Every nook and cranny of California warehouse space, from the coast all the way to the Arizona border, is clogged with freight. None of it is moving anywhere. All the things you’re looking for which can’t be found on the shelves are sitting in an Inland Empire shed. You can blame the Golden State Democrats for putting their independent truck drivers out of business. Meanwhile, alleged Transportation Minister Pete Buttigieg is hiding on the east coast, supposedly to celebrate the opening of a new bridge.
California clogged solid
According to Reuters, cargo isn’t moving through California. Not only that, they’re running out of room to stash any freight which accidentally happens to get unloaded. The outlet warns, “America’s largest warehouse market is full.” They blame it on consumers.
“Major U.S. retailers warn of slowing sales of the clothing, electronics, furniture and other goods that have packed the distribution centers east of Los Angeles.”
When they say “east of Los Angeles” they don’t mean like a few blocks. The largest warehouse and distribution market in America, called the Inland Empire, sprawls from warehouses centered in Riverside and San Bernardino counties across miles of California.
“That booming area, visible from space, anchors an industrial corridor encompassing 1.6 billion square feet of storage space that extends from the busiest U.S. seaport in Los Angeles to near the Arizona and Nevada borders.” It’s full. Every bit of it. The current vacancy rate is “a record 0.6% versus the national average of 3.1 percent.”
Angry California truckers, inefficient ports and overworked rail crews have nothing to do with it. A “consumer spending pullback now threatens to swamp warehouses here and around the country with more goods than they can handle – worsening supply-chain snarls that have stoked inflation.”
The companies who own the goods sitting in storage have a choice to make, pay more money to store the stuff or sell it at a discount. Either way, they lose.
Spending more but buying less
Thanks to Joe Biden’s miracle of inflation, consumer spending “remains above pre-pandemic levels.” Despite all those dollars flowing around, “retailers and suppliers are raising alarms about backlogs in categories that have fallen out of fashion.”
Faced with the highest rate of inflation since Jimmy Carter, consumers make hard choices on what they spend their cash on. California officials’ refusal to accept reality has created the crisis.
Cargo, the insiders remind, “keeps flooding in to the busiest U.S. seaport complex at Los Angeles/Long Beach.” The California port is almost up to pre-pandemic capacity. Right now, they’re in the process of unloading the “winter holiday decor.”
Walmart just got in a big load of patio furniture, while Target scored “stretch pants, jeans and shoes.” All of the merchandise had been ordered many months ago. Now, they’re headed for limbo.
Normally, all this cargo would flow into the California storage supply as trucks and trains hauled the freight away to waiting consumers. Not this time. “It’s a domino effect. Now the inventory is going to really build up,” Scott Weiss explains. He’s a vice president at Performance Team, “a Maersk company with 22 warehouses in greater Los Angeles.”
An opportunity has popped up for anyone with space to rent in the state. Brad Wright is CEO of Chunker, “which bills itself as an AirBNB for warehouses, and works with everyone from state officials to the owners of vacated big-box stores to find new places to stash goods.“