Comment by JumpCrisscross
2 months ago
The number of construction vehicles doing something versus sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.
2 months ago
The number of construction vehicles doing something versus sitting around waiting for labor in that shot is impressive.
I'm 100% sure its a photo op. Think about the logistics of the trucks taking spoil away. How can there be one arriving and one leaving at each location at this time: the diggers near instantly fill their entire capacity?
And the narrow access road is way too congested for all those to actually leave or arrive at that rate. Moments after the shot, the trucks will clearly all have to stop and wait.
This being said, there is power in that many machines in the same place at one time. They would cetainly be able to get work done quickly. Just not quite as quickly as it appears in that shot. Waiting is part of the process, you cant have a system where every component works at 100% capacity
A truck like this represents a substantial amount of investment that costs almost the same if its sitting there as it does doing actual work.
Not to mention the opportunity cost of having other similarly well equipped crews having to wait on you finishing the job.
Why would you be surprised that no time and effort is spared in coordinating the work of these machines? Its like being surprised that items are constantly rolling off the factory production line, and its not just the occasional item showing up at irregular intervals.
firstly, "doing useful work" for these trucks includes sitting still while being filled with spoil, not just driving around looking all fancy
it's not about simply "coordinating". Logistics requires that you have the capacity to absorb unforseen issues and delays. When you have a system with 100% utilisation, the slightest delay at one point ripples out upsetting the balance of everything else and suddenly everything grinds to a halt.
For a more techy example, it is a bad idea to have a server running at 100% CPU usage. If that is your "normal" state, any change in conditions for the worse (more customers want to buy your product because its a weekend) results in degraded experience or total failure for ALL the customers.
And construction (and large machines) just LOVE to throw delays at you.
I'm sure they have people who's job is coordinating. In fact to coordinate such a photo op would be an almighty feat in itself. It's just if those people are in any way good at planning (their job) then they would leave slack in the system, the exact amount is the real trick to avoid waste, but it's never 100% utilisation.
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Everything you wrote applies equally to western countries, and yet the results are different as we all well know. Whatever the reason is why trucks and other equipment stand around doing nothing, a reason clearly exists, and is clearly missing from your argument.
It may be that there is something going on in China that negates the exact reason that exists, and not in other countries, but you said nothing about that.
The fact is this construction site looks different than the way construction sites look usually. Your "trucks are expensive" argument explains nothing and provides no reason for this site to look different than others. Trucks are expensive everywhere, actually I think trucks are more expensive in the west than in China.
I mean, I am surprised when my Factorios do that.
Yeah, I have never seen something like that in America in my life. Always plenty of machines sitting around, and every few weeks some guys will hop on them for the day, but other than that they just sit there. It almost looks AI generated how densely packed those are - though I assume that this is real footage.
With China's real estate sector stagnating (because they've built enough housing for future demand to an excess, broadly speaking), all of that capacity is moving towards clean energy manufacturing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/how-china-became-the-worlds-...
The doubts about the size of the investment in that Wikipedia article are funny. It's a bit like "We cannot afford to invest in education", but the Chinese are saying "We cannot afford not to invest in education" (Famous quotes, it's more about R&D here). China's leadership is probably terrified of falling into the middle-income trap. It might be the biggest issue on their minds right now. At least I am watching from the sidelines, wondering "Are they gonna make it?".
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China scaling and efficiency is really something else. it seems they've latched on to something that works better than even democracy and capitalism
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They're building a large carwash facility near me and have taken over a year to get to the point of putting the roofs onto some steel framed sheds. I constantly think of the time when we were able to build the Empire State Building in 13 months.
The other really impressive part is that they also treated the workers really well during the construction. Cautionary Tales did an episode on this: https://timharford.com/2024/09/cautionary-tales-steel-and-ki...
They paid good wages but also kept a high bar on quality and performance. The workers in turn were incentivized to do a good job and gave feedback like ideas on how to improve efficiency, e.g. build an internal railroad to carry bricks up as they got higher and higher in height.
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They just built a car wash near me, just a few months from start to finish. I don't know what is going on with the one near you, but it isn't a US thing.
Of course car washes are a case where I could see someone building one to keep their crews busy between other better paying jobs. Thus have lots of stops as other projects come in. there isn't much investment sitting and there is value to a contractor to keep their crews busy (read paid!) even when there is no other work. I could see a car wash company agreeing to a build this over 2 years for a discount even though there are only a few months of work - for both it could be financially beneficial.
And what blows my mind is that if I want to rent a tractor with a front loader for some landscaping work it’s hundreds a day. Yet even larger commercial earth moving equipment sits around unused for weeks.
Some of that may be due to the owner transporting it from job to job instead of storing it in their own yard.
Nonetheless, there's a lot of idle people/equipment in construction because things have to be done in the right order and sometimes it's more economical to over-provision than risk delaying the whole project because something wasn't available when it was needed.
Those hundreds per day will partly pay for all the sitting around unused in the hiring company's yard! You can see this in the pricing which is usually a lower rate if you hire it for a longer period.
It's about usable time and cost of capital - if it's cheaper to rent the unit, they'll rent one, if it's cheaper to buy one and let it sit idle most of the time, they'll do that.
The rent/buy calculus can be incredibly shunted towards "buy" once you're using it even somewhat. It's even more so when you realize that labor costs is the main issue, and not having a skilled worker waiting around for an item to be delivered (by another slightly less skilled worker, perhaps) is a huge savings in its own part. Five guys on a site might have 15 machines total; even though they obviously can't use all 15 at the same time.
I have, happens around 6 AM. They get all the generators started up, power tools and full power. All the heavy machinery at full throttle. A cacaphonous 6AM salute to the internal combustion engine. Old Zeke fills his truckbed full of rusty nails and drives aggressively around the neighborhood dropping this way and that. Well, not old Zeke nowadays, more like Senor Ramirez Carloz Gonzalez.
Question is, if it's 6 AM at a construction site, and nobody is around to hear it, do they make any noise?
It does seem to have an AI look to it. The resolution is pretty poor.
They don't have time to waste, they have to get as much cheap stuff out as possible before further tariffs.
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10% of workers are unionized today, vs. 30+% 1940-1960. Surely this isn’t the reason.
I'm sure that's the one and only reason
Yeah, to hell with living wages and working hours that allow a life outside of work.