Shipping Ports

Who knows what kind of readers that heading will pull in. Organized crime bosses, kingpins, oh hey, maybe first time manufacturers struggling to make sense of it all.

I was scared to death of importing when I got started. How was I supposed to master the container shipping industry and import tariffs and dockside management and and and... I just want to design baby clothes!

DELEGATE - and I don't mean the presidential kind... find someone who knows how to do a specialized service you need and PAY THEM to do it for you. You actually save money by spending it. With that attitude I should work for the Federal Reserve. I'm not republican but at first glance, I kinda like Huckabee's idea of doing away with income tax and replacing it with a 23% national sales tax. Tax on what you spend, not what you earn. I'm sure there is a way to easily corrupt it and the rich get richer and poor get the shaft, just like any idea that starts out as a nice thing... oh that's just me being an optimist...

But I digress... FedEx holds my import bond and they do everything for me, door to door. It's lovely. The reason for this shipping port post, quickly before I endure the masses of Los Angeles County at Costco, which is an unfortunate but necessary trip I must make this morning, is because I was in Long Beach yesterday and I saw where my goods come in when they arrive from China. Grizzly shipping dock by day, seedy shipping dock by night but awfully pretty at sunset.

So they make their way here via LCL in a 20' container shared with who knows what else. LCL meaning Less Than Container Load. It's much more cost effective but more risky because if someone else's goods, with whom you are sharing the container, runs into problems, your shipment can be held up indefinitely. And you generally can't pick your container roommates. Logistically it's complicated.

Then the goods get off loaded and put on a train and rail across the US to Detroit where they are put on a truck that takes them to the warehouse in MI. And all that happens with one phone call. Then an e-mail that tells me the goods have been checked in. Ahhhh efficiency. It's yummy!

Even though we are now out in Los Angeles... 35 minutes from where the goods arrive, it is more cost effective to truck them around, house them and drop ship from the Midwest.

But why, you ask? But how? Well insurance is very reasonable as there are no natural disasters there. The zip code they reside in is a benefit because there is virtually no crime. And they are centrally located so it is cheaper to ship to all places from the middle than to every place from one coast or another. Plus we have a house in the dreamy little town where the warehouse is and we can write off our visits... SO THERE.



The container cranes through a porthole cause I'm artsy-fartsy.

The lovely town of Long Beach... home of the Queen Mary

And NO Time Life Magazine, you may not use this picture without paying me huge royalties that will help fund my company... You can look at it but you can't have it. :-) It made me all patriotic and stuff.


Off to Costco... Wish me luck.