The automobile industry is one of the hardest-hit in these troubled times. A supercargo ship almost the length of two football fields arrived at the Los Angeles harbor on April 24 after a three-week sail from Japan.
It has 2,000 Nissan Armada SUVs, Rogue crossovers, and Infiniti sedans, reported Bloomberg. The unloading time for such an operation is usually a half-day work.
The ship, operated by Nissan Motor Co.’s freight arm, was asked to drop anchor when it was about a mile offshore. The ship has been stationed there for almost a week now.
The reason is that all storage spaces are full and the demand for new vehicles has dropped considerably. Acres of parking lots are full of vehicles in companies and dealerships showing the state of economy coronavirus has inflicted.
The economic pain is spread across sectors in the US. Excess pigs are being killed every day, dairy farmers are pouring away milk, oil marketers paying buyers to take barrels off their hands last week, and now, brand-new cars being left at sea for days, reported TIME.
Auto sales in the US dipped almost 40 per cent in March. In India, things are equally bad with zero sales happening for many brands such as Maruti and MG in April.
Navy bases, cold storage facilities, local colleges, sport venues are being used to park surplus cars coming in. Experts note that the worst is yet to come – a recession that would stop deliveries altogether!
