent than consumer products, same with medical devices.

Hang on for that Hyperinflation Ride, will be a Bell Ringer!!!

UK and other Euro Nations are experiencing similar issues, is due to LACK of CONEX Boxes locked in US, ASIA and Chinese ports!!!