Harbor Freight Tools

Harbor Freight Tools is a privately held discount tool and equipment retailer, headquartered in Calabasas, California, which operates a chain of retail stores as well as a mail-order and eCommerce business. The company has over 600 stores in 47 states, offering over 7,000 tools and related products. The company employs over 11,000 people in the U.S.

History

Harbor Freight was founded in 1977 as a mail-order business by Eric Smidt and his father, Allan, in a small North Hollywood building, as Harbor Freight & Salvage Co. The company changed its name to Harbor Freight Tools and, in 1980, opened its first retail store in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1985, Eric Smidt became the president of Harbor Freight; he served under that title until 1999 when he became CEO.

Mail order

The company subsequently acquired US General, another mail-order tool and equipment company. At first, the company mailed promotions in standard #10 business envelopes. In the early 1980s, the company relocated to Camarillo, CA, acquiring the former headquarters of Unity, another large mail-order company, and launched its first mail-order catalog in the mid-1980s.

Harbor

A harbor or harbour (see spelling differences), or haven, is a body of water where ships, boats and barges seek shelter from stormy weather, or are stored for future use. Harbors and ports are often confused with each other. A port is a facility for loading and unloading vessels; ports are often located in harbors.

Harbors can be natural or artificial. An artificial harbor can have deliberately constructed breakwaters, sea walls, or jettys, or they can be constructed by dredging, which requires maintenance by further periodic dredging. An example of an artificial harbor is Long Beach Harbor, California, which was an array of salt marshes and tidal flats too shallow for modern merchant ships before it was first dredged in the early 20th century.

In contrast, a natural harbor is surrounded on several sides by prominences of land. Examples of natural harbors include Sydney Harbour, Australia and San Francisco Bay, California.

Artificial harbors

Artificial harbors are frequently built for use as ports. The oldest artificial harbor known is the Ancient Egyptian site at Wadi al-Jarf, on the Red Sea coast, which is at least 4500 years old (ca. 2600-2550 BC, reign of King Khufu). The largest artificially created harbor is Jebel Ali in Dubai. Other large and busy artificial harbors include:

System

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex/intricate whole. Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning.

The term system may also refer to a set of rules that governs structure and/or behavior. Alternatively, and usually in the context of complex social systems, the term is used to describe the set of rules that govern structure and/or behavior.

Etymology

The term "system" comes from the Latin word systēma, in turn from Greek σύστημα systēma: "whole compounded of several parts or members, system", literary "composition".

History

According to Marshall McLuhan,

"System" means "something to look at". You must have a very high visual gradient to have systematization. In philosophy, before Descartes, there was no "system". Plato had no "system". Aristotle had no "system".

In the 19th century the French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, who studied thermodynamics, pioneered the development of the concept of a "system" in the natural sciences. In 1824 he studied the system which he called the working substance (typically a body of water vapor) in steam engines, in regards to the system's ability to do work when heat is applied to it. The working substance could be put in contact with either a boiler, a cold reservoir (a stream of cold water), or a piston (to which the working body could do work by pushing on it). In 1850, the German physicist Rudolf Clausius generalized this picture to include the concept of the surroundings and began to use the term "working body" when referring to the system.

Cargo

The word cargo refers in particular to goods or produce being conveyed – generally for commercial gain – by ship, boat, or aircraft, although the term is now often extended to cover all types of freight, including that carried by train, van, truck, or intermodal container. The term cargo is also used in case of goods in the cold-chain, because the perishable inventory is always in transit towards a final end-use, even when it is held in cold storage or other similar climate-controlled facility.

Multi-modal container units, designed as reusable carriers to facilitate unit load handling of the goods contained, are also referred to as cargo, specially by shipping lines and logistics operators. Similarly, aircraft ULD boxes are also documented as cargo, with associated packing list of the items contained within. When empty containers are shipped each unit is documented as a cargo and when goods are stored within, the contents are termed as containerised cargo.

Transportation types

Marine

Seaport terminals handle a wide range of maritime cargo.

Pearl Harbor

Coordinates: 21°22′04″N 157°58′38″W / 21.3679°N 157.9771°W / 21.3679; -157.9771

Pearl Harbor is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet. The U.S. government first obtained exclusive use of the inlet and the right to maintain a repair and coaling station for ships here in 1887. The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941 was the immediate cause of the United States' entry into World War II.

History

Pearl Harbor was originally an extensive shallow embayment called Wai Momi (meaning, “Waters of Pearl”) or Puʻuloa (meaning, “long hill”) by the Hawaiians. Puʻuloa was regarded as the home of the shark goddess, Kaʻahupahau, and her brother (or son), Kahiʻuka, in Hawaiian legends. According to tradition, Keaunui, the head of the powerful Ewa chiefs, is credited with cutting a navigable channel near the present Puʻuloa saltworks, by which he made the estuary, known as "Pearl River," accessible to navigation. Making due allowance for legendary amplification, the estuary already had an outlet for its waters where the present gap is; but Keaunui is typically given the credit for widening and deepening it.