What is Causing Shipping Delays, and How to Prepare...

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As the holiday season approaches, demands for goods, and reliance on shipping efficiency rise at predictable rates. This year, COVID-19 is impacting costs and shipping timeframes for customers, businesses, and manufacturers around the globe. The global supply chain problems are causing delays that go on for months causing products to be held up at factories, ports, and warehouses, with virtually no location unaffected. These products sit in their place waiting for shipping containers, planes, and/or trucks for transport. The delays have been caused by numerous factors such as semi-conductor delays, shipping obstacles, worker shortages, and of course the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With global supply issues predicted to continue well in 2022, relief seems far off, and consumers will likely face long delays and higher prices to put presents under their trees or exchange gifts with loved ones this holiday season.

Prices on all goods across the board, for both manufacturers and consumers, have seen a dramatic increase throughout the pandemic and these prices will only continue to rise as we quickly approach the holiday season. According to Goldman Sachs, there were over 77 ships with $24 billion worth of goods waiting outside docks at ports in LA and Long Beach, California on October 25 of this year, less than a month prior to today. An increase in demand, more goods coming into the U.S., and less supply going out created intense congestion and tripled the time it takes to get a shipping container through a major U.S. port. This intense congestion has wreaked havoc on the global supply chain. President Biden attempted to alleviate some congestion at U.S. ports by ordering all U.S. ports to remain open 24 hours a day. This order, unfortunately, had a marginal impact on the supply chain crisis and did little to nothing for the increase in cost and wait times for imported goods.

Ultimately, the problems affecting the global supply chain stem from a national worker shortage, material supply issues raising transportation costs, and congestion in U.S. ports due to more demand (goods coming in) than U.S. supplies and goods (goods going out). Ports and warehouses around the globe are filled with nearly 862 million shipping containers, 27% of which are reported to be empty. But there is a solution on the horizon.

Companies like Staxxon and Holland Container Innovations Nederland (also known as 4Fold) are developing collapsible shipping that folds down to nearly 1/5 their usual size.....

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