We operated with little head room in a very very big system for a long time without these issues, and the major change was online shopping, which really took off during the pandemic.
This worked, mostly because there was suddenly slack in the system to accommodate this changed purchasing pattern, caused by a slow-down in practically everything else.
Now that the everything else is back online though, there is massive contention for space on ships etc, so retailers hoard more in warehouses, and that backs up into container yards, and then into the parking lot at the dock.
Adding more capacity in the middle (stacking some containers) doesn't do anything to materially solve this problem.
We operated with little head room in a very very big system for a long time without these issues, and the major change was online shopping, which really took off during the pandemic.
This worked, mostly because there was suddenly slack in the system to accommodate this changed purchasing pattern, caused by a slow-down in practically everything else.
Now that the everything else is back online though, there is massive contention for space on ships etc, so retailers hoard more in warehouses, and that backs up into container yards, and then into the parking lot at the dock.
Adding more capacity in the middle (stacking some containers) doesn't do anything to materially solve this problem.
https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.p...