Di Leo: A Tale of Two Canals

American Thinker ^ | February 5, AD 2024 | John F. Di Leo

[jfd1776]

The American economy can’t catch a break.

In addition to the massive price inflation of food, cars, housing, energy, and so many other elements, international companies are now suffering from a near-doubling of ocean transportation costs in just the past three months, due to simultaneous crises in Central America and the Red Sea that have restricted international shipping through the Panama and Suez Canals.

This is adding to the cost of goods all over the world, along with damaging lead times, as longer transits cause disruptions to both factory schedules and retail offerings.

For thousands of years, ocean carriers moved cargo. They would fill up a ship with drums, barrels, crates, and boxes of goods. Their math was relatively straightforward: charge for the transportation of the goods based on how much it cost to make the trip from port to port.

In the mid 20th century, Malcom McLean introduced a cost-effective way to switch most of the ocean industry to intermodal container shipping. This means that most ships are now configured to transport thousands of stacked containers each in standard sizes -- mostly 20’ and 40’ long -- measured in “twenty foot equivalent units” or TEUs. So, for example, a ship that holds 1750 standard or highcube 40’ containers is referred to as a 3500 TEU vessel...

[gundog]

Some talk of the canals from Matt Bracken, on this thread.

[Lurker]

None of the idiots in our government can grasp even the basics of this.

And what’s worse is they just don’t care.

L

[fella]

IIRC there’s some prophecies about the control of the sea gates being lost and them being closed.

[eyeamok]

At least we don’t have any mean tweets coming from the White House anymore

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

John; Thanks! U.S. foreign policy planners really do need this kind of information to protect our interests. (Sad that we do not appear to have people like this in the current administration.

In addition to the problems with reduced lake water needed to operate the canal, there is also the problem of CCP control of Panamanian ports and a number of the canal zones and increasing influence in Panama's politics. The CCP has the ability to track and monitor shipments through the canal and could further throttle shipping if it were in their interests. Panama has turned to Chinese firms for infrastructure projects in spite of Panamanian citizen questioning the quality of Chinese engineering.

(The other major choke point, the Malacca Strait.)

Good night

[LonePalm]

FWIW - I have met Malcom McLean. In 1973, my father handled a $28M+ land purchase for him from Westvaco. The land purchased was all in eastern North Carolina but the closing was in NYC. I was there. Although the money for closing was electronically transferred at noon on the closing day, he actually wrote a personal check which I got to hold.

Malcom was about the most unprepossessing man I have ever met.

For most of the previous summer my father paid me to do title searches for the land parcels in Dare, Tyrrell, and Hyde counties. I got to know the Clerks of Court real well. Since I had done most of the title searches for the sale, Dad took me with him to the closing in NYC.

Immediately upon closing Malcom donated about 2/3 of the land to the state of NC for the creation of two state wildlife refuges. This included about 98% of the mainland portion of Dare County. This was used to reintroduce the grey wolf back into NC to great success.

He paid me $25/hr when the minimum wage was $1.85. Dad would have had to pay one of his associates at least $40/hr to do it. Not a bad summer's haul for a rising senior in High School.

I used some of the time to do a little genealogy while I was there since I knew that I had distant relatives somewhere up there. I noticed that there were about 40 people with the same last name in the phone book. One of them had an establishment on Big Diamond Row (47^th & 5^th).

Since that was near the closing I walked over. I know I must have looked VERY young to be shopping there but I was wearing a nice suit. I walked in and asked to speak with Mr. R*****. The sales girl ask who was calling and I said Mr. E. R*****.

Her face went pale and dashed off. A few minutes later I was ushered into Mr R*****'s office. When I explained what I was looking for he beamed. He told me that all of the Rs in the phone book were related and none of them were related to me. They were all Lithuanian Jews that had Anglicized their names to R*****. when they came to America. He couldn't have been nicer. I complemented the salesgirl for being so nice to me even though I was a bit young to be shopping there. He told me they never knew who was going to walk in the door so they were nice to everyone.

SpyNavy

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)