Angelika We still go out for a walk almost every day. By now, our walks through the city have become part of our daily routine. Since San Francisco is famously hilly, we often have fantastic views of the city. For months, we have now noticed that huge container ships line up in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay, waiting to be unloaded at the Oakland port, but stuck in traffic. This is not a side effect of the container ship got stuck recently in the Suez Canal, this has been going on for quite a while now. By the way, there is no port in San Francisco that can handle container ships, but there is one in Oakland, which is on the other side of the bay.

The port of Oakland is considered one of the five most important ports in the US. Back in the day, our belongings were processed there after we had moved to the US. So why is there ships waiting for their turn to be unloaded at the port now? Turns out that this is also the result of the pandemic and the complex dependencies in freight shipping. The shelves of many businesses have to be replenished after months of closures, and suppliers to the industry need new parts, often from Asia. During the pandemic, private consumers have made a record number of purchases from their sofa and ordered things that are often produced and assembled in China, such as treadmills for home use. The container ship traffic jam is so serious that even some deliveries originally planned for spring have not yet arrived! Even the New York Times reported about the container backlog.

At the port, there are coronavirus regulations, so loading and unloading containers takes more time because the crew members cannot stand so close to each other and the sick rate is higher. The problem is not limited to Oakland, there's also a line of ships off Long Beach near Los Angeles, waiting for permission to enter the harbor.

Most ships from Asia first stop in Southern California and then continue on to Oakland after the first loading and unloading. From Oakland, it goes to Seattle and then back to Asia. In Oakland, to make matters worse, three new giant cranes were installed at a pier, which took a few weeks to complete. Funnily enough, we have been waiting since October last year for a Christmas package from Germany, which we know is on its way to us by ship. Whenever we go for a walk, we always wonder if it is on one of these big container ships. Even the big megamarket Costco is having difficulty getting some products like delicious imported cheese from France! The store is looking forward to getting its shelves stocked again soon, when shipping has caught up with demand. Hopefully the ship carrying the expensive cheese will be back on track soon, we can't deal with a cheese shortage!

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Vaccinating for Corona in San Francisco
  	Fry's Electronics gone bankrupt
  	Amazon Returns at the Supermarket
  	Season for Dungeness Crab