Supply Chain issues

[Ura-Ki]

They have one in Medford. Open just shy of 2 years now. Seems to be doing well.

Had one in St.Johns and one in Gresham in the late 80's and early 90's, both closed and left!

 

[2506]

Called nearby roof rack company today, trying to locate a new roof box for the upcoming ski season. Dude said they have $2.6 million in back orders with no set delivery date in sight.

 

[2506]

Called nearby roof rack company today, trying to locate a new roof box for the upcoming ski season. Dude said they have $2.6 million in back orders with no set delivery date in sight.

Apparently their stuff comes mostly from Japan. He said there's a bidding war on containers to ship goods to the US. To make matters worse, he said there are no containers coming into Japan

 

[Ura-Ki]

Apparently their stuff comes mostly from Japan. He said there's a bidding war on containers to ship goods to the US. To make matters worse, he said there are no containers coming into Japan

I remember a time not that long ago where it was cheaper to build containers in Asia and fill them there then shipping empties back! That's why we still have cheap containers for sale here, though they have gone way up in price, they are still cheap compared to a brand new one!

 

[sobo]

Oregon is sadly very well known for being very unfriendly to businesses and organized labor, hell, look at how they treat public employees like the teachers!

...and the city police...

 

[The Heretic]

I remember a time not that long ago where it was cheaper to build containers in Asia and fill them there then shipping empties back! That's why we still have cheap containers for sale here, though they have gone way up in price, they are still cheap compared to a brand new one!

I noticed that they doubled in price in the last year or so. Why is that?

 

[nammac]

How long ago was this? Cracker Barrel is expanding in OR. A few years now in Beaverton, one in Salem, probably elsewhere.
It was a refreshing view back into midwestern life.

There's one by Cabela's in Taulatin as well…. First experienced Cracker Barrels when I lived in Georgia, those places were always packed, lunch and dinner. Not horrible food at a fair price. Even got the wife to try it a few times…

 

[GWS]

I believe by road and rail..

Port of Vancouver is supplied by rail and barge traffic
Talked to one of the port commissioners at an open house and he told me if they could get the channel dredged 1 foot deeper they could load $1 million dollars more cargo per ship, be it wheat or scrap metal.

 

[GWS]

They have one in Medford. Open just shy of 2 years now. Seems to be doing well.

And another Cracker Barrel on Hayden Island near the Home Depot
Great fried chicken, I might add

 

[Barefootdog]

Most people who lost their jobs because of covid got laid off because their jobs went away because of stuff closing. Or because someone needed to stay home with kids whose schools closed. Fancy unemployment payments higher than what their jobs paid were presumably available to some. But not to any I know. The ones I know are not sitting at home watching more videos or getting high. And they kept paying their rent. What they did was take care of their kids, act as teachers for their kids since few kids are disciplined enough to substitute on line stuff for school, went back to it finished up college, spent much more time cooking at home from scratch, and started or expanded vegetable gardens.

Garden seed sales are way up. 2X to 4X for most retail seed companies. Gardening is something you can do at home, and with kids. And having your own fresh produce means you only need to go shopping once or twice a month instead of once or twice a week, meaning greatly limiting exposure to covid.

Now that some jobs are coming back, people aren't eager to take those low paying jobs at the old rates. The schools may or may not be/stay open. Exposure to Covid means many low paid jobs are less attractive than they were. Understaffing, unavailable products, customers having to stand in lines before even getting in stores, and crazy stressed out customers make the low paid jobs much more stressful than they used to be, and many jobs now requiring vaccination have also made the jobs less attractive compared with staying home and doing your own child care or saving money by home cooking or gardening, or trying to develop a home business since the ordinary low paid job turned out to provide no security. People who used to get $12/hr and be greatful they had a job at all have now reevaluated the value of those jobs and decided they aren't going back for less than $15/hr and better treatment. The new reality is that most people will not work for less any more. This is not because they are lazy POSes. Its because properly analyzed, it doesn't make sense to take a job that is so low paying these days. You can't improve your lot with such a job. All you can do is survive until an accident or stroke of bad luck destroys you because you have no health care or savings.. So everything is going to be understaffed until owners and managers accept this reality. And the price of everything is going to go up because of labor costs.

People actually could increase their lot with such low end jobs fifty years ago, when such jobs had regular schedules so that people could work two such jobs, or combine the job with child care or starting their own business. But you can't do that so easily these days with variable schedules and the requirement to be on call 24/7, and if you refuse to come in when ordered they fire you. So a crappy 30 hr per week job loses you your freedom for all your hours, not just 30/week.

If you happen to be advising anyone negotiating to get such a job, suggest they write a fixed schedule into their contract. And no email/phone contact outside work hours. If they are a reliable worker that might work these days. And suggest they explore more possibilities than advertised. Ask what the main problems are and suggest solutions. A friend of mine went in to apply for a $15/hr restaurant job and got hired to manage the place for 30$/hr. Within a month he had it fully staffed and running like clockwork. He had never managed anything. Interesting times provide both crises and opportunities.

All that makes sense as long as the folks holding out for higher pay don't look for the rest of us to support them financially or otherwise during their decision to opt out of available work.

It was common to see work crews at 1/2 strength due to people staying home for the extra weekly cash.
Seriously, government work at prevailing wage. It was nuts. Government funded infrastructure work with the government paying workers not to work.

That program was funded at $800 billion. Per news reports which have now been scrubbed from MSM fully 1/2 of the money was stolen by foreign criminal organizations. $53 billions remained unspent and were redirected to other federal waste programs. Do the math. 57% of the money was stolen or not needed for the mission. Only 43% of the allotted funds were required to pay people not to work. Add all the other transfer payments (welfare) and the numbers get so large as to be meaningless to us middle class working drones.

The Wuhan Flu will be officially designated as "oppressed". It's been the object of systemic bullying, scapegoating and racism.

The "current crisis" is 1000 container ships waiting to be off loaded at our receiving ports creating shortages....Not So....The root cause is that we don't make enough stuff in this country. The problem is that we are importing the stuff rather than making it here on shore. Making things creates living wage jobs and we have the stuff we need and want.

....do we have any reports on how those oil pipeline welders are getting on after being re-trained to write computer code?

EDIT...Fact is I probably shouldn't be up at 5AM and sitting at a computer. Apparently I still need adult supervision.....

 

[WillametteWill]

Flew through (thankfully) Oakland yesterday. There were nearly 20 ships lined up apparently waiting for docs in SF. In the past I only remember seeing one or two there.

Regarding the planned obsolesces conversation, I watched it happen with our family business of TV and electronics repair. My father and later my brother repaired TVs, HiFi equipment and other items...had our own business of sales and repair starting in the 50's. Back then, into the 80's, you repaired these items much of the time when they broke. And at the component level, swapping out tubes then later other parts. There was a dozen TV local TV repair businesses, we were all friend and there was plenty of work for all of us. Then it moved to swapping out entire boards. By the 90's the only things worth repairing were high end items. My brother ended up where the only work was warrantee work on super expensive items. This became a tiny trickle of business by the mid 2000's.

As this was happening the service life of most of these items became five-ish years. Also society has become programed to "need" the latest and greatest big screen, camera, fridge (guessing this doesn't apply to MANY folks on this forum)...many of us still fix things and learn to be content. Except with gun, never content with these.

 

[Diamondback]

Wow... six CB's in CA, five in OR... you know your state sucks when it's even more business-hostile than Commief**khole.

 

[The Heretic]

https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/q16gox

 

[The Heretic]

The Beer Game

This is a description of the Beer Game which shows how systems cause their own problems.

maaw.info

 

[Tony617]

I went to Costco yesterday evening and they were out paper towels and TP. They had Kleenex brand Kleenex only. Not sure if they were out or did run out for day and didn't restock intentionally or not.

 

[billdeserthills]

I went to Costco yesterday evening and they were out paper towels and TP. They had Kleenex brand Kleenex only. Not sure if they were out or did run out for day and didn't restock intentionally or not.

Costco near me ran out of tp & paper towels last month, sounds like it's catching

 

[OldBroad44]

https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/q16gox

Useful info and perspective, @The Heretic .

A minor disagreement. Amazon 2-day delivery seems to mostly have recovered for items with prime listing for prime customers. In fact, many prime items are now 1-day delivery. The difference is that Amazon used to depend mostly on other carriers. Now it has a huge fleet of its own trucks not just doing shipments across distances but also the last few miles to the door. Some prime deliveries take longer, but your order page at checkout lists the delivery dates for each item. Non prime items not shipped by Amazon can take longer, in some cases much longer. And common canned goods staples pass in and out of being in stock.

 

[The Heretic]

Useful info and perspective, @The Heretic .

A minor disagreement. Amazon 2-day delivery seems to mostly have recovered for items with prime listing for prime customers. In fact, many prime items are now 1-day delivery. The difference is that Amazon used to depend mostly on other carriers. Now it has a huge fleet of its own trucks not just doing shipments across distances but also the last few miles to the door. Some prime deliveries take longer, but your order page at checkout lists the delivery dates for each item. Non prime items not shipped by Amazon can take longer, in some cases much longer. And common canned goods staples pass in and out of being in stock.

I think it depends on where the item comes from and who the seller is. Many of the Prime items are sold/fulfilled by Amazon and Amazon has a fulfillment center not far from me, so some items are coming next day, others can take 4-5 days.

 

[Certaindeaf]

I went to Costco yesterday evening and they were out paper towels and TP. They had Kleenex brand Kleenex only. Not sure if they were out or did run out for day and didn't restock intentionally or not.

A lot of resellers use costco.
I drive by a 7-11 and the whole parking lot is full of shipping containers, no parking. The owner of this store has crammed them with goods.

 

[Member 52301]

Costco warns customers over delays on essential household item

Costco’s warnings to customers is just the latest after the retailer announced a shortage of supplies on its website several weeks ago, noting that some warehouses may have temporary item limits.

www.foxbusiness.com

Costco put a limit on some of their items.

Toilet paper was one of them. (ALL brands from what I gather. ONE package per day.)

(Side note: My husband does 99% of the grocery shopping/buying - in and out. Plus he has been shopping at WINCO more since we NOW have a store here in town. Sometimes he shops at Walmart or another PNW store for some other products that they only carry in stock.

Many of our LOCAL MT grocery, gun, etc. stores have closed up and not just due to the 'flu' crapola. THAT 'flu' KILLED TONS OF BUSINESSES here and across the country. MORE STORES are STILL closing now too. In our LOCAL news. Throw in the nationwide ones.

FORCED SHUTDOWNS and other crapola which was ALL handled wrong from the gitgo from BOTH PARTIES and ALL sides KILLED businesses. Small and large companies. Pathetic! Wrong! LOOK at what was ALLOWED to stay open and what was SHUT DOWN! OMG!)

Back to the toilet paper discussion now.

Costoc's KIRKLAND large pack has LESS SHEETS PER ROLL but looks just as big.

I looked at our old one versus the new one.

Old = 30 Rolls @ 425 sheets per roll.

New = 30 Rolls @ 380 sheets per roll. Now it says 'wide sheets' on the package and the older one did not have this marked on their packages.

ADDED MORE HERE:

The last package of KIRKLAND toilet paper was $16.99 - the other day or week. I have seen it @ $19.99 previously in the PAST but I do NOT keep cash receipts super long and, if need be, I can get a copy of that from Costco.

I did not look at the Charmin packages in the pantry/storage closet for any size differences.

We have paper stock on hand and we have not bought any toilet paper for some time. I never run LOW there and I always rotate my stock of ANY type of product or food or whatever.

But the other day, my husband decided to buy one package of paper since we made a review of our pantry/closet - our own products and ones for donations. (We give household and personal ITEMS including food and NO money/check there.) That is when he NOTICED A SIGN regarding limitations. It may have been up longer and I did NOTICE IT in the news about Costco but HE had not been down that lane in our Costco store.

He did NOT go down all lanes in the Costco or Winco or Walmart or 'whatever' store when it came to food or household items. He was IN and out.

ALL grocery items not only MEAT/FISH/POULTRY have increased a LOT when it comes to their prices. I keep an envelope for food - CASH on hand and even though we had company... I could see the difference there PLUS by just looking at the CASH RECEIPTS.

(Everything is going UP in price!

U.S. currency is going down the toilet bowl with an even bigger flush as time goes marches on!)

We have been shopping at our OLD and LOCAL farm for some veggies and fruit whenever they are OPEN. We would rather support our LOCAL stores as much as we can.

Cate
ADDED MORE on cost per package.