Right now the board is filled with story after story about procurement issues with everything from bearings, to Dodge trucks, every car part in the land, building materials, and pretty much everything made of any sort of metal. WITHOUT flinging any poo in either direction at the red and blue teams, what is actually going on? This has been building for months and I think we are in for a pretty rough time ahead. I deal with around 30 or so companies that most of you know and use parts from and a few you may not know. These are the companies that make our stuff. A lot are companies based here and some are importers for various products. BOTH of these are months behind schedule and getting worse. The overwhelming arch that connects them all is MATERIALS. You cannot make your widgets without raw material in some fashion. Where are they???? People are ordering parts in record numbers at least here.

People are calling from everywhere hunting parts of every sort. As Mopar guys (and gals) we are often used to having to wait for parts. A lot of other people are not! I call it drive through mentality. I often here from folks new to our side of the car culture that they had no idea things were so hard to get. The last twenty years have seen a flood of new parts that everyone is all to eager to purchase. While aluminum hemi blocks have always been a wait for it.....most of the commonly needed parts were available with a bit of hunting. Hey company S does not have it available but company J does. I believe the reason that S and J are having so many issues is their sales teams are overloaded with the "where is my stuff calls" and managing back orders which have become a GRADE A nightmare for anyone trying to manage it. I have more open invoices than I have ever had by an order of 10.

I ordered a commonly available part that is in wide usage from an age old supplier. We use enough to order 50 at a time to keep them available. I waited for a full year. Nothing. You cannot complete any engine build without one so started hunting. Found some sources on the web. SO now I have to order 1 little part from three suppliers to keep up with orders. Now these guys are running out. Everyone is waiting on parts for everything and it keeps getting worse. No dodge trucks!! Say what? I talk to lots of people everyday (including some of you) and nearly everyone is ticked off and upset about the way things are going these days.

I know it is easy to blame the Covid, and politics for what is going on but this seems different to me. I have no grand conspiracy plan to unveil or politician to blame but it is starting to feel like we are being "herded". Which brings me to my point. Buckle up. I think this is just the start of coming attractions. Even my international customers are asking me " hey are you guys ok over there"? I have some more thoughts on the logistical reasons a lot of this is going on but they are just symptoms of a growing problem. I just cannot see things going back to anything that most of us would call normal anytime soon. Feel free to flame.
Todd

With everyone outsourcing to China and other low cost "jurisdictions" its gonna take time to get production back online or relocated back home. Spoke to my machinist and he tells me a well know bearing manufacturer has moved back and set up a local production plant in local state with cheaper wage costs but still local.

This will ultimately be inflationary so watch the bond yields

Glad you posted this Todd. At least I know whats going on.

So sad to hear your misfortunes Bigfoot!

I am an overseas buyer of Moparts (40 years) and its been a rough time for everyone.

Firstly to buy stuff you need money, (hard to find at the moment).
Secondly its a 'Hobby thing' we are mostly talking about with Mopars, not ultra important when folks are dropping dead.

The supply-chain is breaking down for 'old car parts' and ELECTRIC is coming real fast!

Some are saying the MOST important part 'FUEL aka GAS' for oil-burners is gonna be phased OUT!
Folks are thinking, ''is it worth investing in a dinosaur' car...?

Can I be bothered to wait a year for a laughter shaft and a giggle pin for my 60 year old car...

That's what happened in the early 90's, I couldn't find parts for my 69 Charger R/T, so it had to go...(long story)
Sold it cheap (5K) and now its worth 75K...

You live and learn and know stuff that you wish you didn't...

I think the biggest problem is that everything was setup for "Just in time inventory". A company uses 500 of something every week, so they keep 550 of that something and order 500 every week. The company supplying the part also does this, and the companies that have the raw materials to make these parts also do this. So say demand slows down, no big deal you just reduce your order. But if supply suddenly stops, or demand goes crazy, or BOTH(Covid) you have a big problem where now you need 1000 a week, but its not there, production was already "just in time" and now that its behind it can't keep up, and this happens to everyone that has a hand in making that part. Then add the covid factor in where people may be afraid to hire more help because of uncertainty OR they can't get help because people are sitting on stimulus money or much larger than normal unemployment money.

The toilet paper shortage is a good example. Everyone wipes there rear(hopefully) so they just keep kicking toilet paper out. They have the production knob set to 9 and have had for years so reason to hire more people or build more lines, they are consistently kicking out poop tickets and making money. So for some reason everyone goes out and buys TP for a disease that effects your lungs and the toilet paper people need to crank up production, turn the production knob to 11! OOPS the knob only goes to 3 now because of government rules about distance and shut downs etc and even when things were good the knob only went to 9.5 because that is all they ever needed because of millions of rolls of toilet paper in inventory around the country.

I work with one major car part and that is Batteries. I am the GM for a Battery Distributor, we have 9 employees. Covid hits, things are shutting down, it gets SSSLLLLOOOOWWWWWW for a couple of weeks. I start to reduce orders because we aren't selling anything. The owner and I start talking about how we handle this, who we may need to lay off and how the future looks for the next few months. The world shuts down about this time and BUSINESS GOES ABSOLUTELY CRAZY. The big problem is business is NUTS and the suppliers are shut down so back orders immediately become a problem. The time I am speaking of is late march to early may 2020 and we have had very full shipments since them. The warehouses got empty while the plants were shut down, and it has been almost impossible to fill them back up. My orders are usually only about 75%-80% full and sometimes less than 50%.

I think my few examples happened everywhere. Nobody is setup for zero demand then double demand. Its a big hole that won't be fixed for awhile. I know if I was an business that was doing well and somewhat maxed out I would have a hard time dropping a few million bucks to add a line of production or whatever right now due to the weirdness and uncertainty going on in the world still.

I'm in the Power Equipment business and we're in the same boat. I also talk to people in the Snowmobile, ATV / Side by Side business and they can't get product either.

One reason I can see is most all manufacture's transitioned over to "Lean Manufacturing" 15 - 20 years ago. What this means is no one carries inventory anymore, starting at the assembly plant all the way down the the suppliers supplier.

Then compound this with all the acquisitions over the last 20 years there are not as many suppliers as there used to be to turn to.

So all it took was a hiccup in the system like a shut down to allow the whole house of cards to come tumbling down.



(Not getting Political here) but remember when President Trump kept saying "WE CAN'T SHUT THIS COUNTRY DOWN".... I'm sure this is a big reason why he was saying this.

I work at an automotive manufacturing facility and our overall sales were up higher in 2020 than 2019 and we did not produce anything for 7 weeks due to COVID, but a lot of the stimulus money did what it was meant to do people spent it but there was very little production so when we came back online not only were we behind all of the changes in this pandemic issue nobody wanted to work and they were still collecting money. My guys with unemployment and the extra payments were collecting almost $1000 a week, they were calling me from the beach in Fl. and they would use any excuse not to work, and finding any help is a problem so on Fri. we were working on a contingency plan for the next few weeks because the $1400 per person is about to hit and we know we will have big attendance issues.

It seems to be everything. Tried to buy a major appliance lately? Good luck. Everybody, and I mean everybody, is two months out minimum.

You can't shut the manufacturing world down for 6 - 9 months, in some places a year (so far), without consequences...
That's the flaw in "just in time" flow.
A lot of other indicators show that the car hobby is stronger than ever, but the umbilical cord that feeds pretty much everything has been tied in a knot.

After I transitioned to “work from home” and my music gigs were all cancelled,
I went a bit crazy with the car hobby, spent a whole lot of money and am able
To spend a ton more time in the shop working on bucket list items. The kind of stuff I always wanted to do, but never thought I’d have the time.

Safe to say every cent of stimulus money was spent on that, along with the proceeds from
Some significant parts sales, but to add on to it my fuel expenses went down to peanuts because the need to commute
Disappeared too. Spend, spend spend.

I almost made it a part time job to just get everything I needed and I’ve never been able to immerse myself
In the hobby quite as hardcore as I do now. I went from being bummed nobody wanted to work on
The car (2018-2019 I asked around and was either turned away or given ridiculous prices), to looking forward
To doing it myself. Though some of it is nasty work, it just needed to happen.

One truck driver delivering the trunk floor complained about COVID, I said if it wasn’t for COVID we wouldn’t be talking right
Now, and I probably wouldn’t have ordered these parts.

Had to wait close to a month for some of the reproduction sheet metal to show up. It seems
I’m not the only one down this path.

All you need to do is talk to anyone that is trying to build something in USA with all components made in USA with American materials to see what a nightmare that is. Jamie Passon is dealing with this problem of steel and shops trying to build an " all AMERICAN built" 5-speed transmission that will bolt in place of your 833 box. There has been one headache after another and this was WAY before the Covid deal.

Gus

And not just automotive. I've had issues getting deck screws from my local store. All sorts of industries got affected.

I've ordered a set of air bags from a dealer that listed the part in stock, it's been a little over a week now haven't receive nothing yet not even a tracking # start to wonder if they saying in-stock so they can charge the cards

the biggest issue is the entry level work force that does everything from load parts in a machine to sweeping and or mopping floors. all these things have to be done. these are the giuys making anywhere from 12-17/hr. with continued availability of unemployment benefits of 600-700 per week, and alot of them not being required to attend work if your home watching kids who can't go back to school, there is no way that any production is getting done. i've got a roofer buddy paying 20 cash/hr just to get people to show up. this is going to have way long term effects as even when these people come back to work its going to take 18+ months for them to get remotivated

I see empty shelves and stuff OOS for extended periods in the supermarket, along with prices going up.

There is a lot of insanity going around, it just "feels" like there are bad times ahead.

Chinavirus didn't kill the economy. The government did.

The amount of money the government is giving people is rediculous. I know some that are taking in $3500 per month. That may not be enough for people who have a house payment but for someone that only rents why work. Add in stimulus money and they are even less motivated.

Her is an example single parent $575 per wk unemployment, now an additional $300 per month per child under 6 will be coming, he has two, then there is $650 in snap payment (old food stamp program). Thats $3550 per month. Then there is free pre-school so he spends the day at the beach.

He is making more not working. His expenses are $2000 per month. His feeling is why go back to work untill the gravy train comes to a stop. I'm sure many are doing this.

" Chinavirus didn't kill the economy. The government did."

This ^^^

Guys it isn’t just race parts. Being single I do all of my shopping and the choices that were once there even at Walmart aren’t there. I don’t go shopping just to shop so I start a list and it sets there for days filling it out and try to keep some stock at home. Three trips in close to three weeks there wasn’t a can of cat food in the store. A guy working there said it’s just not coming in.

stocking at Walmart ain't what it use to be i get it when i can.

We haven't seen that yet where we are. From December thru mid April I live in New Smyrna Beach Florida. The Walmart down here is always stocked. Maybe it has to do with Florida not shutting down like other areas. I'm sure as areas open up inventory will increase but for now companies are more than likely shipping where places are open.

Another thing I saw on the news was that there is a HUGE number of shipping containers just sitting at the docks. They can't move the containers out fast enough.