New Trucks Piling Up, Satellite Images Reveal...

I still can't seem to wrap my head around all this shortage business. We are told there is a major lumber shortage. Prices through the roof and can't get anything in less than 8 weeks once paid for. And the millions of board feet of timber that was cut down due to wildfires. There has been literally almost a billion board feet cut down that is good to be cut for lumber. I live close to 4 mills and watch train cars and trucks at an increased rate leaving with cut and ready lumber. But the price is going up at a rate of 8% a week for the last year and a half.

It's the same with clothing. I see cloths being shorted at stores as well. And I still can't see why this is. Unless it's a ploy to raise pricing and cause the "pandemic scare".
 
JHornsby3 said:
I still can't seem to wrap my head around all this shortage business. We are told there is a major lumber shortage. Prices through the roof and can't get anything in less than 8 weeks once paid for. And the millions of board feet of timber that was cut down due to wildfires. There has been literally almost a billion board feet cut down that is good to be cut for lumber. I live close to 4 mills and watch train cars and trucks at an increased rate leaving with cut and ready lumber. But the price is going up at a rate of 8% a week for the last year and a half.

It's the same with clothing. I see cloths being shorted at stores as well. And I still can't see why this is. Unless it's a ploy to raise pricing and cause the "pandemic scare".
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Do you not see that we have been on the biggest home remodeling and home building bender in the history of our country in the past year?
 
My son is finishing his basement. 2x4 wood is thru the roof ... so he picked up steel today at $7.50/pc because it is going up $1.50 Monday
 
I get that with all the home remodels and building. But with so much timber being cut and mills at extreme full compacity, the prices wouldn't be so high. We had two major fires and caused the tree huggers to let loose of timber that has been shut down for over 40 years. Millions of acers of land clear cut because folks are all of a sudden afraid their large homes in the trees are threatened. There is so much lumber cut that they can't truck it fast enough.

So lots of product, so much there is no room for storage, lets raise prices to historic highs? Not one bit of sense.
 
I sat in on a steel seminar the other day. What appears to have happened is all the big suppliers (likely of everything) shut down when the pandemic hit. So they quickly cut back on their capacity. Except someone forgot to tell the consuming public. For the most part, consumers still continued to buy stuff. The suppliers overreacted -- cut capacity way more than the eventual sales decline. Now they are having a heck of a time catching up. Throw in low interest rates and a few dollars of stimulus funny money, and you have all these dollars chasing very few goods. So instead of consumers saying "F that, I'll wait" they are throwing more money at it and bidding the prices up. It's nuts.
 
The steel gutter guard we install has go up by 210% prices went up on the 1st. I ordered 300 sections to avoid the increase, for now
 
My wife follows the semicon industry as part of her work. The basic problem with vehicle shortages is this:
  • Cars use a ton of semicon chips to run all their systems and subsystems. The chips are are specialized, and have a fairly long lead time to find their way into finished goods.
  • The car makers panicked and cancelled their chip orders assuming car sales would plummet.
  • Semicon makers filled their production pipeline with huge orders for all the electronics people wanted by being stuck at home: tablets, PCs, game consoles, security cameras, etc, etc.
  • By the time vehicle makers realized their mistake and that sales were actually UP, it was too late. Their chip production slots were filled with other types of chips and they had to get to the back of the line.

I'm currently in a graduate program to get an M.S. in technological systems management. One of my professors in an industry guy and he's a strong advocate of just in time and lean operations. We've had some discussions about if JIT is going to continue to be used like it has been. I feel like with these supply chain shortages and shocks, manufacturers are going to want to keep more inventory on hand so they can actually produce a final good. It's fine that Ford can turn out the truck bodies, but it's not good to them if they can't actually make deliveries because of component shortages. It's just work in process inventory that's costing money because it can't be sold.
 
b_arrington said:
My wife follows the semicon industry as part of her work. The basic problem with vehicle shortages is this:
  • Cars use a ton of semicon chips to run all their systems and subsystems. The chips are are specialized, and have a fairly long lead time to find their way into finished goods.
  • The car makers panicked and cancelled their chip orders assuming car sales would plummet.
  • Semicon makers filled their production pipeline with huge orders for all the electronics people wanted by being stuck at home: tablets, PCs, game consoles, security cameras, etc, etc.
  • By the time vehicle makers realized their mistake and that sales were actually UP, it was too late. Their chip production slots were filled with other types of chips and they had to get to the back of the line.

I'm currently in a graduate program to get an M.S. in technological systems management. One of my professors in an industry guy and he's a strong advocate of just in time and lean operations. We've had some discussions about if JIT is going to continue to be used like it has been. I feel like with these supply chain shortages and shocks, manufacturers are going to want to keep more inventory on hand so they can actually produce a final good. It's fine that Ford can turn out the truck bodies, but it's not good to them if they can't actually make deliveries because of component shortages. It's just work in process inventory that's costing money because it can't be sold.
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Exactly what you said. The automakers paniced, cancelled chips and steel. Now they can't get either. As for JIT nobody is going to hold enough chips to weather this type of storm.
 
Golfman25 said:
Exactly what you said. The automakers paniced, cancelled chips and steel. Now they can't get either. As for JIT nobody is going to hold enough chips to weather this type of storm.
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Fair about chips. That's a pretty extreme case though. Given how many industries are affected by supplies shortages, I wonder if businesses will be likely to hold additional inventory as a buffer. A guy I know has a Grocco strainer and the basket sprung a leak. Grocco doesn't have any spares so his is out of commission.
 
Blueone said:
You need to get over that... tell me one thing tucker has lied about or bent the truth....just one. If you don’t listen to the other side you will never be balanced...research what he says
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Hey, I listen to you guys, right?

I do try to be open to different viewpoints - otherwise you get locked in an echo chamber. He just rubs be the wrong way and has for a long time.
 
b_arrington said:
My wife follows the semicon industry as part of her work. The basic problem with vehicle shortages is this:
  • Cars use a ton of semicon chips to run all their systems and subsystems. The chips are are specialized, and have a fairly long lead time to find their way into finished goods.
  • The car makers panicked and cancelled their chip orders assuming car sales would plummet.
  • Semicon makers filled their production pipeline with huge orders for all the electronics people wanted by being stuck at home: tablets, PCs, game consoles, security cameras, etc, etc.
  • By the time vehicle makers realized their mistake and that sales were actually UP, it was too late. Their chip production slots were filled with other types of chips and they had to get to the back of the line.

I'm currently in a graduate program to get an M.S. in technological systems management. One of my professors in an industry guy and he's a strong advocate of just in time and lean operations. We've had some discussions about if JIT is going to continue to be used like it has been. I feel like with these supply chain shortages and shocks, manufacturers are going to want to keep more inventory on hand so they can actually produce a final good. It's fine that Ford can turn out the truck bodies, but it's not good to them if they can't actually make deliveries because of component shortages. It's just work in process inventory that's costing money because it can't be sold.
Click to expand...


Yes, some of our manufactures have practiced this JIT model for a few years now. Sometimes it works when you have a “stocking” distributor. Problem is, distributors don’t want to stock anything, even high running product. They would rather drop-ship directly to the customer from the manufacturer. Now in a crunch, no one has anything. That’s been my experience. ( not including the chip shortage, just using this as another example)
 
Blueone said:
You need to get over that... tell me one thing tucker has lied about or bent the truth....just one. If you don’t listen to the other side you will never be balanced...research what he says
Click to expand...
Part of achieving balance is recognizing when either side is not being truthful. I agree on listening to all sides and find that all "commentators" either shade the truth or outright lie to make a point. Sadly, I think Tucker is more dishonest than most. A Google search on "Tucker Carlson lies" came back with almost 56 million results.

You Literally Can't Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox's Lawyers
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/9177...s-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye

In the clip, Tucker repeated the claim he has been making that frozen windmills caused the Texas power outages. This has been rated a "Pants on Fire" lie by several fact-checkers.
 
Oh gawd....

“
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) told the Austin American Statesman that roughly 12,000 megawatts of Texas' wind generation capacity had been hampered as of Sunday due to frozen wind turbines. However, they also noted that unfrozen wind turbines are spinning at a higher rate than expected, helping to offset the losses.

ERCOT operates Texas' electric grid and manages the deregulated energy market for 75% of the state, "This is a unique winter storm that's more widespread with lots of moisture in West Texas, where there's a lot of times not a lot of moisture," ERCOT senior director of system operations Dan Woodfin told the outlet. "It's certainly more than what we would typically assume."


I guess Dan is a liar too...
 
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