A space for dialogue and debate about learning and technology.
How our things reach us.
Arrived today: From the factory to the front door-why everything has changed the way and content of our purchases by Christopher Mims
The time of arrival today couldn't be more appropriate. Before the pandemic, most consumers had little interest in the operation of global supply chains. Most of us think that what we order on Amazon will show up at our door within a day or two.
Today, each of us is a student of supply chain logistics.
"Arriving Today" is an introductory book to understand the causes of pressures, interruptions and delays in the supply chain from Asia to the United States. Written by Wall Street Journal technology columnist Christopher Mims, "Arrival Today" traces the path of the USB charger from the gate of the factory in Vietnam to the final destination at our gate.
Since the United States produces very few physical goods that we consume, almost everything we buy needs to be shipped here from other places. For electronic products, that place is almost always Asia. China still has a dominant position in many electronics fields, but rising wages in China have pushed manufacturing to countries with lower wages such as Vietnam.
The USB charger we ordered will start the journey on a truck outside the Vietnam factory, then transfer to an inland river barge on the way to more trucks, and finally be loaded onto a container ship in a shipping port. The first and longest segment of the supply chain is in a 40-foot container on board that can hold up to 12,000 such boxes.
The backlog of cargo at the two ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has become one of the headlines in 2021, with 40% of the country's imported cargo arriving here. Reading "Arriving Today" helps to understand why these ports are so congested. Decades of long-term underinvestment in port-related infrastructure will mean that even if the port operates 24-7, it will not be able to solve the shipping backlog. There are too few cranes and container chassis, terminal space, warehouse space, and truck drivers to accommodate the surge in imports driven by COVID.
As Mims records, once shipping containers leave the port and board the trucks that transport our goods to the sorting and distribution warehouses, supply chain problems will worsen. Anyone worried about the imminent arrival of self-driving trucks and replacing 3.5 million truck drivers across the country should read Arrived Today.
The turnover of long-distance truck drivers is close to 100%. For now, the job is low-paying and dangerous. Since the deregulation of the trucking industry in the 1970s, truck drivers’ wages and working conditions have become worse, and the economy’s dependence on trucking has increased dramatically.
Since the work of truck drivers is very complex and changeable, autonomous driving technology will be used for truck transportation for a long time. When autonomous driving technology is developed to the extent that it can be promoted, the benefits of truck drivers in reducing work fatigue and danger should be huge.
The future of trucking will be where drivers and technology work together. Truck drivers are responsible for supervising driving and possibly transporting goods to the last mile of the warehouse. This is a development that truck drivers and all of us will welcome as we progress.
From the truck, Mims followed our USB charger to go deep into the Amazon warehouse system. If the lives of truck drivers are worrying, then the plight of the Amazon warehouse workers we all rely on is indeed frustrating. Even in Amazon's most automated warehouse, heavy manual tasks such as sorting, picking, boxing, and loading are still done manually. Amazon requires its warehouse workers to operate at a speed that ensures a high rate of worker injury and a high turnover rate.
The story of how our USB charger was delivered from the Amazon fulfillment center to our home is only slightly less than what happened in the early stages of the supply chain. If our package ends up on a UPS truck, the story will be great. UPS drivers have joined the union and have been well paid.
However, if our packages are provided by Amazon-branded delivery services, then things are not so good. The Amazon vans you see in town are not owned by Amazon. Those Amazon delivery men wearing Amazon clothing do not actually work for Amazon. The company has built a system in which Amazon delivery drivers are much like Uber drivers—they are subcontractors rather than employees. Amazon can benefit from lowering the delivery price without having to deal with troublesome issues such as liability.
As we learned in Arriving Today, every supply chain link contains countless ethical issues almost completely invisible to consumers. Should these issues be concealed from academia?
Colleges and universities will buy a lot of things. Many schools try to reduce costs through Amazon's centralized procurement. Are we responsible to the truck drivers, warehouse workers, and delivery personnel that we rely on to deliver goods to campus?
It may not be possible to ethically purchase everything that higher education buys. What we can do is educate our students to understand labor practices and labor history.
Our academic leaders can participate in the fight for living wages and appropriate workplace safety regulations. As far as our institution is integrated into the global supply chain, the responsibility for the workers we rely on does not stop at the door of our campus.
Reading Arriving Today will deepen and complicate your understanding of how the global economy works. This is the perfect book when people think about the impact of the pandemic on our economy and society.
We have cancelled the comment and introduced the letter to the editor. Letters can be sent to [email protected].
Read the letter to the editor »