I’m at the airport now, waiting for my flight back home from one of the more unusual press trips that I’ve been on in some time. It was a trip not to show off any particular car, but rather to show off an impressive and important new facility, the grand opening of the Volkswagen Group’s new Port Freeport, in Freeport, Texas. This is the company’s new Gulf Coast shipping hub that will provide cars coming from Europe and Mexico to over 300 dealers across the Central and Western US, reaching as far as the Pacific Northwest. It’s a huge, impressive facility, and it just so happens that VW’s grand opening of it coincided with the first significant dockworker’s strike since 1977.
This is some pretty spectacularly bad luck for VW, to open a huge, $114 million dollar facility that will process 140,000 Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, and Porsche cars (Bugatti is too good for conventional shipping, it seems, ooh la la) right as this historic and huge strike is happening, but fortunately the local union that works at Port Freeport, International Longshoreman’s Association Local 24, has not decided to strike at this point.
I learned an awful lot on this short trip, not the least of which was the fact that each local union acts independently, and each local’s president gets to decide if they want to strike or not. In the case of Local 24, the union seems to be at least currently satisfied with how things are going, and, as far as VW is concerned, that’s just fine by them.
I Tried To Learn More About The Strike
The main reason I learned so much on this little jaunt was because I spent a lot of time listening to Anu Goel, Executive Vice President, Group After Sales & Services for Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., who is in charge of ports like these and seems to be – and I mean this in the nicest, most respectful way – a genuine logistics geek.
This dude’s face lit up when talking about trade routes and shipping and how resources need to be moved and allocated efficiently like no one else I’ve ever seen; the man loves logistics. He also explained VW’s relationship with Local 24, and I asked why they haven’t decided to strike.
He told me that was a “good question he’s reluctant to ask,” because, essentially, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. He said he keeps out of union politics, but accepts that unions are a part of this world, and he always wants to talk to them openly and honestly. The opening was planned in such a way that no picket lines would be crossed by anyone, and he seems to genuinely respect the unions.
Goel also mentioned he was expecting something like this to happen as far back as June or July, and noted that once negotiation details were published in the newspaper, he knew things were going badly. You never want to negotiate via the media, he noted, because at that point you’ve lost control. I think he’s right about that.
As far as the timing of the strike, I think there are some interesting things to note. First, Goel explained that right about now, end of September to early October is when retail outlets want to stock up on all their holiday shopping inventory, so it’s the start of one of the most crucial and busy shipping times. It’s no coincidence that the union contracts expire about now, because they know this is the period of time when the incentive to wrap things up will be strongest.
The union contract is six years long; one of the main issues, in addition to better pay, is protection from job losses through automation. Personally, I suspect that this strike is happening now because it has been within the last six years that advances in automation and robotics and AI have accelerated to the point where the threat of being replaced by machines is seeming quite real.
It’s not an easy thing at all to deal with; automation will very likely make for more efficient everything, but will consumers really see the benefits of that, or will companies just make more and more profit? The price of new cars certainly hasn’t come down with the addition of more automation, for example. And people losing jobs is terrible, and if you can’t work, you sure as hell aren’t going to be buying new cars, either.
Of course, I have no solution to this problem, which has been around since the first steam engines started belching clouds and moving pistons. Automation will happen, but somehow we need to guide it in such a way that it doesn’t decimate jobs. Shipping companies have had record profits in recent years, so it’s not like they need to do this to squeeze out profits; they’re doing just fine.
Again, I don’t know the answer to this, and I don’t think anyone does. I was told that this strike can go on maybe a week or two, and then after that things are going to get really rough global shipping and supply chain and just getting-stuff-wise. When things do eventually start back up, that will only bring about whole new sets of problems.
For example, Goel, who got called out of our meeting to hop on a call with the United States Deputy Secretary of Transportation to answer questions and give advice about all of this mess, mentioned that after the strike ends, someone needs to figure out how to service and unload the vessels that have been waiting. Is it first in, first out? Do some ships and cargoes get priority? Nobody really knows at this point, and it all needs to be figured out now, so things can get moving again as quickly as possible once everything is resolved.
All of this was just lingering in the background of the whole tour of the facility, which, to be brutally honest, seemed mostly like massive warehouses and automotive workshops and body shops and vast parking lots filled with cars wrapped up in white plastic.
They Do A Lot Of Work On These Cars At The Port
I asked about those white plastic covers, and I’ll tell you everything I know about them: they’re only used for cars coming from overseas. The trip from Emden, Germany to Freeport takes 21 days, and those plastic covers protect the cars on that journey from scrapes and scratches and that sort of thing. Salt air getting trapped under them isn’t great, though, so they have to watch for that.
Cars coming by rail from Mexico or by truck do not have the full body wraps, because grit or gravel could get trapped between the plastic and the paint and wreak some havoc.
Of course, should havoc of paint or other body damaged be wreaked, Freeport has extensive body shop facilities, and can fix almost anything. We’re talking full paint booths and the whole works. Yes, at the port. Oh, and also, all factory accessories are installed at the port facilities — even complex stuff that requires drilling holes, so pretty much anything from a tow hitch to a roof rack to exhaust tips to a rear wing are getting installed here, not at the factory, and not at the dealer.
We were supposed to see one of the massive roll-on/roll-off car carrying ships on the tour, but a certain troublemaking hurricane named Helene prevented the ship from arriving in time. These ships are truly massive, like entire mall parking garages floating on the water. VW has switched from diesel ones to liquid natural gas (LNG)-powered ones, which are wider ships, and are so much wider that at their old port facility, it was no longer possible for two ships to be abreast in the channels. Freeport’s larger channels take care of that problem.
I did ask why the LNG ships are wider than the diesels, and while Goel didn’t know, he promised to find out for me, so I’ll update when I have an actual answer. My theory is that LNG is less energy-dense than diesel, and as such requires physically larger tanks. But I’m not sure why larger has to translate to width (beam? Isn’t that what they call the width of a ship?) but when I find out, I’ll update this so we all can know.
Even without seeing the massive ships and being awed by the scale of it all, it’s easy to be awed by the more mundane but equally impressive scale of this facility. For example, there are 13,400 parking places, and they break down like this:
- 8,200 first point of rest spots
- 900 storage spots
- 1,050 production queue spots
- 1,500 outbound track away spots – that means for the rail cars
- 750 rail load lanes, not really spots, but lanes for loading cars onto the triple-decker rail cars
… and then 1,000 are earmarked as luxury spots – I assumed these would be carpeted or something, but they’re just spots dedicated to the Audis, Lambos, and Bentleys.
Does that all add up to 13,400? Hey, it does, if you include the rail load lanes! How about that!
During the tour of the extensive warehousing and processing facilities, I realized something profound: If you want to know how your new Volkswagen or Audi got its floormats, this is how. There were boxes and boxes filled with pliant, rubbery floormats, and racks — much like clothing racks — choked with hanging floor mats awaiting placement into the footwells of so very many Atlases and Tiguans and Audi Q[number]s.
In addition to floormatting cars, this is also where cars get software updated before being sent to dealers. There’s actually a very slow-moving production line that takes cars and allows them to be prepped and crammed full of floormats and accessories all while a laptop is downloading new software into the OBD port. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, but I scribbled this clumsy drawing in my notes app with my finger:
Wow, that’s almost unintelligible. It looks like a Franz Kline painting. The laptop is on a hanging thing that moves with the car, you see. If I had time I’d do a better drawing, but my flight boards in 15 minutes!
I feel like there are so many other bits of information I need you to know, but I’m not sure what the best context is, so I’m just going to firehose some data at you: Under 400 miles, the car gets trucked. Over, it goes by rail. It takes 20 days to go overland from Freeport to the Pacific Northwest, which seems crazy considering that’s only one day less than crossing the whole damn Atlantic, but shipping costs from California to the North are so absurdly expensive, it’s cheaper to go to Oregon or Washington from Freeport.
A Firehose Of Port Information
Each huge vessel has 3,000 to 4,000 cars over seven or eight decks, and a professional crew can empty a ship of its automotive cargo in a matter of hours. It’s quite a sight to behold, I was told. I was also told that if there’s a custom issue with one car out of thousands, all the cars get held up until it’s resolved, so customs does not play around.
The amount of time that cars stay in Freeport, Texas after arriving is 8 days (11 if you count fleet cars, which stay longer by design) and the efficient layout of the facility means that usually two miles or fewer are put on the cars. That compares to six to 14 miles at other port facilities. Also, the triple-decker railcars – known as Trimax– are no longer being built, and are, according to sources at the port, “like gold.”
My flight is boarding soon, but I wanted to get as much of this information out as I could. We’re in a strange moment, shipping-wise, though I suspect it’ll be resolved before anyone is in real danger of losing serious money, because nobody wants that. The logistics of shipping cars all around the world is impressive and daunting, and I appreciated the glimpse into it I got today.
Now I just need to know why those LNG ships are so damn thicc.
I’m about half way through a fascinating book, The Box, by Marc Levinson. Containers were a thing back in the 50s and 60s and the wrangling that the multiple unions went through when containers were replacing manual moving of individual pieces of mechandise around (bulk) cargo was really interesting. It seems like automation (details of which were not detailed in this article) will likely result in a similar scenario where the reality of automation and how quickly the unions will figure out how to reduce their workforce while keeping income coming to their members during the reduction.
If the Trimax railcars are like gold then why isn’t anyone building them any more?
I’m still amazed people buy VWs in the first place. Fussy, fragile, unreliable cars that aren’t exactly exciting or distinguishable from the sea of other, more reliable brands.
I agree with you in principle, but I loved my Jetta GLI. It was just a joy to drive, when it worked. I would gladly have another GLI or a GTI, as long as I could sell it when the warranty is up.
Being that I had the archetypical basic Golf: i can say it was solid, to the point it was far more solid feeling than anything else comparable.
But as I didn’t get a vast range of extras on mine: things just worked.
But the pedestrian Golf would be distinguishable in America being that it’s a reasonably nice hatchback without any prétentions of being an SUV.
My MIL had a TDI Jetta wagon. When it worked it was indeed really nice to drive. But it also had a lot of problems and did so nearly constantly. The dumbest thing was when I changed the oil and the plastic orange oil filler tube broke off in my hands because it had gotten brittle with age. Now why it was made out of plastic in the first place is beyond me. But many decisions like that are what led to the car being pretty unreliable.
I daily an MK5 GTI. I love it enough that I would buy it again.
I daily a Mk 4 Golf GL. I love it enough that I’ve never considered replacing it since buying it new twenty years ago, even though I can afford much more.
Fun to drive, no car payment, and the local yokels don’t want to key/bump/trash it like they do to my friends’ nicer cars when grocery shopping. Win-win-win.
I am not surprised about Bugatti not taking the commuter boat. Every family has a diva.
When quoting someone, such as Jack London, you should put the text in quotes – otherwise, you’re just a thief.
I was in CWA for years – the union spent all of their time “protecting” the lazy and mediocre. Ports will soon be fully automated.
As a former AT&T IBEW member, I’ve heard some incredible shitty stories about CWA and their cuddling relationship with corporate.
Even though IBEW’s AT&T workforce was tiny compared to AT&T’s CWA members numbers, all their contracts (CWA’s) were worse than ours because their leadership didn’t really care about their members (I was at AT&T for 3 CBA contracts).
One of those CWA guys told me ‘CWA’ stands for “Can’t Win Anything”.
Obviously the union leadership has a say in how they run their union, but in the end it’s those members that have to throw them out and replace them if they’re not representing them as they should (remember the decades of shittiness the UAW had endured before they finally turned the corner with new leadership).
Unions like IBEW, NABTU, the pipefitters one…. Those are a little bit different than CWA, right? IBEW guarantees a certain level of training and expertise based on apprenticeship, experience, classroom time, and field mentorship. All of my buddies in construction will tell you that IBEW, generally, is worth the extra cost because you have more than the requisite decrease in screwups, so it costs less in the long run.
What does CWA do besides say, “There are a bunch of us; you can’t fire us all”? Is ILA doing the same thing? I mean, I wish I could ask for a 61.5% increase in pay, but I can’t prove that I am 61.5% more effective than last year (or last contract, or whatever works).
I guess I am not surprised you did well with a union that literally teaches its members to be better at their craft. That, by itself, shows a level of caring that I think is missing in, say, UFCW.
Maybe I am wrong here, but I feel like, when someone leads a bunch of unskilled people, there is a higher risk for corruption.
There are some specifics of IBEW in communications vs actual electricians.
At AT&T IBEW membership was only contingent on where you were based, but the positions/training/jobs were identical to my fellow CWA co-workers in the next state over. We only got our union membership through our AT&T jobs, not beforehand. I was in Chicago, but all around Illinois (and throughout the country) the people doing the exact same job as me were CWA members.
If IBEW threatend to strike AT&T it wouldn’t have been very hard for them find some workarounds, but if CWA were to strike the whole company would crumble. That’s why IBEW contracts always having better terms than CWA was solely due to union leadership and how they negotiated those CBAs.
“…if you can’t work, you sure as hell aren’t going to be buying new cars, either.”
Wasn’t this basically Henry Ford’s motto?
Ford opened a similar facility at the port of Los Angeles, but somehow 13,387 spots are now occupied by rusty jeeps.
Port Tracy
I’m so glad they opened up a whole new port location specifically to make it easier to send Porsches to me.
…and so close to MSR-Houston, too! Gosh, they can just drop it off at the track.
1.) Don’t trust a company’s promises, whether you’re in a union or not. They’re not loyal to you, so don’t feel any loyalty to them.
2.) Compare companies based upon what they actually pay out, any programs they sell you that pay out way off in the future like pensions and shit cannot be trusted to pay out reliably.
3.) The bird in hand is worth 2 in the bush.
4.) Apply this to Unions, especially if the Union leaders are super wealthy and you ain’t got shit but garnished wages.
I’m glad these guys are working, hopefully VW pays them enough, but considering how shit VW’s products have been recently I hope these guys have other jobs lined up. It wouldn’t surprise me if VW USA goes under.
if the port facilities are as efficient as they claim, someone else will scoop it up if VW USA collapses.
It’s pretty clear Unions are no more than a futile hurdle in the way of automation and people should be thinking about Universal Basic Income instead.
But between “Unions” and “UBI”, the ‘Murican psyche might actually spontaneously catch fire before choosing one or the other
Seems strange that it’s more efficient to do some of that stuff at the port than at the factory. Is it so country-specific that it just makes more sense to do it here?
My GTI was the only car I ever bought that had a bunch of accessories baked into the sticker price. A first aid kit, a trunk liner with little velcro cargo block things, and a cargo net, because apparently loose cargo is a real issue.
I got that plus the rubber mats, which I would have wanted anyway, but it wasn’t in lieu of the carpet mats, so now I’ve had an extra set of mats lying around.
The cargo blocks seem like a nice idea but are most effective at just being in the way when I actually need to load things. I think my cargo net is stuffed in one of the side pockets; those nets were something that GM at the least often liked to tout on their offerings as part of preferred equipment groups.
Depending on brand, I think it’s more probable that it’s more profitable to structure it this way. Check out the Southeast Toyota region and the accessories they’ll throw on a car. Sometimes it’s things like leather seats on a lower trim that didn’t offer it from the factory, but most of the time it’s anything from screen protectors to USB ports to LED fogs to unique blackout packages to exterior protectant to…
It also would lower the declared value of the car at port. This probably saves a very non-negligible amount of import duties over the course of 100,000 cars per year.
The way I’ve always negotiated with car dealers Re: the “baked in” accessories was “I don’t need any of that, so whether you take them out of leave them in, we’re taking their price out of the total anyways, or else I’m just gonna go to another dealer 5 blocks away”.
Needless to say they never take them out and I’ve never had to pay for them. Obviously this likely only works if you’re in a big metro with plenty of dealers to choose from.
Automation is really going to hit hard at container ports, because all that’s involved is picking boxes up from the inbound transportation mode. sorting them, and putting them on the outbound transportation mode. It allows all that expensive port infrastructure to be used 24/7 without incurring overtime for dockworkers and drastically changes the jobs that will remain – port staff will be more like air traffic control than traditional dockworkers. It’s only just beginning The transition is inevitable, but the negotiations are about how to protect the workers and ameliorate the effects. There are two fully automated terminals at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, but the only ports on the East and Gulf coasts are semi-automated terminals in New York-New Jersey and in Virginia, where both container terminals have been upgraded substantially over the past decade. (I used to have to report on that and put together promotional presentations for marketing logistics properties near the latter.) The contract in California that allowed automation to move forward (and LA/Long Beach was badly congested, so much so that it became more effective to ship goods through the Panama Canal to Atlantic ports for distribution) will serve as a model for the East and Gulf coasts as well.
Do Diesel Locomotives still have “Firemen”? Anybody? Anybody? Mercedes?
Fuck the ILA. LOL that guy makes even the UAW look reasonable, and even other unions don’t like them.
But we can’t let them hold the economy hostage. Fire them and replace them with better people and robots and finally bring the ports in the 21st century.
It’s relatively easy to install robots during the strike, as there is no contract during the strike period.
Maybe they should negotiate early retirement packages for the current members and/or some other shit for current workers only and not new ones hired in the future.
These aren’t low-paid service workers, truck drivers, construction workers, etc that can’t make ends meet and really do need more money. The ILA jobs pay over 100k and in some cases even 200k.
A lot of people say dockworkers are lazy, but I don’t really know and won’t comment on that. Truck drivers don’t seem to like them. Supposedly, it’s very hard to even get one of these job, having to wait 30 years for your grandfather to retire.
So, I looked up the wages today. East Coast Lonshoremen start at $20/hr or as much as a burger flipper gets in California. It goes pretty quickly to $24 then $32/hr. All plus benefits which are pretty good. Those guys getting $200K/yr are working extra shifts.
I can understand the fear of being replaced by a robot. AI is gonna put a LOT of people out of work, including those jobs that previously were well insulated from capricious and sudden layoffs due to automation. The existing workers will probably be taken care of w/o too many givebacks. The new hires will be slightly lower than whale ???? and will not put 3 kids through college while buying a 2500 sq ft house on one salary.
This anti-union sentiment is the direct result of 50 years of anti-union rhetoric from the right, just like defunding education for decades gets them a population easy to manipulate and misinformed enough to keep voting against their own interests in perpetuity. Sad as it is, it works.
If a union member has better pay or beter benefits than you do, it’s their fault, not your own bosses who underpay you, so instead of you trying to join a union that can better bargain for your pay, you should get rid of the unions to bring them down to your level, while the corporate owners laugh all the way to the bank 🙂
I’m sure everyone would be happier to work 7 days /week starting at 10 years old again, and when getting maimed on a production line to just get thrown out on the street to beg.
“I’m sure everyone would be happier to work 7 days /week starting at 10 years old again, and when getting maimed on a production line to just get thrown out on the street to beg.”
Triple digit hour weeks are the norm for junior IBankers.
As long as the arrangement is between two consenting adults, who are we to judge?
…despite the outrageous compensation even ibankers are bitching in the comments at the Financial Times because the work is soul-destroying when you work Japanese salaryman hours without salaryman security.
They just lowered that because a dude died on the job. Leo Lukenas III worked 100-hour week and left.
Beyond that, I’m happy to judge bosses who ask for 100-hour weeks, because they get marginal returns, while increasing their turnover.
I was a member of a union at a “government” agency (special district utility) for 30 years. The biggest benefit I got was a good pension, based on what the Board of Directors got (much longer terms of service required to get the benefits). A good 50% of our union dues went for lobbying and election efforts that often went against the interests of the workers. Union representatives also got well compensated. This was on the west coast, not the mobbed up east coast unions. As a worker bee, I didn’t notice or know about any no-show jobs.
Public service unions are a bit different than private industry unions, those govt jobs have much better benefits to start, and not just because the govt isn’t actively lobbying against or suing the NLRB to weaken worker rights.
Private industry has specific management training on how to antagonize the union in the most efficient and cost-effective way. I know because they actually trained me before I quit in disgust.
I will say that I took a $3/hr pay cut (1989) to go to the public agency because of the benefits, not the pay.
They probably aren’t striking to halt automation at this new facility because, being brand new, the automation is already baked in. There are no jobs to protect from automation.
A little of both. But the profits come first. Companies aren’t charities, after all. However, (speaking as someone who as been an industrial automation engineer for the last thirty years) companies today are turning to automation because of a shortage of a reliable workforce, not because there’s a conspiracy to boost profits by systematically replacing people. I don’t know if that necessarily carries over to dock workers, but that’s the case most everywhere else, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
“…companies today are turning to automation because of a shortage of a reliable workforce”
I wonder why it’s so difficult to have a reliable workforce when corporations refuse to pay them a living wage?
Gotta pay for those share buybacks and the CEO’s new yacht, after all!
These people make over 100k and sometimes even 200k.
With how much forced overtime?
Millennia? Really?
“I wonder why it’s so difficult to have a reliable workforce when corporations refuse to pay them a living wage?”
Sometimes people just aren’t reliable even if they have excellent credentials on paper. It’s not always a matter of compensation.
One of my engineers effed us over big time by basically abandoning the job though he’s paid more than market rate and came with sterling credentials.
Are you saying people shouldn’t be allowed to quit jobs?
Sure but we require a standard 2-week notice. This guy basically went AWOL (and he’s alive and well, because Facebook). Because of this several projects of his could not finish on time and we were penalized by tens of thousands of dollars.
I have another engineer who I love to death, but had to leave due to family move. He gave us 8 months of notice just so he can bring his replacements up to speed (notice the plural) and to ensure smooth transfer.
That’s the definition of GAF. To me it’s job qualification numero uno.
High quality engineers are in demand.
But these people are often the type who are so in their own heads – they can do a great job, but don’t have the people skills to advocate for themselves effectively or deal with confrontation.
So without a reason to stay – these folks can be poached for more money, better benefits, etc.
These things happen.
It probably wasn’t personal.
Harold J. Daggett, head of ILA, grosses over $750K/yr + benefits, is an emeritus alumni of the Mechanics Union for $$$?, drives (?) a Bentley and has a 70’ yacht (you don’t operate one of those single handed). Sadly, that doesn’t translate as a benefit to the rank and file workers.
$750K/year wouldn’t be more than chump change for any CEO of anything bigger than a mall kiosk. It’s also 7.5 times of the guy who makes $100k (less than 4 times the guy making $200k).
Show me all the CEOs who only make 7.5 times of what their basic workers are making (I’m talking full compensation including shares, not just the salary).
So you expect a guy who earns just $100K a year to go toe-to-toe with guys who take in $10MM a year?
Riiiiight….
If this guy does a proper job of taking care of the people who have chosen him to represent their best interests – Then he’s earning his money.
The clock is not turning back on automation. Process control, HMI/SCADA etc etc is decades old at this point. It’s yelling at clouds level ignorance to suggest it’s going to halt or reverse course.
This is just another case of technology progressing. It happened to weavers in Scotland and Ireland 150 years ago through tge devolpment of industrial manufacturing processes, through steel mills in the late 19th century, auto manufacturing in the 70’s, and today with AI and robotics. Corporations see an competitive advantage and make use of it.
I’m sorry, why are you so sure the c-suite will happily sacrifice their value to mere stockholders to that extent? Musk is already at war with his supposed bosses over his promises – what actually stops more of the same?
They need the demand on real estate to guarantee their own personal liquidity.
Do you sincerely expect them to pop that bubble in a way that benefits “the company” and not them by running everything out of a datacenter in Boise or Bejing?
I’ll bet the first time it happens management will deliberately crash the company while selling the capital to themselves for a dollar so that the “parasite” shareholders don’t get anything of true value.
Rightt.
Can you actually give a response or is that a fancy way of saying “I don’t know”?
I’m asking these (admittedly pointed) questions because the guardrails that stop this will not work from where I’m standing. Sorta like how I got the same vibe in
2007* 2011* that throwing money into China for cheap shit while going off into misadventures was stupid and gonna cost us later.But I am willing to hear how I’m just being paranoid.
Fast Food Service Corporations in California are increasingly going to self service and automation to reduce the number of $20/hr workers behind the counter. A high school student (and sadly a lot of people not in high school) just don’t bring $20/hr of value to Burger King or Micky D’s.
Yet, in the EU (Denmark) workers make about $20/hr, have excellent benefits and the price for the same food is between $.27 more or $.76 less depending on who you ask. I’d personally trust The Economist’s estimate more than most anyone else.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/
AND fast food places that have gone automated have INCREASED employee count. Fighting the concept of automation is unhelpful, at best.
McDonald’s touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened | CNN Business
“Fast Food Service Corporations in California”
Um – It’s not a “California” thing.
It’s a US thing.
“A high school student (and sadly a lot of people not in high school) just don’t bring $20/hr of value to Burger King or Micky D’s.”
My first job out of high school when I started attending college in 1984 was at a Wendys. I don’t recall my base wage, but I have the feeling it was around $7/hour. Which is worth $21.21 in today’s money. Even then, I could barely afford my ancient Volvo and the rent on my little old apartment – and the shareholders were doing just fine.
If a job is worth hiring someone to do – it’s worth paying a living wage.
Sorry, burger flippers or grocery store janitors are not lifetime careers, intended to support a family of 4. They are stepping stones for a better education and a better job. They are a leg up, not an easy chair for a lifetime career.
And yet – Folks who do those jobs still need to pay for a safe place to live, a way to get to work, clothing to wear, food to eat, and proper healthcare while they’re working those jobs.
You can’t just say “Well, I’m sure I’ll be earning more working elsewhere in 10 years” to when it comes time to pay the rent, pay for a visit to the dentist, or buy a new set of tires today.
Ask me how I know this.
Back in my day as a newspaper editor, I covered the opening of an inland port in northern Virginia. It was fascinating. Trucks from the Port of Baltimore arriving to offload containers of merchandise to be loaded on trains to all points west, while loaded trains from the west offloaded containers to trucks headed north and south. Quite an operation, though nothing compared with your experience. Ports are anthills of America and every bit as confounding to the amateur eye.
You are right about the energy density thing being the cause for wider beams on LNG ships. Larger tanks are required to achieve the same range as diesel ships, trsulting in fat-bottomed girls that make the world go round.
To carry all that booty, clearly.