WP Minute producer Dave Rodenbaugh of Recapture.io discusses what the supply chain issue is with eCommerce and why it is still an issue.

The US imports over 41% of its consumer goods from China and these imports come in through two ports - Long Beach, CA or Los Angeles, CA. During COVID people were buying online at a skyrocketing rate and those goods were coming in containers and unloaded. However, there was already a shortage of truck drivers and port workers and with the pandemic this problem has escalated. This means that containers stacked up at the ports and ships waited in the harbor. Today, that record is 96 ships waiting.

To address this issue, local laws have been modified to allow containers to be stacked higher, but they are not moving quickly enough. About 80,000 jobs are still open and that’s why items are still not moving. For example, cars and car parts are sitting in containers and can’t get to where they are needed. 

According to Bloomberg from December 4th the average waiting time for a ship to be unloaded is 20.8 days! It used to be 6 days - pre pandemic. And the cost of shipping containers has also risen dramatically the past two years as well. The freightos index shows that the current cost is about 14K but the goods that may be on that container are impacting small businesses.

So this is the issue in a nutshell. Until we can move that freight completely from all points in the journey, we are going to continue to see small shortages and price increases everywhere. This will probably continue for months.

If you have other eCommerce topics you would like Dave to talk about, tweet at the WPMinute and he will put it on the show.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Episode transcription

It's the WP minute. This episode is brought to you by mind size. If you're looking for monthly WooCommerce report, check out mind size.com. Today's episode is written and produced by Dave Rodenbach [email protected]. It's his returning episode on the e-commerce minute discussing the.

At the supply chain, if you're out there going, man, am I going to get my presence? This holiday season for my kids? They will kind of give us a little insight into that and, and the impact the supply chain has on the e-commerce world. We really hope you enjoy today's episode with Dave. If you do thank him on Twitter.

If you want to think the WP minute support the WP minute, by going to buy me a coffee.com/matt report, that's buy me a coffee.com/matt report support WordPress media and independent. Like this. Okay. Let's get into today's episode. Hello again, Dave, Rodenburg here with the e-commerce minute. This episode comes to you right after black Friday, cyber Monday 2021.

This week. I want it to talk about an ongoing crisis in e-commerce that you've probably heard a bit about, but you're likely confused as to why it's still a problem. And that would be the supply chain issue. So we've been hearing about supply chain delays since the beginning of the pandemic here in the U S.

You probably suffered through some shortages of consumer goods, like toilet paper buying, fresh meat, like chicken or beef. And now you're probably seeing those items on your shores store shelves again, but everyone keeps talking about supplier, June issues, supply chain issues doesn't make sense. Right. So let's unpack that.

First of all the United States imports over 41% of its consumer goods from China. There's some smaller amounts that come from Vietnam, India, and Germany. Th