Global Trade This Week – October 31st, 2022
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Keenan Brugh
You're watching Global Trade This Week with Pete Mento and Doug Draper.
Doug Draper
Hello and welcome to a another edition of global trade this week is brought to you by CAP logistics. I am one of your hosts. My name is Doug Draper. I won't even say inner Mountain West because that's where I am but my Co Co hosts partner in crime. And on the East Coast, Mr. Pete mento. Pete, I got to love that coffee cup. I'm not sure if I should ask questions about or not. So I'll just say how are you doing? I'm great. And you can ask me all the questions you want. Doug, I'm
Pete Mento
I'm uh, I'm loving man. You know, my old age. I have decided that I don't carry grudges anymore. Yeah. Nice. Good. But, you know, let other people be angry. That's on them. Yeah, that's on them. Yeah. Yeah. So did you do anything fun this weekend, Doug. I mean, it it's
Doug Draper
not it's Monday. It's Halloween Week. I think our half times are both focused around this wonderful holidays. So we'll dive into that. But to answer your question, no. Been out of town the last three weekends. So rake leaves, sat on my tail and enjoyed a pretty nice weekend. How about you?
Pete Mento
I did stuff. I mean, you know, my Sunday's are kind of generally the same. Get up early, go to church, we go have breakfast. And that is it is a wonderful part of my week. Like it's one of the things that I love the consistency of it some time alone. Our heathen children don't come with us. So you know, we we get some time to just talk alone and not be interrupted. And that was very nice. And I I could spend some time with his daughter. It was it was wonderful. So it was a good weekend, but you talked about raking and everything. There are a lot of things about living in a high rise that suck. One of the things that does not is not having to rake leaves and shuffle. So the snow Sherman, I hate
Doug Draper
it. So on the breakfast, are you a bacon or sausage guy or a little of each?
Pete Mento
Die very strong feelings on this topic. So I'm a man that really does care deeply about breakfast meats. And it goes it goes very simply it goes bacon first bacon is bacon is the Zeus you know it is it is the High Holy of breakfast meats. Follow it in my opinion. And this is this is going to cause a stir. But sausage patties. I'm a patties guy, always been a patties guy. It's because I'm a farm boy and that was you know, Jimmy Dean sausage is it's something of legend to me. After that. I'm a big fan of the Irish rashers the English bacon. The bacon that you get over there. I think it's fantastic. And then ham. I love breakfast Ham was scrambled eggs or with fried eggs. I think it's fantastic. One of my I just got a look from Amy as she was walking to the one of my favorite things for lunch when I'm in the UK is to fried eggs with a ham steak and chips. With a couple of years. If you want to see the happiest guy on Earth happy, then you know what if you take the chips away it's low carb, so I can feel good about that. When I when I eat that But Doug, let me guess. Are you like granola? Yogurt with with some with some berries in there? You know that? That? That Kenan is probably eating like pebbles. twigs? Yeah, it's pine tar colon. It's probably one. Oh, no.
Doug Draper
We're midwest. I grew up in Kansas. I was over my brother's house yesterday and they made soup and my niece who's like in third grade. So you can say this outlandish shit to them and they're not sure whether you're serious or not. So she asked me, she said Uncle Dougie, do you like vegetables? And I said if they're made out of meat I do. I just turned around with my bowl of soup and I think she was just super confused about that comment. So yeah,
Pete Mento
are you okay love that they can.
Doug Draper
I'm good either way, but I will agree with you. The thing with Patty is is they just cook nice. blinks they just roll around too much and then you burn one side and you're like shit, but it's still sausage seats. Eat it anyway.
Pete Mento
Yeah, I love I absolutely love eggs. And I can I can eat them a couple of times a day and foreign fresh eggs in particular ones that you just got there just late recently. So A monster fan
Doug Draper
you know what's really you know, it's very similar to farm fresh eggs is logistics and supply chain. So I
Pete Mento
think watches I don't think anything watches the show for our actual hotcakes. I think they actually watch it for the theater and the crap that we send back and forth to each other. So that's fine. So let me start the show off with my first topic. So
Doug Draper
yeah, so
Pete Mento
I live in a house where I am generally the only male that's hanging around here. So any given weekend, I'm going to have Amy's here, I'll have the two daughters, and then even the pets are female. So that means the need the necessity for constant deliveries of packages from E commerce. And we talk about e commerce a lot. And we talk about how it gets here we talk about the routes that they're going to conveyances warehousing we talked about, but one of the things we don't spend a lot of time talking about is the packaging. And I am really frustrated with the completely lazy, environmentally unfriendly waste of space. Expensive, pointless packaging that I am getting from across the board. You know, people like to joke about how Amazon will use a package because package is five times too large for what's inside. They'll joke about how the the mylar outside bubble wrap of something will have what's akin to like a button on, I understand all that. But when you're you're talking about the safety and security of what's inside, we're about to face everybody's favorite part of the year, if you're in cargo security, which is porch pirate season, you know, the ability for people to just shake and bake on what's the inside of it, break through the tape and be able to pick up very quickly. What's in the inside of these boxes ascertain if they should steal it, walk away from it, there's no package security, aside from the amount of money that people will be able to save on space, the amount of money they be able to save on moving things from one point to another why they have not hired just a coven, a Kandra, the Navy SEALs, if you will, of packaging consultants to come into the Amazons, the Alibaba is of the world, the Walmarts of the world and say, here's a machine that can package to suit it get this put thing where it needs to be without wasting a lot of extra material and extra time eludes me duck. And it makes me nuts. Because of all the cardboard that we're recycling that honestly man it doesn't need to be. And it's a waste of time and money.
Doug Draper
Yeah, 100% Agree. We've broached the topic in the past not too in depth. But there are packaging companies out there that are willing to talk about their services, the thing that baffles me, the Amazons, the Wayfarers, you name it, why don't they embrace it? I mean, every single person that you talk about or look on Facebook or whatever has a photograph of something they ordered in a gigantic box, right? Even if it's just the PR potential. With this, yes, the carbon footprint will be reduced. Transportation will be more effective with putting more packages in a truck as it goes down the road for the delivery. It is it's baffling to me why somebody a big player has not embraced the potential out there are for marketing and improvement with our carbon footprint. It's It's baffling. It's the same old school box.
Pete Mento
Let me just add on to that. You know, my time at Wayfair. There were two things that really struck me about working there that that I loved one of them was just how much we loved our suppliers, and just how far they were willing to go to make a customer happy. You know. And when you're moving, furniture, things break, they break a lot. That's one of the problems with being in that business is it tends to be it's wood a lot of the times it's lacquer, it's plastic. And when you're moving it, you're that's why logistics companies don't want to move furniture and home goods. So we were constantly dealing with returns we were constantly dealing with trying to make up for the fact that things broke. And I can tell you as a consumer, we've all been there, right? You wait for a package, you're excited to get it and you open it and for whatever reason. You know, what you ordered isn't the right size. What you ordered was not what you expected. What you ordered was not it doesn't come intact. It's broken. There's pieces missing. It is it's it's upsetting and it makes you say well, you know, this is why I wish I could still go to the X store and buy it or do bogus Doug, or whatever, and you know, be able to have that retail experience because I feel let down as a consumer. But it's crashing, when you get something in, it's broken. You know, you're like, damn it, you know, and now I've got a, I've got to wait another couple of days or a week or who knows to get another one of these things. So it's a problem with claims to problem with insurance to problem with client satisfaction. Somebody should jump on top of this and make the investment and make it work. And you're right, Doug, you've talked about it in the past. I'm bringing it up again, because clearly, I'm everything I do is derivative of Doug Draper. So, you know, somebody should do something about this. Because it's, it's beginning to sour the customer experience and ask somebody to do something about,
Doug Draper
well, we'll have a good two months to size up our packaging. No pun intended, so we'll keep that
Pete Mento
heavy. Let me do the jokes duck. Me do the jokes, or what do you got for us funny.
Doug Draper
This one is something that caught my attention. And part of me was excited about it. And then part of me like we so often do, Peters, just tear it apart, and talk about the futility of it. So this is about the DOD and the port infrastructure development program. I'm sure there's an acronym that I missed in there, that's all fuddy duddy. But my whole point in this one is I think the public and private partnerships really need to flourish with some of the infrastructure, both port and terminal, air, ocean, in our, in our waterways, there is money out there. So here's some statistics, there's 41 projects that the DoD is throwing some money at 22 Different states $703 million. Well, when he basically here's where we start poking fun at IP, if you break it down, that's basically seven $17 million per project. And if you haven't figured out that, you can barely buy a house anymore for like a million dollars in any major market, right. So in the big picture, if you average it out 17 million is not a whole lot of money. Now, not every project gets 17 million, some are getting a lot more. And, and I get that when I was looking at some of the larger projects, two of them are related to essentially marshalling yards on on the coast out there. One is actually in Salem, Massachusetts, the other one is outside of New York. And it's a new facility that's exclusively designed to deal with offshore wind energy products, bring it in here, we'll assemble it and ship it out has nothing to do with the core port and infrastructure that you and I live and breathe every single day. So yes, 700 million bucks seems like a lot dispersed over 41 projects. But those two projects I just mentioned, Pete represent a little over 12% of that 700 million. So 12% are going to build new terminals related to wind, wind and energy products, which I guess that's important alternative energy sources. I'm cool with that. But it just it just shows that $700 million doesn't go as far as it used to any of these port projects to have any legs in any efficiency. And any true impact to the traditional freight that moves through all of those connectors. Engaging a public private partnership is the way to go. They're doing it in Charleston, we talked about that Port of Charleston, and there's some things going on in port in New Orleans that has or New Orleans that are public partners. So anyway, my whole take on this one Pete is there's money out there, there's not a whole lot if you think about the big picture. And we need to get some some private partnerships in there really make an impact on the infrastructure that most people rely on because most people don't rely on a marshalling yard to build wind energy on the ocean.
Pete Mento
So Doug, the the sad reality of having worked with politicians for as long as I have, and, you know, being a being a cockroach in DC for all of these years, is it's not their fault. Our country is always reacting. Because that's what politicians do. They react to the will of the public in order to get reelected. They're, they're reacting to what people tell them needs to be done. They're not proactive, they're not strategic in the way that they think. Because being strategic does not get them reelected. And business people are strategic, because we know like a great example that I was talking to a mutual friend of ours Whose name rhymes with Arc? Axl B, recently, and we were talking about how if you're selling in this business right now, and you're selling ocean freight or selling air freight, we're all we all see, like, you know where the economy's going, you better be out there right now trying to try to steal customers. Because it's like a six month cycle, it's a five month cycle and your opportunity to get after that market, when that market is going to change, you need to be sowing the seeds and putting the work in now, right? politicians and governments, they don't think that way. And it's really it's up to business, to drive that. So when you talk about these public partnerships with with, with the government, all of the opportunity, you know, all of the other financial opportunity for certain the agenda is in the hands of the public side of things to get reelected, when it's a knee jerk thing, short amount of time, it's in the news. It's up to us to drive it, and nobody wants to hear it. So, you know, in the iOS left quoting old songs on the show, but in the words of Denise Williams and Johnny Mathis, from their seminal 70s hit too much, too little too late. It's Oh, yes, it's over the chips are down, you know, all our bridges have burned to the ground like it is. It is. It's too late, Doug, for the government to get engaged. We, they have to first stop being obstructive. And that's number one, the best thing that government can do right now, in order to help us with all of these things that we are endlessly talking about, is get the hell out of the way. Just get the hell out of the way. find some way to first say is our involvement necessary? Is there anything that we are currently doing that is slowing down progress towards making logistics faster, cleaner, safer, like ism? Is there anything we're doing now that's doing that? And who should they be asking the private part of that public private partnership, because we're the ones that are thinking 1020 3040 50 years down the road, not them. They're thinking about the next election cycle, finding ways to concentrate their power, you pulled my string, Doug, and half of this partnership doesn't give a damn about the other one, except for when they're getting checks written to them. And when they show up on the ballot box next Tuesday. And it's just really it's not a partnership as much as it could be. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I can cosign on this one as much as I, as I really wish somebody would just take a host home on the front yard and get them to play nice.
Doug Draper
Yeah. All right. Well, there we go.
Pete Mento
Too much. Too much coffee. Too much coffee.
Doug Draper
I know. Yeah. The tears of your enemies as you drink it down. Tasty, sweet. Nice. So all right. Well, we come to our favorite spot, our favorite time in the show, which is halftime, brought to you by CAP logistics. We wouldn't be here without those guys. Oh, Cap logistics.com to check them out. But I always forget when first guy goes first, who does have time or whatever? Yeah, I'll tell you one. But let me drop this one. Because Mine's kind of short and sweet. And I think you'll be more more impactful. Mine just goes old school. I'm not a big horror film guy. And I'll keep this one but I was thinking, the battle royale of villains out there and in and in horror movies. So here's the four that I came up with. We got penny wise, Freddy Krueger, Mike Meyers, Michael Myers. And Jason. I don't even know Jason's last name, but everybody knows who he is. So over the years, right, those have been kind of the key players, there's been a whole franchise made out of all of those guys as far as just raking in the money. So the question is, if all four of them got in a fight, who would come out on top? So I'm going to keep it short and simple, because I'm sure you'll have some comments on this one. And I want to get to your your halftime topic, as well. So we're gonna go bottom up, so I'm going to keep it short and sweet. There's a tie between third and fourth, third and fourth, which is Jason and Mike Myers, because they're kind of the same character. Right? One's kind of creepy in one way, ones creeping in another way, but they're silent. They have to have tools in order to create their destruction. So they're kind of the same person, right? Pennywise would be number two, because people just freak out on clowns. He's a little creepy. But really, the granddaddy of them all is Freddy Krueger, a guy comes to you in your dreams. There's no way to escape him. Every single time you put those four up really any horror figure out there you can come up with Freddy Krueger is gonna drop dimes on him. And by far and away Battle Royale officially won by Freddy Krueger in my opinion.
Pete Mento
Well, Doug, you're right but for a different reason. Because only Freddy Krueger had a theme song by Ronnie James Dio whenever that's the reason why so And aside from that, I hate jumpscares dog hate Okay, so I'm not I don't know about when you when you have friends in high school, but my friends used to hang around in packs. So we would go to movies together, they all of us would go it was extremely rare that anybody ever went to a movie with just their girlfriend or just a boyfriend like we would just, you know, so I can remember going to these stupid ass 80s movies, or some idiot would jump out of a closet with a chainsaw. Like no one heard the chainsaw before. There have been a chainsaw, the big noise, you know, or whatever. Right? And I hated that stuff. Doug hate it deeply, you know, but but here's the thing. Like I was I was irreparably screwed up as a kid when a babysitter took me to see the Amityville Horror with her boyfriend when I was a kid. I still get freaked out by the exorcist. You know, like religious horror movies terrify me, terrify me. And anything spooky like that. It will get to me but I don't believe in ghosts duck. I don't. I don't. There are cameras everywhere. Now somebody surely would have gotten some kind of evidence at this point. It just patently don't. And everyone around me does. So I'm the asshole when it comes to this in my life. So the idea of like, someone who comes in your dreams and kills you or some supernatural being, the world has enough psychopaths in it that I can buy like Texas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or, you know those that I believe like I believe that there's some there's enough sickos in the world that would come and kill you with an axe like I buy all that 100% file that but dolls that come alive and kill you in your sleep. Get out of here.
Doug Draper
All right, well, you just you just took Chucky out of the mix too. So
Pete Mento
that's true. Yeah. No Chucky. Okay, so by halftime is that it's a it's a double one here. So first of all, greatest Halloween candies? In my opinion, there's there's only one answer. Okay, first of all, if you're the kind of person that gives raisins at Halloween, you need to just turn your light off at your house and go back to doing whatever other unfun stuff it is that you do that ruins other people's lives because you suck as a human being. And you need to just stop, stop, just stop, okay? Nobody wants to come to your house ever for anything. So just stop. Stop with the reasons that's not what kids want, unless they're covered in chocolate. Okay? Unless you're taping a $5 bill to every box of reasons that you give a kid. Don't do it. Okay. When I was a kid, I loved Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They were my favorite. I also loved $100,000 bars. I loved getting those. They were also my second favorite. And then all the joys and mounds bars. My father who was would get the munchies because as he handed out stuff, he would drink beers and smoke the devil's cabbage. He would check my candy when I would bring it back, as with my mother, and they would steal things that this doesn't look safe. Right. So here's what they would take out of my candy. Now my friends and I would I think half of West Texas would get hit up by my friends and I and we would, I would come back with a with a pillowcase right? Just fully. I mean, I would have my mom would take all of my junior mints. I don't think I ate a junior mint until I was in high school. So she would take all my junior mints. Everyone would take all my bid honeys, which now is an adult is one of my favorite sweets. And I don't think I have all the lifesavers. My mom would take all those in all the Jolly Ranchers. My mother loved Jolly Ranchers today, by the way, would have been her birthday. My mom was born on Halloween. So it was another my father, that son of a bitch right so my father Butterfingers would take them off. Anything that he knew I wanted he would take half of them because he didn't want me eating all of them. So he would take like half of them Reese's Peanut Butter Cups half of all the baby Ruth's my dad would take all the baby routes and he would take all of those. And then my father would take all of the Hershey's bars. My mom would also take all the special darks, all the Hershey's bars, he would take any, like just plain chocolate, and he would hoard them in his car. And he would eat them while he smokes cigarettes doing sales calls. So two part question here, Doug, okay. Yeah, question number one. Greatest Halloween candy, in your opinion. And number two, at what age should children stop trick or treating?
Doug Draper
At what age I would say 16 Right. Because then you can go out and do some destruction. I remember. This is Pete is just pathetic. You know if there's I know there's no children listening to the show. But you know, smarts is not part of anybody's equation. When you're 16 years old, we would go out and dumb things. I'm not even gonna go into it. I'll just leave it at that. So 16 By far that's the top end and candy Frou Frou Frou Frou. I'm a big fan of Twizzlers? I like Twizzlers. And then the little, the little mini Milky Way's are pretty good. So
Pete Mento
see many candies families had hand up many candies are asking to be egged you have to give out full size candy bars. Full size candy bars. Yeah. And then as far as the age thing goes, I think it has to do with gender honestly, like, I mean, boys, you shouldn't be out there running around when you're like 16 and 50. And you're just my parents would never have let me in my friends out. They do. We had parties at that point. Like we would go to parties. But we weren't really at the parties. We were out toilet paper in our teachers houses and shaking people's cars and stealing candy from people's little brothers. And it was just terrible. But girls like the girls were would go out in even that I'm not so sure they should have been doing. But I had a friend of mine whose mom and dad said at 12 that once you were a teenager, you couldn't go anymore. And I remember being 13 going to his house to pick them up and he was just sitting there like I can't. I can't go into guys and we're like your parents suck man. Like, what's going on? like, Nah, you can't go out them so I can't I can't go home. So yeah, let's just see what other people say. Because when it comes to Halloween candy they were generally the sweets guys that like you know, like sugary sweet candies and the chocolate types. And there was always the one dentist in your neighborhood that handed out theater handed out toothbrushes or they give up five times more candy to keep the business going.
Doug Draper
Yeah, it was nothing about our little things of floss. We got an
Pete Mento
awesome duck was the people that gave out like the free Frosties at Wendy's or they gave up the the free ice cream cone at McDonald's. I love that. That was the best gave me an excuse to go get a happy meal when I was a kid.
Doug Draper
Nice. Nice. All right, so we are on to I think I should go. I'll go and
Pete Mento
you can watch me or what is it up? Cuz? Because you you opened up. Fire away? Yep. So we've been talking a lot about the Greek correction, the Greek correction, the Greek correction, and you you have conversations these days with people on the street. So yesterday, I'm on the couch talking to Amy and she's like, wow, don't you follow this Dr. Doom guy and like the cartoon character or Dr. Nouriel Roubini. She's like a nerd. She said Nouriel Roubini and I said, Yeah, I do, actually. And she's still called me a nerd. But Nouriel Roubini has a new book out where he talks about these mega threats. And the one of the biggest ones, of course, is about supply chains. And we've been waiting, waiting, waiting. And I still contend that you're going to see the big drop off happen at some point after the Lunar New Year. But if you talk to anybody right now, who is involved in supply chain, particularly our world logistics, you're beginning to see the rates just barf on themselves and volumes barf on themselves. There are major freight forwarders who are out in the streets right now dealing with the fact that their volumes are down 30% 40% Some of them 50% over the same time last year. So that is just how much lower volumes are coming into North America right now. And it's not just west coast volumes. It's east coast as well. What's shocking, though, Doug, is that we're still seeing higher imports. So imports are up, but the volumes that these nvoccs are seeing are down their speculative buy for 2023 24 calendar years are down. And they're they're just not seeing the volumes they saw before. I don't know how they're going to be able to maintain the shareholder expectations that they were seeing before. I'm not sure how they're going to be able to maintain these employees employ ple levels. So here's where I think this is all leading. layoffs. Any major freight forwarding company that has just been riding the wave of massive massive profits, is probably going to see some significant layoffs at some point in 2023, let's just be honest, there's just not the kind of business that was there to be able to support this stuff. Second of all, the days of making 234 or $5,000, a container are done, we're going to be back to making 100 200 304 and 500, depending on the route. And then third, the unfortunately, when you have all the freight going to the East Coast, it gives management more power on the west coast. So you're gonna continue to see those rates plummet on the West Coast. And that's just going to drive more rates down and down and down. And with the European economy continuing to flutter. This has nothing but bad news for everyone. Add to that fact that the Chinese economy continues to just be a song of Whoa, buddy, it's going to be a bad year 2324 to be somebody who has been riding the wave and not working hard. I think that as I said, in the LinkedIn post, rookies are about to find out just how tough this business can be.
Doug Draper
Yeah, 110% Agree. When you click this over to me a few minutes ago, generalists are going to get destroyed. So if you say, hey, go into bid for a company that has 500 or 1000 containers coming in more skill is going to be lined up, you know, you and I come from a sales perspective background, there's going to be lined up and they're going to just cherry pick, and it's not worth it. So when I looked at that companies that specialize whether that's out of gauge cargo, specific to commodities, and things that may not be so hypersensitive to, you know, a commodity based market, I think those are the companies they're going to be doing better than others. And then if you can be hyper focused, you know, I think anybody in some business school comes out there, when push comes to shove, and the and economy's a little, a little shaky, or a lot shaky, like we're in laser focused on your core competency to get back. And when you're laser focused on a core competency, you don't need peripheral people, or services and solutions out there. So I think you're seeing that with some of what FedEx was doing whenever they had their earnings come out. So hyperfocus companies that understand that, and if you specialize in a specific type of industry, I think you're going to be okay. But if you're assuming, like you said, I'm going to make $1,000, a container on a company that's bringing in 500 1000, a year, long gone, those days are long gone.
Pete Mento
You know, Doug, it was, it was easy to be sloppy, and still get rich these past couple of years, that's over, it's over there, people put up with a lot of of shenanigans, because they needed, they needed help. And now that they're back in the position where the buyer has the power, I think that that sloppiness just it's not, it's not going to be put up with sound be put up by the consumer, it's not going to be put up by the employer, either. So there's going to be a lot of employers who are going to have higher expectations of their employees to put out a more quality product. And I think, I don't think I know that a lot of this technology that was sort of out there that had to do with efficiency, I think is going to be brought in. And I also believe that we're we're looking at maybe another another five years of people getting comfortable with implementing technology, getting comfortable with thinking more broadly, and how to use data to be more effective. And this is going to be another interesting era of being in this business. We're going to take the lessons that we learned on how to make more, more stable and more structured supply chains, and depend on partners to get us there. But I think you're gonna see that supply chain consumers, our customers or clients are going to take more responsibility. And they're going to say, I'm not going to find myself over dependent on the supplier ever again.
Doug Draper
Yeah, good points. All right. Well, we have planes, trains and automobiles, and we haven't talked about this Pete in a while is the rail and the railroad. So a couple of weeks ago, there was a pending strike and made national news and and Biden and Congress came in and wave their wand and said everything has a tentative agreement. Well, lo and behold some of those unions out there are starting to disagree and vote down some of the proposals. So our audience may not know that there's actually 12 unions that are representing the quote unquote, rail industry, right. So all of them need to ratify the proposals and you're seeing little bits and pieces because there's 120 ish 1000 employees in the rail industry that they're referring to in the unionized side. Divide that by 12, you get a lot of smaller kind of regional and specialized unions out there. And and to recently have said, No, thank you. We don't like what you've presented. So I think that it's going to come back up to be a hot topic. So obviously, the rail is the backbone of the supply chain, and the and the rail transportation here, right LTL uses it full truckload uses it parcel, bulk commodities, energy, so much moves on the rail that the general public doesn't really understand. So it's going to come back into into the headlines. But the thing here is that it the rules applied differently with the Railway Labor Act. And I'm not going to get into the weeds on that one. I know enough to be dangerous, but push comes to shove with the Railway Labor Act, you know, Congress has the authority to prevent a strike, and whether they kick up the cooling off period where you cannot strike during a cooling off period. So let's extend the cooling off period, oh, it's about to end we're not going to change anything but extend the cooling off period, so you can't strike. There's other rules in there that says you can't strike unless Congress has been in session for a minimum of five days and all these nuances. So I guess my whole point in this beat is that it's not behind us. And again, a lot of momentum, especially post election here in a week. But ultimately, I don't think they'll go on strike, because Congress will step in and they just can't afford it's too big to fail. And Congress will use the benefits of the Railway Labor Act and prevent anything catastrophic from happening. That's my take on the rail.
Pete Mento
Doug, you've been a very good cheerleader, marketer, on this show of real, it is a under it's an under marketed under appreciated and extremely important foundation of how we deal with the supply chain. Globally, not just in this country globally. But in this country in particular, it is a linchpin of what has probably saved us through the course of the pandemic, and particularly in the supply chain crisis. And it's shown again, and again and again, its value. And now, as you've also pointed out, over and over again, as we try to find more environmentally friendly ways of dealing and managing with transportation in this country. It's just, it's gotten a new life. So you, you see how all of these people are learning to depend on the rail. And rail workers are never going to have a better time than right now to negotiate what they want. And some of the things that they're asking for are honestly, they're not that they're not that ridiculous, you know, they, they want real sick time they want real time off. And I don't think the average American consumer, if you and Doug were to, you know, global trade this week on the spot, go to, you know, go to go to a mall somewhere in Colorado or somewhere in New England and, and ask a couple 100 People talk to us about how you feel about the strike the pending strikes on the West Coast and ports with the rail, we might get a small fraction of people who, who are well read on the topic, but I think it will be extremely rare. And then if we were to sit down with those same people, this is an incredibly unlikely scenario that anybody would ever make time for this. But if we were to sit down with them, and give them a three minute primer on why it is critical, that the rail strike does not happen, I think they would be terrified. If we explain to them, your your fruits and vegetables, the prices of them are going to go through the roof, all of the auto parts, so much of the livestock that you see across the country is going to become unattainably expensive. Coal, oil, we don't have pipelines because of all kinds of political stuff. Guess how a lot of that stuff moves. I don't know how to break it to you. You know? Like there's there's a lot of things that people don't realize move on the rail. And if that goes away, now it's got to move Overland. What's that mean for congestion? What's it mean for all these other things, you're taking away? One of the Stuart one of the legs of the stool. So So we're fortunate in that people take it for granted. We're very, very unfortunate that people take it for granted, because they don't understand how important it is. If we were to say there's going to be an air traffic controller strike again, everybody would understand how bad that that would be. I would say, Doug, that, that this is equally as important, equally as important. And it would actually make a bigger deal, because we're just coming out of the greatest supply chain chaos that any of us have seen in our lifetime. If this would bring us right back there, if it were to happen. So you're right, Congress isn't going to let that happen. They're going to use every type of trickery they can legislative and otherwise to make sure that it doesn't. And this is a place where the White House needs to step in and do something about it.
Doug Draper
Yeah, for sure. Good points. Good points.
Pete Mento
All right. Well, that is gonna do it for this week's break neck Halloween episode. I shouldn't say Halloween, I forgot that it's spooky season. Global trade this week, with my good friend Doug Draper with Kenan back in the booth making it happen. But we can't make it happen without our good friends at CAP logistics. To learn more about them, do visit them on their website at cap logistics.com. And we do read your comments. We do pay attention to you when you send us your instant messages on LinkedIn and every other place. And thank you for that. So if you have ideas you'd like us to discuss or questions, please do hit us up. If you'd like for me to spend more time making fun of Kenan I do hear those requests as well. And to do that as well. Big announcement for the show next week. So do tune in. I will be making an announcement about where I'm working now. Starting on November first, I do have a new job. So very excited to be talking about that. And I'll be dropping that announcement next week on the show. And I guess that'll do it for this week and CO produce with Doug as always thank you for caring the show. Without your buddy, thank you keep next week, global trade this week.
Doug Draper
All right. Thanks, Pete.