ordered and paid for a new gas cook stove the end of January.... still waiting........

Given the issues food manufacturers are having, it is a big deal - for them, it’s mostly due to labor shortages.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
My belief (mine alone) a lot of this is BS. Plain and simple. I do not buy into a lot of it.

I have not had one thing I have been in need of that I could not get. Not one thing.

Try building a house and ordering appliances.

Sometimes it’s the little things that you hardly notice. Like some baking spices.

Shelves don’t seem tin get stocked as quickly as before.

quote:

Originally posted by oldbill123:
And the MOB probably still controls the docks

Wrong coast. You are thinking of the CSX docks in NJ. Supervised an intermodal operation there back in the early 2000's and the organized crime/theft there was astounding.

i know several people who have bought new cars with little issue. Maybe a two week or three week wait. Price was not over inflated to much either.

The building things is who in their right mind would try to build a house in the last six months, I don't know.

I did not say it is not a thing. But way over blown imho and we know why.

And I don't need a bunch of imported garbage anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:
Given the issues food manufacturers are having, it is a big deal - for them, it’s mostly due to labor shortages.

And more now with JBS hack. My beef mainly comes from the Midwest and this hurts also.
My casings for my beef sticks (Slim Jim's but ALOT better) were sitting on a ship in Maryland because they were backed up unloading ships because of workforce issues.
I have also had a revolving door at work and I'm struggling to keep people even though I raised wages $3 an hour. So that affects me as well and I am behind on orders.
It all adds up eventually.

BUSINESS dictates to government! Why did Micron and others get to 'take over' the semi-conductor manufacturing facilities in the US, built by others. Gotta luv' that whine and cheez! Who was too big to fail?

quote:

Originally posted by FishOn:

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
My belief (mine alone) a lot of this is BS. Plain and simple. I do not buy into a lot of it.

I have not had one thing I have been in need of that I could not get. Not one thing.

Try building a house and ordering appliances.

I ordered a Speed Queen washer and dryer in January and it took 5 months to get them. Insane. On top of that the washer is all screwed up and there is something seriously wrong with it. Waiting for repair people to check it out tomorrow. I swear, if I have to wait another 5 months for a replacement.......

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
i know several people who have bought new cars with little issue. Maybe a two week or three week wait. Price was not over inflated to much either.

The building things is who in their right mind would try to build a house in the last six months, I don't know.

I did not say it is not a thing. But way over blown imho and we know why.

And I don't need a bunch of imported garbage anyway.

I bought a new car April 13. Walked into the dealership, asked if they had such and such a car in a certain color, and they said yes. Didn't get much of a discount, just $500 off MSRP, but it was better than nothing. Drove home with the new car same day.

I work in the bicycle industry selling various products. Everything in the bicycle industry is produced overseas, mostly Asia, some Italy. Getting product into containers has been a nightmare. Product is piling up at the factories because we cannot get our hands on containers. And then once we do get our hands on containers, good luck buying a spot on the ship.

One of my companies, 15 months ago, a 40 foot container cost them $4K to ship to the US. And it took exactly 30 days to arrive. Now that price has risen to $18.5K and is still rising. At $18.5K the shipping companies are giving spots to higher bidders and bumping us. And it is now taking 60-75 days for the product to arrive.

Interesting stuff here. I don’t see Just In Time Manufacturing going away anytime soon. I work in the automotive world and we are under constant pressure to reduce costs. You have to be extremely efficient these days to stay in the game.

The past year has been quite the real world lesson in how global economics/supply works.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:

The building things is who in their right mind would try to build a house in the last six months, I don't know.

There is very low inventory in the real estate market currently. New construction is selling rapidly here. My fiancé is making a killing on new construction deals and she is lucky for it. The builder is getting hammered though, as material prices keep increasing and the lumber yard won’t honor a quote for more than a week.

quote:

One of my companies, 15 months ago, a 40 foot container cost them $4K to ship to the US. And it took exactly 30 days to arrive. Now that price has risen to $18.5K and is still rising

I got an e-mail the other day regarding coil nails for roofing. They mentioned this exact problem, and the costs were pretty similar. China to the US was about $4,500 over a year ago, and currently pushing $17,000.

The price of lumber is dropping by the day. Don't expect anyone in the chain to say it is though. If you do not pay attention than you will get screwed by just about everyone in the chain. When the cost goes up and down. Just the everyone is in it for themselves world we live in.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
My belief (mine alone) a lot of this is BS. Plain and simple. I do not buy into a lot of it.

I have not had one thing I have been in need of that I could not get. Not one thing.

Spend some time on the Net looking for #209 Shotgun primers for less than $45.00 per thousand and then post back your success. It's just one small example of what a shortage is.

I do not consider that a shortage of supply.It is not like those are in a container somewhere with a bunch of other chicom junk. Extended panic buying caused the shortage. The manufacturing of this item and many others is more than its ever been. That is a completely different scenario. It is not like they have not been producing them. They are producing them in record numbers and have been. Nice try though

This is what happens when we let "public health" people make decisions that are way outside their area of experience. They didn't even get the public health part right because the lockdowns had very little actual effect.

Chernobyl taught us that you do not throttle a Russian nuclear reactor down to idle then try to bring it back up to full power quickly.

Hopefully the past year and a half will ensure that we never ever try this again no matter what bug is on the loose. Take reasonable precautions, protect the vulnerable, and carry on.

Out-of-Control Shipping Costs Fire Up Prices From Coffee to Toys
Bloomberg

By Alex Longley, Catherine Bosley and Deirdre Hipwell (Bloomberg) —

The skyrocketing price of shipping goods across the globe may hit your pocketbook sooner than you think — from that cup of coffee you get each morning to the toys you were thinking of buying your kids.

Transporting a 40-foot steel container of cargo by sea from Shanghai to Rotterdam now costs a record $10,522, a whopping 547% higher than the seasonal average over the last five years, according to Drewry Shipping. With upwards of 80% of all goods trade transported by sea, freight-cost surges are threatening to boost the price of everything from toys, furniture and car parts to coffee, sugar and anchovies, compounding concerns in global markets already bracing for accelerating inflation.

“In 40 years in toy retailing I have never known such challenging conditions from the point of view of pricing,” Gary Grant, the founder and executive chairman of the U.K. toy shop The Entertainer, said in a interview. He has had to stop importing giant teddy bears from China because their retail price would have had to double to add in higher freight costs. “Will this have an impact on retail prices? My answer has to be yes.”

A confluence of factors — soaring demand, a shortage of containers, saturated ports and too few ships and dock workers — have contributed to the squeeze on transportation capacity on every freight path. Recent Covid outbreaks in Asian export hubs like China have made matters worse. The pain is most acutely felt on longer-distance routes, making shipping from Shanghai to Rotterdam 67% more expensive than to the U.S. West Coast, for instance.

Often dismissed as having an insignificant impact on inflation because they were a tiny part of the overall expense, rising shipping costs are now forcing some economists to pay them a bit more attention. Although still seen as a relatively minor input, HSBC Holdings Plc estimates that a 205% increase in container shipping costs over the past year could raise euro-area producer prices by as much as 2%.

At the retail level, vendors are faced with three choices: halt trade, raise prices or absorb the cost to pass it on later, all of which would effectively mean more expensive goods, said Jordi Espin, strategic relations manager at the European Shippers’ Council, a Brussels-based trade group that represents about 100,000 retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers.

“These costs are already being passed to consumers,” he said.

Prices for customers are rising in other ways, too. For instance, anchovies from Peru have largely stopped being imported into Europe because with the higher freight costs they’re not competitive relative to what’s available locally, Espin said. Also, European olive growers can no longer afford to export to the U.S., he said.

Meanwhile, shipping bottlenecks and costs are hurting the transport of arabica coffee beans, favored by Starbucks, and robusta beans used to make instant coffee, which are largely sourced from Asia.

Few industry observers expect container rates to retreat much any time soon. Lars Jensen, CEO of consultant Vespucci Maritime in Copenhagen, said on a Flexport Inc. webinar last week that there’s “zero slack in the system.”

Closely held French shipping company CMA CGM SA, which raked in net income of $2.1 billion in the first quarter compared with $48 million in the year-ago period, indicated recently that it expects “sustained demand for the transportation of consumer goods” to continue throughout the year.

Freight costs are more painful for companies that move clunky, low-value items like toys and furniture. “If they are bulky products it means you can’t get very many in the container and that will have a significant impact on the landed price of the goods,” said The Entertainer’s Grant.

For some lower-value furniture makers, freight now makes up about 62% of the retail value, according to Alan Murphy, CEO of consultant Sea-Intelligence in Copenhagen.

“You simply can’t survive on this,” he said. “Someone is bleeding very hard.”

Companies are desperately trying to work around the higher costs. Some have stopped exporting to certain locations while others are looking for goods or raw materials from nearer locations, according to Philip Damas, founder and operational head of Drewry Supply Chain Advisors.

“The longer these extreme shipping freight rates last, the more companies will take structural measures to shorten their supply chains,” Damas said. “Few companies can absorb a 15% increase in total delivered costs for internationally traded products.”

Some firms in Europe are resorting to extreme methods, like using truck convoys to get products including automotive parts, bikes and scooters from China, said Espin at the European Shippers’ Council.

Central bankers have so far been sanguine about the phenomenon, arguing that the rise in consumer prices tied to supply hiccups won’t last. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on June 10 that while supply-chain bottlenecks would push up production prices and the headline inflation rate is expected to rise further in the second half of this year, the effect will fade.

Several factors explain the relative lack of concern. Shipping costs only constitute a small fraction of the final price of a manufactured good, with economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimating in March — when China-Europe rates were about half of current levels — that internationally they made up less than 1%.

To top that, companies have annual contracts with the container lines, so the prices they’ve locked in are considerably lower than the headline-grabbing spot rates. Although the latest round of contract negotiations in May reflected the stronger spot market, HSBC trade economist Shanella Rajanayagam said that “the longer-term rates are much much lower than the spot rates, even if they are feeding through.”

With the end of lockdowns consumer demand is likely to shift to services from goods, but “the risk of course is that higher shipping costs persist — especially given ongoing shipping disruption — and that producers become more willing to pass these higher costs on to consumers,” Rajanayagam said.

While many economists note that even a full pass-through of higher shipping fares to consumers will have a marginal effect on headline inflation, Volker Wieland, a professor of economics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and a member of the German government’s council of economic advisers, warns that they might not be sufficiently factored in.

“Even if the order of magnitude is smaller than estimated, the dynamic builds over a year and has significant effects,” he said. “That means there’s a danger we’re underestimating the impact.”

–With assistance from Manisha Jha, Mai Ngoc Chau and Jasmine Ng.

© 2021 Bloomberg L.P.

https://gcaptain.com/out-of-co...from-coffee-to-toys/

My 12 year old Honda walk behind mower broke over the weekend. I went out yesterday to buy a new one, but there are none to be had.
Can't even order one.