You have 1000 kilograms of clean, fresh water in a single IBC container in Sydney at the Opera house. You will be paid 1 million dollars if you can deliver it to Los Angeles McArthur Park within 3 weeks, or 21 days, or 504 hours. You can split the water into as many containers as you want, and the IBC doesn’t need to make it to LA, just the water inside. If you deliver 2000 bottles each containing 500ml of undiluted, clean, fresh water, or like, 99% of it to account for evaporation and some spillage, that counts as a win. You can assume that any partial water deliveries that remain in Sydney or arrive in LA won’t be stolen in your absence so you don’t need to hire guards. There are no consequences for failing, but if you do fail or succeed, any money you spend on the project, you don’t get refunded. Normal consequences for breaking laws apply.
How do you do it, or do you even bother trying?
I’d call the recipient and ask them to turn on the faucet and explain that I’ll send the water through that. That’ll be $1000000, thanks.
“I have opened the faucet but it is dry. when will you send the water?”
When the bank transfer has cleared.
You can ship 1 ton/1m3 of cargo via any international air freight company to the other side of the world for less than 10,000 dollars.
(Source: I’ve done it plenty of times)
A day for pickup and transport to the airport in Sydney, 24 hours for actual transit, a day in customs in LA, a day for a truck to deliver it to that location. 5 business days to get that IBC to your destination in LA, tops.
a day in customs in LA,
It might take a bit longer, since this is a pretty weird cargo with an even weirder story behind it.
Still, you should be able to clear it well within the states time
Nah. It’s a very basic checklist type stuff. No one cares about the story, they care about clearing cargo.
Are you trying me that if I import “water, 1000L, bulk”, and someone at customs sees it, it’ll be fine?
Yeah, I’d expect them to test it, find it true, and clear it.
If asked you can just say that you are participating in a scavenger hunt for a rich weirdo.
Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be? You can import water to the US. HTS 2201.90.0000 covers the import tariffs, so it depends on the value determined by the importer what your pay. Companies import bottled water all the time. Fiji water is all imported.
This seriously the global logistics version of asking if it’s OK to bring your own bottled sparkling water to a fancy restaurant. It’s stupid and will be pointless, and you might pay a corking fee on top of it all, but you very much can, and it’s not even a funny story or cool for anyone involved. It’s just an odd, smalltime decision.
Isn’t this… how futures and even regular trading works?
In the simplest form, you sell the water in Sydney, buy in Los Angeles with contract criteria specifying what “clean, fresh water” is to you, done.
As others have said, this is very simple, truck the container to the airport, then put it on a cargo aircraft, fly to LA, truck it to the final destination.
You would even make a large profit.
I open a sink in Sydney, and do the same in Los Angeles to fill 1000 bottles. Water transfered in a few minutes.
Is this some silly AI training question? 1000kg is the weight of 10 humans with some luggage for each of them, so transporting it by plane shouldn’t cost drastically more than 10 passenger airfares. I mean come on. Plus you have to move it around by truck before and after the plane flight. Again no biggie. Clearing customs, who knows.
Yeah, this seems really odd. Today’s shipping industry is worth trillions, fully globalised, and pretty much bookable online. The biggest hurdle is paperwork, and has been for a while.
Like some others have said standard air freight costs are significantly under that 1M, and take hardly any time compared to 3 weeks.
This is a “problem” that might be worth millions to solve in the 1700s, but it’s been long solved.
1.000.000$? Just book a private flight. 1.000.000$ is “call the airline” kind of money. Call FedEx or something.
The smallest cargo planes can carry twice what you want in weight.
Do I get a million for every metric tonne of water transferred?
It’s 12006km from Sydney to Los Angeles as the bird flies. Garden hose is ~$2/m. I’d break even after 25 metric tonnes.
A garden hose is about 2cm in diameter, you’re gonna need a pretty massive pump to get any flow rate to speak of through that hose. I’ll be back with numbers for you ;)
The hose itself works require 3.77 million litres to fill. But after that! Profit!
At standard domestic pressure (3.5bar), we’d expect 60 litres per minute through that hose. Just filling the hose would take 52 days.
I filled an 800 litre hot tub up in abiut 2.5 hours.
1000 litres won’t take long.
Although you also have to account for distance…
Fill it by a 12000km long 2cm wide tube. Do not underestimate the pressure needed to get a reasonable flow. Ever tried soak up honey with a straw?
I’d call GAC or Pentagon (No, not that pentagon) and book the shipping. They’re the ones we use at work for these things, and they’re pretty fast and costs a lot less that that kind of money.
While they organize the physical shipping, I’d call my logistical superhero of a coworker so we can get all the customs stuff out of the way and processed before arrival.
Is this for a Smokie and The Bandit reboot?
That’s … oddly specific.
That falls into the regular shipping realm. Any shipping company can handle that.
To make it challenging we could say that you’re not allowed to use the internet, only phone calls.
Would ask for the details about that water( quality , application and so on). Than I will offer them a cheaper source located near the destination. Doing such logistics would be absulutely stupid (Except for water of ultra high purity or large Deuterium/Tritium contents)
1000L of water is literally nothing on a global logistics scale.
Single transportable tank would hold more than enough. (A fuel truck, for example can hold up to about 45,000L)
Stick it on a freight aircraft overnight.
Chill for 20 days and line up how I’m gonna spend my easy money.
Put it on a plane.
