The family went grocery shopping on Saturday.
Food was abundant, albeit more expensive than in the past, it was the other consumables that we had a hard time finding. Things like shampoo, body wash, mouth wash, cleaning supplies, foot spray, OTC drugs, were low, especially the store brand generics.
Today I went to Walmart at lunch and it took was low on a lot of non-food supplies.
Some specialty food items like Gatorade/sports drinks have been low or empty for weeks.
I haven’t seen store shelves this picked clean since the early lockdown days of COVID over a year ago.
This time is different.
In Red states, the lockdowns are essentially over. Everyone who wants the vaccine has gotten it and everyone has chosen to risk it.
Manufacturing, transportation, and distribution should be back into near-full swing. The economy should be recovering fast.
Instead, it looks like we’ve rolled the clock back 18 months and we’re about to get fucked.
I think the bottom is about to out of the market and it’s going to be a disaster.
I read what’s happening described as “Biden’s quiet lockdown”. This administration’s goal is to destroy the economy and ultimately the country, and they are doing a good job.
We are seeing price increases and shortages around here. Interesting shortage that lasted a couple of weeks was ricotta cheese. The two super markets to our south were both out. The super market to our north was not. Three different chains.
It feels like there isn’t enough transport available. It takes X units of transport to move everything. We have Y units available. If Y is greater than X all is good. If Y drops below X then we have to leave things behind. End user (super market) get shortages.
Last year, the things that got shorted were the same across multiple stores and locations over an extended period of time. Now it feels like they are rotating what goes on the transports so that no one product stays out of stock.
I also believe that the shutdowns/lock downs broke our distribution system.
There are lots of moving parts. The source items getting into the containers and onto the long distance transports. The offload and warehousing followed by the shipping and loading and repeat through multiple stages.
I know that the transport people got lots of exemptions originally. But the people that didn’t were the warehouse people. Amazon didn’t get hit as badly as much of their stuff is handled by robots. Robots do a great deal of the shelf work while people do only a smaller amount of the packaging part.
So right now, it feels like there aren’t enough people to load/unload and to handle the warehousing.
The glories of a global supply chain.
Let’s say a new car or truck has 10,000 components. If Ford only has 9,999 of them, it has a problem. What happpens if they then stop ordering the other 9,999 components for six weeks? They get the missing component and order the other9,999 components, but suddenly 5 or 6 others are not available because those component manufacturers shut down and switched the manufacturing line to a different product.
Same for a Shampoo maker. The shampoo has 20 ingredients, but if the delivery of one single ingredient is delayed, then they cannot start the mixing and processing until they get that ingredient.
Supply Chain interruptions I have seen this Summer:
Gatorade, attributed to flavorings. Not all flavors, but fruit punch and others.
Grocery Bags with handles, attributed to no glue. Three week issue.
Soda Pop because they did not have the aluminum cans.
I noticed the local Dollar Tree Store shelves are pretty sparse. I do not know if it is supply shortages, or a labor shortage? They are now closed two days a week, and shutdown three hours early every day they are open. How many other businesses are in the same boat?
I think the LA harbor bottlenecks explain a lot of the empty shelves you saw. Much of that stuff comes out of China, by sea into LA. So while you may not have lockdowns locally, you have idiot politicians screwing things up on the coast and that’s all that’s required.
Yeah… Darth Noisome (maybe with an assist from some unions) is obstructing international trade.
A real POTUS would be looking for ways to get the ports working at full capacity.
Lotta states are still coddling the lay abouts, giving them “free” money.. why work when nanny gubmint is paying me not to work… fukkin sad. Its gonna get fun
When the supply chain issues intersect with another covid surge of “x” variant and/or all these people who have been fired cause Healthcare and some industries to collapse or slow down, yep, the bottom will have fallen out.