As the economy declines and Walmarts JIT rolling warehouse model fails will they not just convert the back half or so of each Walmart to warehouse space?

Just a personal observation:

Last week on sailing from Harwich I had a good view of the Felixstow container port across the estuary [for the non-Brits they are north east of London facing Denmark and Sweden]. The large container ships looked like they would be full up, but as we were sailing out, a smaller container ship (belonging to a Scandinavian company) sailed in with lots of empty space on the deck (I would estimate that about half the deck space was empty, but presume that below deck was full).

I am not sure what this means in the whole scheme of things, but it seems to me that it points out the weak link being connection the major ports to where people actually live. If with the current high level of shipping, smaller more local routes are underused, then it would seem to spell trouble in distribution when volumes drop.

The biggest advantage of JIT is not that you don't need warehouse space, but rather that you don't need to tie up money in inventory, it also reduces the risk of you having a "dud" product that you have to clear out at a loss.

So yeah, technically they could just go back to more local storage etc. but I am not sure many companies have the capital outlay to do this (not even WalMart).

As such the solution will probably be in reducing the number of items carried and having delays in "replenishments'.

Snowrunner;
Even though Wallmart saves money with their JIT system I dont see it as requiring great amounts of capital to go back to a ware house system. At the most it just slows down their cash flow. The stock on hand is an asset and most of their stuff is non perisable. A major change may /will certainly come in the types of products they stock. Wide screen TVs out ,hand pushed garden planters in.
There cash registers will have cash in them and plastic will be a memory. Also their will be plenty of empty spaces in the parking lot to park containers. They will call your village when your order comes in and you will go with the neighbors to get a truck full all carefully ordered by cell phone to avoid wasting fuel.

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The idea is that this port will bring back the old concept: ship stuff closer to the place where they are sold, decrease mileage travelled by road, reduce costs. It's smart thinking, really - the solution is not to reduce shipping, which is considerably cheap, but to reduce the expensive last miles. The future, gentleman?


[url=http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23483381-details/World's+biggest+cargo+ships+will+head+for+capital's+new+£1.5bn+port/article.do]News Link[/url]

vtsnowedin said:



The money to finance a return to stock supplied retail is not there to be had. That probably even goes for a company like Wally Mart. The Western world’s financial system has lost $15 trillion in a little over a year. The banking/financial system has for all intensive purposes collapsed. Once the federal feed bottle, aka FED bailout, is removed, it will for real.

I can't speak for the "ultimate end result" of PO but right now Walmart is actually doing pretty good. They specialize in selling the cheap stuff and naturally that is what people gravitate to in an economic slowdown.

The stores that are being devastated right now are the "specialty shops".
You know what I'm talking about. It's those small shops you see in the shopping mall that sells some over-priced stuff that really is NOT a necessity: specialty soaps, candles, a shiatsu foot massager, etc...
Sign of the Times: 6,000 Retail Store Closings in 2008

Good riddance

VT it may be good riddance to you or even to our culture, but all those stores paid taxes to local, state and federal government, and they all had employees who did the same as well as paying for rents, mortgages, utilities etc etc...

This fundamentally slows down the economy no matter if it was fat on the pig or not.

I know, A dollar is a dollar and gross domestic product is just that , "Gross" But I just can't place as much value on a dollars worth of sented candle as I can on a dollars worth of bridge concrete. There is so much work that needs to be done the sooner we stop wasting money on trinkets and candles and get started the better.

Those shops closing will send many people to unemployment. The "necessary products" economy can't employ everyone right now. The overpopulation means those people need to be in the fat of the economy. Remember: one of the potential problems of PO is either unemployment, from economic slowdown, or overpricing from having too many paid people working in what is now made cheaper by machines and energy. 6000 shops closing is nothing to cheer about.

Went to Liverpool last week, by car. Came home via the Dock road.
Now most of Liverpools docks are empty, not used for years, but just up there was a HUGE pile of scrap metal, being loaded onto a Chinese boat.

A bit further and a panama registered ship unloading coal onto the dockside bins & waiting trains, destination Fiddlers Ferry power station.

Further along, at Seaforth container terminal a few big ships, again 1 Chinese, 1 Maersk, others could not see. Allways busy here.
Cranes loading trains direct from ship. Don't notice any reduction.

Gasmon

We probably need 15-25% of our workforce to meet all our basic needs for food, fuel, shelter, etc. The rest out of necessity is either employed in services or in producing luxury products or discretionary spending. The economy expands to include labor. Most of us are simply not necessary to its running. So from a societal point of view it may be better than 75% of the workforce stop working and stop producing, while being supported by the 25% of those that actually produce what it is that we need. At least that would reduce the amount of waste and energy consumed by society as a whole. However, that is going to be a tough sell to those that have to work to support everyone else. It is not hard to solve problems. Give everyone a broom and send them out to sweep the streets. It is very hard to solve problems without creating new ones.

CURRENTLY, as long as Oil is available, that is all we need Mr Bill, but as oil becomes more scarce and higher priced, we need far more of the population involved in producing and transporting the goods.

As oil becomes more scarce and higher priced, human labor has to replace it and becomes more valuable as a result. In a typical agricultural society, as much as 80% of the labor was done by slaves or land locked peasants.

You cannot produce food to the levels we produce it without oil, so the idea that 75% of the population could do nothing while they are fed by 25% of the population doing something is absurd. Get a grip here.

Reverse Engineer

Get a grip? F-U! I didn't say anything about post peak oil. I was talking about the here and now. The point is that the economy expands to include free labor. From a societal point of view that free labor consumes whether it produces anything of 'value' or not. Can you possibly waste anymore of my time? Thanks.