I took a trip to City Market on Wednesday, to check on the price of bananas.
When you’re a bachelor, you’re typically concerned about the price of frozen pizzas and Pabst Blue Ribbon. But I’d just finished reading an article on the Pro Publica website, written by Michael Grabell.
The Hidden Fees Making Your Bananas, and Everything Else, Cost More
The article frightened me enough to cause me to drive all the way to City Market, even though I already had a bunch of bananas slowly turning brown in the kitchen.
To paraphrase a famous book, “A man does not live by pizza and beer alone, but also by overripe bananas.”
According to Mr. Grabell’s July 5 article, the American shipping and trucking industry is in turmoil these days, in so many ways. His story starts out:
Last fall, a company called One Banana loaded 600,000 pounds of the fruit from its plantations in Guatemala and Ecuador onto ships bound for the Port of Long Beach in California. Once they arrived, the bananas, packed in refrigerated containers, were offloaded by cranes for trucking to a nearby warehouse, where the fruit would be sent to supermarkets nationwide.
As the bananas sat at the marine terminal, a logistics specialist for One Banana scrambled, contacting more than a dozen trucking firms.
With each passing hour, the bananas grew closer to spoiling.
It turns out that American trucking companies are fearful of picking up container shipments at the Port of Long Beach, because the non-American shipping companies will not readily accept the empty containers afterwards, making the trucking companies hold on to the empty containers. But then, the shipping companies charge the trucking companies outrageous “detention and demurrage fees” because the containers were not returned on time.
It’s a scary story. You can read the whole article, here.
The only trucking company willing to handle One Banana’s shipment wanted to charge $12,000 per container, on top of already outrageous shipping fees. To break even, One Banana would have had to increase the price of their bananas to 90 cents per pound.
I can easily afford 59 cents per pound for bananas, even on my meager salary. But I would hesitate to pay 90 cents, considering they’re probably going to turn brown before I get around to eating them.
However, we never had a chance to pay 90 cents, because the One Banana shipment spoiled before it got out of the port.
You will be relieved to know that the price at City Market yesterday was still 59 cents. I checked yesterday.
But this shipping/trucking crisis doesn’t affect only banana growers. Almost everything we buy in the U.S. nowadays, comes from Asia or South America, and arrives in shipping containers.
Furniture. Clothing. Electronics. Shoes. Vitamins. Toys. Pillows. Knives. Batteries. Coffee.
The list is practically endless.
These days, we produce almost nothing here in the U.S. except political controversy. So the price of everything now depends on shipping companies and trucking companies, who apparently don’t know how to get along with each other.
I know what you’re thinking. “We never produced bananas in the U.S. We had to buy up most of Central America and turn it into banana plantations.”
That’s true. But now we can’t seem to get our bananas delivered here, without paying a ransom to shipping and trucking companies.
I guess we could switch to eating fruit that’s grown in America. Apples, maybe?