Let's Talk Procurement
Welcome to "Let's Talk Procurement" - the procurement podcast where Lukes 1 and 10 navigate the wild world of purchasing with a side of humour and a dash of dad jokes. 🛍️ Join Luke 1, the procurement prodigy, and Luke 10, the tender-hearted jokester, as they untangle the knotty world of supply chains and contracts, one laugh at a time. From negotiating deals to chasing down the best bulk discounts, these Lukes have it all covered – and yes, they'll probably throw in a few puns along the way. Take a break from the text books & join us on the journey to procurement enlightenment served with a smile and a sprinkle of procurement magic! 🌟✨
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are like coffee preferences – diverse and subject to change. The hosts may spill the beans on their thoughts, but they don't claim to be everyone's cup of tea. Listener discretion is advised. Remember, it's all in good fun and the only thing brewed here is a blend of entertainment and conversation with a hint of education. Sip responsibly! ☕🎙️
Let's Talk Procurement
S2. E31. Ship Happens: Global Trade Disruption Duck Up
A single ship lodged sideways for six days. Global trade paralyzed. Billions of dollars in goods delayed. The Ever Given incident in the Suez Canal wasn't just a maritime mishap—it was a wake-up call for procurement professionals everywhere.
When the massive container vessel blocked this critical waterway in March 2021, it created ripple effects that reached every corner of global commerce. Overnight, companies faced empty shelves, production delays, and frantic calls from customers. What exactly happened when this 400-metre behemoth ran aground, supposedly due to "strong winds"? And more importantly, what lasting impacts did it have on how we approach supply chain risk?
Through our signature blend of analysis and humor, we dissect this fascinating supply chain duck-up that affected everything from oil prices to electronics deliveries. We explore the critical role of force majeure clauses in contracts, questioning whether this truly qualified as an "act of God" or revealed deeper vulnerabilities in our logistics networks. As procurement professionals, should we have anticipated something like this? And how did the most successful companies respond when their carefully planned delivery routes suddenly vanished?
This episode offers valuable insights into business continuity planning, the limitations of just-in-time inventory models, and the strategic shifts toward nearshoring and diversified supply bases that followed the incident. Whether you're managing global supply chains or simply curious about how one sideways ship could cause $60 billion in losses, this conversation will change how you think about procurement resilience.
How would your organization handle a Suez-level disruption? We'd love to hear your perspective!
Please get in touch as we love to hear from you listeners! You can use the "text" function above or drop us on email: 2lukes1cip@gmail.com or visit our website www.letstalkprocurement.co.uk
It would also mean the world if you can drop us a cheeky 5* rating on your platform of choice,
Cya Later
Hello and welcome to let's Talk Procurement, the only show you need to master the art of procurement, let's go, so welcome. Welcome back to another episode. Another day has arrived, another episode is live, so with me, as always and actually looking pretty good today with his new specs on, is Luke 10. Luke 10, the up and coming procurement protege, and sorry I forgot to introduce myself, but I am luke one, the one, and only I can't even say the one and only luke can I, because there's two of us you're the one and only luke one yes, trademarked yeah um, okay, yeah, so obviously just recapping who we are.
Speaker 1:Um, I am a sips profesh it's god and all yeah, um god in the making, and then you are a sips uh apprentice.
Speaker 2:That's a bit harsh sips, uh, what they have? They have terms, don't they, for all these things yeah, I would say you're not a baby.
Speaker 1:In your kind of growth stage you're probably reaching late adolescence.
Speaker 2:You're nearly there, um yeah, I'm, I'm like, um well, as we know you are, you are building a baby I am as we know from from previous eps, which I don't think we've mentioned that much, to be fair, what stage of if, like if, if you know, once I'm fully, once I'm fully formed, I'm fully graduated through sips, right? What stage of the uh pregnancy am I? On the pregnancy because I assume I'm not. I've not been birthed yet as a sip well, I think as a child of Sips.
Speaker 1:I think that's how you collect your certificate for level six when you graduate. That's your, that's the birth yeah, I would say you're in the final trimester. Um, you've already come along quite nicely. You know you're developing all your features, kind of listening. You're a bit active, almost good to go Fully baked nearly.
Speaker 2:I'm nearly fully baked.
Speaker 1:Okay, I like that. So why would you listen to us? Well, here's exactly why you should listen to us if you're new around here. This is the only procurement podcast that covers things like SIPs topics how to improve your results, what the hell is procurement? Because we're still finding out what are the core tools that we need in our little armory to bash those salespeople. How can you improve as a procurement professional and you know what? We do it while having a smile on our faces. So completely different to the majority of other podcasts that are available. You know, we don't just talk about what's at the forefront of procurement. We like to. We like to try and encourage more people to get involved and active with uh, with procurement as a topic as well. So we are very accessible. You can reach out to us on many of our platforms, but we do have a few favorites, don't we?
Speaker 2:yes, we do. That was, that was a subtle hint for me to to say said things. I don't know why I can't speak today. That's useful. So we have an email address. That email address is 2lucs1sip at gmailcom. I will repeat myself 2lucs1sip at gmailcom. That's the number two luks plural, the number one cip at gmailcom. And we also have an instagram. If you want to slide into our dms then or just follow us for the content. We do post occasional memes on there and, uh, we have a not quite a face reveal, a body reveal, but it's a body in um in a cloak, in a cloak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're both in the same cloak, so that is let's Wait, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 1:We're not in the same cloak.
Speaker 2:We're not in the same cloak, but we are kind of in the same cloak. Go and look at our. Instagram. It's let's underscore talk, underscore procurement. We also have a text us button, so if you can't be bothered to type anything or you know, just move apps on your phone that's the most difficult thing in the world. There's a link under this episode in the description that you just press it and you can text us.
Speaker 1:If you're on a phone, I don't know what happens if you're on a, if you're on a laptop or a non-textable device no idea, probably just try out, see what happens yeah um, and yeah, that also goes straight into our, straight into our dms as well and actually on that, if you do send us a text and we we like the the message, and by like, it doesn't have to be a compliment, it can be horrific as well, but if we find it amusing, we will showcase it on our website, which is wwwletstalkprocurementcouk, and you can see some texts we've already received and have a little chuckle at those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our fan mail section. You can also see information about us, but that's for you to explore when we're not live. So feel free to check that out, and the last thing that we would request of you is to give us a five-star review or six-star, six-star review. Yeah, as you said earlier, luke One, there are some things that we do different to other procurement podcasts. Those things, or that one thing, is something we like to call procurement duck-up, which there are some other. It's sort of a mini series within our greater let's talk procurement series. We've done some things, like the kfc short shortage of chicken. We've. What else we've done? We've done one on ministry of defense in the uk. We've done.
Speaker 2:Spanish and French trains.
Speaker 1:Halloween special.
Speaker 2:Halloween special. Yeah, that's a few duck-ups in there. Today we're slightly varying that. We are doing a supply chain duck-up S-C-D-U instead of a P-D-U. So what we've got is this picture this right. Lean back in your chairs, get yourself strapped in for this and just picture in your mind. Bit of meditation. Don't close your eyes unless you're driving. Wait one way around.
Speaker 1:I'm leaning back, my eyes are closed, the mic is on my, on my lips so the date was 23rd of March 2021 it's not too far away do you remember what happened on that date?
Speaker 2:I don't what if I tell you about? The perpetrator was a vessel called the ever given, which was a 400 meter long container ship operated by the company called evergreen marine wait what was it called? Ever, ever given ever giving vessel ever given was a vessel.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I've got a 400-pound vessel, 400 metres long. I don't know how heavy it was. I've got a 400-metre-long veiny vessel, Come on.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm picturing it, keep going and you're in Egypt. Okay, you specifically are at the Suez Canal, which is a critical choke point that connects the mediterranean and the red sea, so it's a uh, it's a very important shipping route and it handles 12 of global trade and nearly 30 of global container traffic.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a lot of traffic. Okay, so I'm in Egypt, sailing down a river, a canal, in a big dainty vessel called Evergiving, full of shipping containers. Yeah, that is correct I don't know why I think that Is that because I've seen the picture of it could be so of course we're talking about when the Suez Canal got blocked isn't he a football player, luis Suez?
Speaker 2:Suarez, but something completely different to what I just said. Sorry, I thought.
Speaker 1:I'd get a good joke out of that people's shit. Suarez Thought something completely different to what I just said.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I thought I'd get a good joke out of that, but it was shit, yeah, so what actually happened? For those who don't know but I'm assuming most people know maybe this is getting listened to in like 50 years and people don't remember what happened.
Speaker 2:The ship ran aground sideways due to high winds or possibly human error, and it completely blocked the canal for six days. So the company said the ship is suspected to have met with a sudden gust of strong wind which caused the ship's body to veer from its course and accidentally run aground.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure I believe that I mean. How strong does a gust of wind Basically a hurricane? To turn a ship of that magnitude.
Speaker 2:It's a 400-metre long, I assume quite heavily loaded ship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a gust of wind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, someone's just like you're blowing on your tea if it's too hot, you just yeah. And somehow that made the ship run aground.
Speaker 1:Side note for every journey you've been on. I know you've been driving for a while now. How many times has your car been blown over by a gust?
Speaker 2:zero. What about you? How?
Speaker 1:many times have you blocked a? Uh major road due to a gust of wind blowing?
Speaker 2:your car over. I'm glad you clarified due to a gust of wind, because the answer would have been one that well, we know about that. The flaming car episode, yeah yeah, what was that total cost of ownership? Ep it was. You want to hear about how I blocked at one of, well, probably the uk's busiest motorway with a flaming car with a. Yeah, I mean we'll just give it away, but yeah, with the car, so you just purchased it then listen to the tco app.
Speaker 2:But yeah, back to the ever given. Um, yeah, I don't, i't know, but I've never given it a try.
Speaker 1:Oh dear, can I ask you a question?
Speaker 2:You can.
Speaker 1:If you were a 400 metre long vessel, what would your ship name be?
Speaker 2:Good question. What would it be? Can I give you mine? Yeah, go on To give you some inspiration.
Speaker 1:It would be what a load of ship, Because obviously it's quite a big ship and has a lot of stuff on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, mine would be Shippy McShipface, I'll give you that. So, of course, when the ship got stuck, it led to there were a number of delays. That happened because the ship got blown off course, as I said, it blocked the canal for six days. Got blown off course, as I said, it blocked the canal for six days.
Speaker 2:Over 400 ships were delayed or rerouted around the cape of good hope, which added 10 days to the journey, instead of just cutting off longer lead time for egypt, exactly yep, there to go around the bottom of uh I don't know if that's a good accent or not, I'll hear back on the recording and approximately 9 to 10 billion dollars worth of goods were held up per day.
Speaker 1:How many days? Was it? 10 days, 6 days, so that's 700 billion, 700 billion.
Speaker 2:Where's your humour gone, man? Come on what 700 billion. Where's your humagon, man? Come on what We'll go with that. Come on what We'll go with that. It's not funny though, just bad maths. I never find bad maths funny. Yeah, true, God. So key sectors that were impacted Oil and gas prices spiked, of course.
Speaker 1:Haven't gone down since.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a spike, we're still on the spike Resale manufacturing. Obviously there's delays in delivery, especially things like electronics and automotive parts. And linking back to our first procurement duck up just in time, supply chains were exposed and the vulnerabilities in those lean inventory models it's a point, yeah, because there's no spares and repairs is there in those models.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, uh. So I've got a question for you now. What do you call a ship that blocks global trade? So I've got a question for you now. What do you call a ship that blocks global trade? Wait, that doesn't make sense. Hold on, let me edit this. I took it from AI, but it doesn't make sense. Okay, I'll say it anyway. What do you call a?
Speaker 1:ship that blocks global trade, a real freightening experience. Okay, yeah, frightening, freightening.
Speaker 2:Kind of get it Moving on. The impact was threefold impact. What I've come up with Disruption ripple effect, so that's port congestion, container shortages was made worse and increased price for freight transport and insurance.
Speaker 2:Secondly, procurement challenges increased price for freight transport and insurance, of course, yeah. Secondly, procurement challenges. So of course there was a problem with meeting timescales for delivery. You needed to find alternate sourcing and logistics strategies and there's going to be a greater emphasis on supply chain resilience and risk management. So business continuity activities. Thirdly, is strategic shift which kind of links to that last point companies, uh, assessing their single, single Single what Single source, Single source dependencies.
Speaker 2:that's it. There's a rise in near-shoring and diversified supply base and investment in supply chain visibility tools and scenario planning. What are your thoughts on those?
Speaker 1:I find that interesting because it's a knock-on effect from somebody else screwing up and it would depend on the contract you have with the companies. So, for example, if I've got a contract with you to deliver things to me, I would probably be asking that you deliver within, you know, within an SLA and stuff like that, and you probably say that the canal route being blocked is a major event, maybe like a force majeure type of event. Um, and I'm trying to think, Can you on that?
Speaker 2:can you detail to me how that would play out in the scenario? So let's say right, I'll be, I'll be the supplier, you be in procurement. So I'll come to you and I'll say look, mate, sorry, I can't deliver your three-piece suit. You're okay, can't deliver your six by my ship because, uh well, you've got a hundred of them, so it kind of makes sense to to do it.
Speaker 1:So I can't deliver them because I can't deliver them on time, because they're blocked I'd be looking to check the contract and see, obviously, if it's, if it's a legit contract, you'll know you. You should know it inside out, right. But I'll be looking for things like are we paying you specifically to deliver it via boat? If not, are we paying you specifically to deliver it by a certain date? You know, when you go to, when you're doing online shopping and you select your method of shipping and you can pick from two or three different delivery providers. I'd be looking for things like that. So have I selected the one that happens to then be blocked? In which case, is that something that I'm at fault for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've said to you in my proposal. When you did a tender for delivering six-piece suits, I said to you I was going to deliver it by ship.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's in the contract and it's by ship.
Speaker 2:You didn't say anything.
Speaker 1:Well, there will probably be something in there general goods delivery that will effectively say who bears the the responsibility for those delays and where those costs should sit does it?
Speaker 2:is that affected by? I can't remember what it's exactly. Is it incoterms? Yeah so when do you own it?
Speaker 1:yeah, so incoterms is who's responsible for it at particular parts of the journey and where they are in transport and who's who's signing it off and things like that. I think there's another term. When it's by sea as well, I think there's a specific type of inco terms for by sea, but that has escaped my head.
Speaker 2:So on force majeure as well. So as a supplier, I could try and claim that a force majeure event yeah, I mean what does that mean?
Speaker 1:effectively. It's an well, typically it's known as an act of god, clause, um how it originated, but it's basically huge impacts that happens globally or or in a in a particular location that will that are out of your control but will prevent you from delivering to the contract. But you would say it's reasonable that such event would um cause failure for you to deliver. So, for example, if if a storm is written in force majeure, well, a storm happening in turkey doesn't impact you because you're based in egypt, right, so that's not really a valid force majeure event.
Speaker 1:If right you might have war um political events in there as well as a potential force majeure clause, but obviously if you're not in those affected countries, does it necessarily affect you. Um you know, if I've got a manufacturer in china and china enter into a war, then all of a sudden force majeure could be impacting my ability to deliver so would you have had to?
Speaker 2:let's say, it's a really badly drafted clause and it just says, as you say, if there's a storm, then I can't deliver it. If I then say, oh, you know there's a storm somewhere in the world, then does that kind of give me the ability to exit, or is it implied?
Speaker 1:It's implied so normally, to be honest, honest, normally even the boilerplate wording normally has something that will say um, that event that reasonably restricts your ability to deliver the service. So it's a event such as, you know, storm lightning, act of god, volcanic, volcanic eruption, whatever. But even if it's not, it would be implied that it's something that Because the whole reason is it's something that's well out of your control, that you can't necessarily predict that is a genuine reason for you not able to deliver the contract.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which, I think, is where this clause starts to confuse me sometimes, is because you have to predict what you're not going to be able to predict.
Speaker 1:That's why, yeah, that's why you get like broad terms like act of god. Um viruses never used to be in there. You're starting to see that appear now. So global viruses or pandemics as a result of covid, that's been added in um because that wasn't in many contracts beforehand. So you could reasonably argue that it wasn't necessarily an event that's going to stop you being able to deliver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So at what point does it become like what's beneficial? Since we are trying to be a procurement podcast, what would be, you know you, if you were reviewing a force majeure clause? What would you look for?
Speaker 1:so I would look, you don't want the clause to be too open and vague, so some people put things in there like, um, flooding and fire and power cut and transport delays or road closures and things like that, and then you start to think, well, hang on a second, that's.
Speaker 2:You can just plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's getting a bit stupid. So even things like fires, which is kind of typical to see in there, or power cuts, you just want that. You want to just firm it up a little bit and say you know power cuts that will impact the service, power cuts in the locations that the supplier operates, you kind of it's always been a boiler plate clause, so you kind of expect it in most contracts. What you have to kind of do is go in relation to the services we are buying, would those events actually give rise to a termination event, or is it just giving the supplier a way to exit a contract they don't want? So does a power cut in a factory impact you from receiving professional services from a company? It shouldn't do right.
Speaker 1:So but if you've got power cuts in your force majeure clause, they can go well potentially yeah, obviously it becomes a lot more complicated than that because you get into the legalities of it, but I think it's very rare to terminate a contract for force majeure, because most of the time, if it is a genuine reason, you don't really want to get out of the contract. You just want whatever it is that's not being delivered, which is why business continuity plans and things like that are very important in disaster recovery.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So sorry, a bit of a tangent now, but going back to the canal, would you qualify the canal event as a force majeure event?
Speaker 2:well, it's not, it's not really you know. Let's say I'm the ship behind this one. I've seen it get blown off. Course that's not within my control, but but would I have had to, I would have had to have something. It's not necessarily like you know, the next ship's behind it. I mean for for a reasonable amount of time, right Once it's been cleared, then you probably can't claim it as an event anymore.
Speaker 1:So I would argue that for the ship, that the Evergiving, that if it was truly a gust of wind that caused it, then that could be a force majeure event, because unforeseen extreme winds that could blow a ship into into a vertical position or horizontal position and block a whole canal, um, which is probably why they're saying that that's the cause, as opposed to grossing, um, miss, uh, what do you call it? Gross negligence or just incompetency?
Speaker 1:yeah, driver yeah um, she was trying to do a u-turn or something, or he was trying to do a u-turn. Sorry not being specific there and uh the one, the one time you say he or she, yeah they were trying to do a u-turn um, but if you're the other, if the other, the other transports. Realistically there are alternative routes, so you should have a contingency for being able to deliver in the event that your main route is blocked yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you, if you were a supplier and and your contract said time is of the essence, then potentially a continuity plan would be. You know, I've got a plane. I've got a plane from Dubai that's going to fly over to the Suez Canal, the nearest airport. We're going to go and pick it up stick it on a plane.
Speaker 1:And just keep it moving.
Speaker 1:And get it yeah, Whereas if it was like reasonable endeavours, then you could soften it a little bit and they might just go. We'll turn around, we'll give it to the next ship and then they'll come around, um, go in a different direction or something like that. But ultimately you should be prepared, right? I mean if, if your local commute to work is blocked because you know the roadworks are going on and you've got to take a longer route, you just leave a bit earlier yeah, you're still expected to get there yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:What was the second point? You said Sorry, you gave three points, I meant the second one.
Speaker 2:Second one was procurement challenges. So the three sub points within that were difficulty in meeting delivery timelines, need for alternative sourcing and logistic strategies, and greater emphasis on supply chain resilience and risk management.
Speaker 1:Yeah, greater emphasis on supply chain resilience and risk management. Yeah, how do you feel about that? That last one about supply chain resilience, and understand all the emphasis on that that'd have to be.
Speaker 2:That'd have to be obviously done before something like this happens. Yeah, you can't just get to. You can't turn up at suez canal. Oh, oh, it's blocked. Oh, now I'll think about what the backup plan is.
Speaker 1:I think about risk management.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of those things that people don't really like to do, isn't it? Governance and risk management stuff. But you can see when it comes to this that it's important.
Speaker 1:What's easy to forget is that these people that are delivering the six-piece suits are logistics experts. You're literally paying a transport company to transport goods to you, so you would expect them to have alternative means if necessary, and you know if they're only shipping suppliers, you would expect them to have a network of you know, uh, airplanes or something like that, a company that does it by air or a company that does it by limousine or whatever. But you know similar, similar industry, but you would know who you contact and ring up and kind of say, look, I'm stuck in a canal here, mate, can you, uh, can you bail us out?
Speaker 2:so yeah, yeah, and, and to an extent as well. I mean maybe it's not applicable. I mean might be it might be for this, but there was a lot of memes that came out about it because the way that they had to try and get it out at first was they just used a little digger. Someone took a photo of the digger. If you are able to go online, look up the photo of the ever given next to the digger, the digger's tiny With its little hook.
Speaker 1:It's trying to scoop out some A bit of sand that keeps filling up, or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you can basically see the bottom third of the ship, next to the whole digger. It's quite funny. All the captions were like Whose problem is that?
Speaker 2:Well, this is Sorry. That was the point I was going to go on before I went on a tangent. If you're going to Assume they're paying some sort of fees to go through the canal, If you're paying these fees to this company, you'd probably expect them to have some risk management in their kind of strategy as well. If they're you know, If this happens, then we'll do this or we'll dig the canal a bit deeper across so that this won't happen.
Speaker 1:Yes, but how many? If you were doing a risk register of things as a canal owner and you own the transport route, where on your list would a gust of wind blowing an evergreen long, 400 long, 400 meter long thing sideways be? Because you probably have high impact, but it'll probably be a low, very low likelihood. Yeah, so you're probably looking at things like traffic control, traffic lanes, making sure there's no collisions. What if there's an oil spill or contents get spilled in? How do we clean up with that? And you probably argue that they they're right to be prioritized on those issues yeah, although I don't know, I've never been to the suez canal.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's notoriously windy yeah, I just feel very skeptical of the fact that it's the wind is the only thing to blame yeah, and the company was the one that said they came out and said oh, it was wind yeah but other other places what they're trying to. Was it a driver error? They're trying to get out of that however many billion a day impact that they were causing yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Nine to ten billion dollars per day for six days oh yeah, 700 billion yeah still hate, don't you? So strategic shifts. Companies began reassessing single-source dependencies and there was a rise in nearshoring and diversified supply bases. And then I had another point about scenario planning. Are you going to make that point? Or, oh yeah, supply chain, investment in supply chain visibility tools and scenario planning.
Speaker 1:I just I'm kind of sceptical on the whole thing really, because it's a bit like a freak event that's happened and everybody's all I don't want to say overreacting, but kind of panicking about what's going on with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if these things are happening en masse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:As I said, this is just the kind of the people impacted by it. Perhaps yeah, this is just the kind of the people impacted by it, perhaps. Yeah, this is just what I could Like.
Speaker 1:I think the knock-on effects are huge really, because if you're not getting your supplies and you're failing to meet your customers' demands, you're probably going to end up trying to sue someone, and you can imagine there being a lot of court cases and things.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was a massive impact, wasn't it? We were both alive at the time this happened.
Speaker 1:Is this the first event?
Speaker 2:where you were. No, so I can remember back in the day right when this happened, that you know you couldn't really order quite a lot of stuff, because if you think we live in England, right, we buy a lot of stuff from places like china. That is, if you look on a map. Yeah, that's, you know. Everything goes through from china to here yeah through that suez canal.
Speaker 2:So if there's an extra 10 day kind of extension on that has impacts, right? I couldn't you know I couldn't get my six piece suits. This is why I use that example, because it was a real. It's a real pain for me't get my six-piece suits. This is why I use that example, because it was a real. It's a real pain for me to get my 100 times six-piece suits 600 pieces they're all different is it a lego suit?
Speaker 1:jmail uh, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I've got mixed feelings about this one, to be honest.
Speaker 2:In what way? Tell me about it, release your feelings to me. This is therapy.
Speaker 1:It just reminds me of someone driving down the motorway and when a gust of wind, you know, they turn sideways, their car rolls over.
Speaker 2:Ah, so you think it was some sort of, you think it was, like you know, on purpose.
Speaker 1:Not necessarily on purpose, know on purpose, not necessarily on purpose, potentially, but not necessarily on purpose. But somebody has created an issue, whether it was intentional or not, and it's caused a knock-on effect. So you've got the m25 is blocked, major motorway in the uk. For those who don't know, m25 is blocked and you've got tons of lorries sitting there in the traffic, tons of cars, tons of everything. If I turn up late, the traffic, tons of cars, tons of everything. If I turn up late to my meeting, people just go. Oh, okay, yeah, he's a little bit late. Maybe I understand it because we've seen on the news, but there's not really much else you do about it, is there? You kind of just?
Speaker 2:But I don't know. I feel like you're thinking about it from a personal level, whereas, as you say, logistics companies get paid to do this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:So they fail their SLAs.
Speaker 2:And they're not prepared for it. They're going to look awful if their competitors are.
Speaker 1:I guess. So yeah, if their competitors aren't affected by it. But again, where were you in the canal at the time? Was your boat the one in front, of, the one that blocks it, or the one two hours behind it? And it could literally be that as to whether you're a good supplier or a shit supplier, just I mean. So it's kind of wouldn't.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't you say that that part is luck? What defines or what separates you as a good versus a bad supplier is how you reacted to it and therefore how good your business continuity plans were yeah in place for something like that to happen how quick do you respond to it? That's what separates a great from a bad supplier.
Speaker 1:So would you be annoyed if you, if you were in the in the boat behind this blockage.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say yes, whatever comes next.
Speaker 1:And you turned it all around and rapidly sped down a different route. Literally, I think, James Bond tearing it up and down the waves, like doing everything you can.
Speaker 2:You've got a container ship like as a jet ski.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jet ski container. Yeah, just one container on ship, like as a jet ski. Yeah, jet ski container. Yeah, just one container on the back of a jet ski, Weaving in and out of kind of you know all sorts of different vehicles, vessels, and you know you don't sleep for two days straight just to get this package to your customer. You turn up battered, bruised bird shit, your breath stinks like awful and they then go. Why is it two days late?
Speaker 2:that's ridiculous what I would do is then put them in the nuisance category such a petty little thing to respond with.
Speaker 1:But that's amazing I'll supply it.
Speaker 2:No, what's it? Customer preferencing model yeah it's called yeah, um, yeah. I mean, I guess that's just unrealistic, unrealistic expectations. Can you do much about that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I guess it's communication, isn't it like if you would, if you were weaving through all the vessels and you had every, you're doing everything you could you'd probably be communicating to the customer as well to say, look this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:This is what I'm doing yeah yeah, um, what's the most relatable ship of 2021? The one that got stuck doing nothing and caused chaos everywhere. Does that does? Do you relate to that? Was that a?
Speaker 1:joke, or was that like?
Speaker 2:That's an AI-created joke.
Speaker 1:I thought it was just a fact.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Do you know any other famous ships?
Speaker 2:Titanic. Do you want me to make a Titanic joke?
Speaker 1:No, it wouldn't go down well.
Speaker 2:How's the kid set?
Speaker 1:up. Okay cool, I think that's been insightful. I don't know, it's kind of a mystery duck up, isn't it? Somebody else's supply chain messed up my supply chain and now I've got to deal with it. You'll be interesting to see how it played out contractually for a lot of people, but I just don't.
Speaker 2:I don't know enough about it to kind of comment much more than we have really if you work for a logistics company, and well, if you worked and no longer work for them, and now you're not bound by an NDA, then come and chat to us, let us know what it was like yes, please do and I've got one last joke for you ever given walked into a bar pause and immediately blocked the entrance for six days, and on that I think we should end the episode.
Speaker 2:He's staying silent. That's how bad the uh the joke was. See you in a bit, thank you.
