Re: Plans to Restock Items?
 

I saw something over the weekend that said Hanjin ships were starting to be offloaded. Apparently the 4 that were stuck in Long Beach were afforded asset seizure protection by a federal judge and the South Korean bankruptcy court had approved the release of $10 million in funds to pay for the offloading. It looks like some $14 billion in merchandise was sitting on those 4 ships.

Re: Plans to Restock Items?
 

I saw mention of this development this weekend too, and the article noted that shipping prices had already "skyrocketed".

Re: Plans to Restock Items?
 

Container prices are up ~50%, but this is a change from $1100 to $1700 for a COMEX box. So in relative terms its an increase, but given the price of what you can move, its not much. Rates are still well below where they have been in the past, which is probably contributing to the bankruptcies. This is similar to how oil was up $10/barrel (30%) from its low, but still down over 50% from the highs many years ago.

Re: Plans to Restock Items?
 

That's kind of surprising since there is a glut of shipping space (container loads) for the last year. Shipping prices have been dropping and the demand has also been dropping. This is one of the reasons that Hanjin got into so much trouble was these two factors.

China's slowing economy is also a problem. Not as many goods in or out in the last year. There are over 170 large container ships in a port in Malaysia that have been mothballed because of lack of work.

Short term rates may go up, Hanjin has raised theirs to get back some cash flow. But they are still way under what they were 18 months ago.

The other interesting side effect is that for the last two years you could purchase containers fairly cheaply. You may have seen lots of articles about people building house, offices, etc out of containers. This was to ease the glut of non active containers, since if they are not on a boat full of goods, they are empty in your storage yards costing you money. The availability of containers is slowing and the cost is slowly going back up. If you were planning to get containers and covert them into robot spaces the time is now.

A second wave of problems is that the containers got offloaded, but the trucking and train companies are not picking them up, since they are worried about getting paid for transport. It will take some time to get that sorted out. But presently there are truckers looking for loads from the major ports.

It should get sorted out by mid-November when all the Christmas goods start showing up in full force in warehouses.

The joys of living in a world economy!!

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I may have been overly optimistic about Christmas. This followup article from the Economist explains some more details on what is going on. Evidently there is still about $14 billion (USD) in goods floating around out there looking to get unloaded.

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BaneBots wheels are back in stock!!!!!

http://banebots.com/

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Hooray hooray!

Also, I'm a little embarrassed that I just now noticed the different colors of wheel had different durometers.

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Is the hub thing new to the product? I didn't really look at these wheels this year, but it seems like a clever way to avoid having too much stock of one type of wheel and not enough stock of another. Plus teams can reuse hubs and just buy a lot of wheel stock.

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Yes, the hubs are a new feature. They have their pros and cons however.

Also there is now a 4th durometer now. 60A in Black which is more firm than the Blue wheels.

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Does anyone have any insight as to when the 3:1 and 4:1 VexPro Versaplanetary stages will be back in stock? They have been out of stock since May.

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I know! We're dying for them too.

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Same here. We use a 4:1 on our shooter, so they're pretty important. Luckily, we were able to find a local team (shout out to 5026) that had one they were willing to get rid of, so we at least have one spare.

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The 3:1 and 4:1 Gear Kits should both be back In Stock by mid-November.

Thanks for your patience!