All - Here is what is going on with supply chain, and part of the problem is the government paying people extra money to sit on their backside at home instead of working.
Today at our Ham Club field day, I sat down and talked to lots of members, drinking coffee, and learned quite a lot.
One of our members is a regional rep for a company which markets equipment for the car racing industry. He said they are not having supply issues, because they, in 2018 knew one of their competitors was going to declare bankruptcy and so they ordered lots of extra stuff to be able to satisfy the market after that. They sold historically high amounts of stuff in 2020, and this year have already passed last years totals, now how does this story relate.
Here is how, companies they have relationships with, and other companies here (my home town*) have had supply issues, why, well the supply chain is still very fractured, but, everything we use, gets to a store by a truck, currently (pre pandemic-shortage of 200,000 drivers for OTH trucks), now unless you are driver and work for Walmart, you might have been furloughed, or just now getting back to work. PLUS, containers needed on ships returning to far east are in short supply, stuck all over the place with no trucks to haul them back to the seaports, why. Simply, the workers are home making more money sitting on their backside than they can make by driving truck. Plus, many drivers are just now being called back to work, and if you were a private/owner operator, you may not have the contacts left or working to get loads to haul. Then we had the pipeline hack, thousand of loads sat, because no fuel for east coast transportation. That has ended, but the backlog is just now clearing. I went to Walmart today, they have their own trucking fleet, the shelves are 40% empty, and shortages of lots of things are in play. Frozen blueberries normally in stock, out, yeah the Toilet Paper, paper towels, et-all is now in stock, but lots of things are backordered or in long supply chain system and stuck someplace.
Then you had the idiots on the west coast shutting down whole states, ports closed for 3 months, thousands of ships unable to unload cargo, that is now over, but just. So, having DEF heads on a 747 is all well and good, that plane has to land at a "customs port of entry", and the load has to be inspected (customs inspectors-COVID-not working for while) , then those same parts need to be placed on a truck, and taken to points of distribution, which then sends to end user/retailer/business. If that load needs a truck, then it's "get in line, a very long broken line"
Personal experience, I ordered power supply and SWR meter in February 2021, they arrived two weeks ago. Kenwood has back order on the power cable/RS-292 serial cable and I ordered that in March, no delivery date has been provided. The whole world's supply and delivery system has been broken, and it may be middle of next year before things are back to normal, and all those "things" depend on some method of a delivery vehicle, i.e., truck of some type. *One local restaurant here, had to close early one day last week, did not have food to serve, no truck drivers to deliver. We ordered a new TV in December 11, 2020, it arrived at Costco on Jan 12, shipped to delivery station, and they could not tell me when it was going to be delivered, this was end of January, we canceled order, and Costco was pissed, but I aint waiting for over a month, because a TV is the least important thing on my to do list.
The list of things in short supply, is too long to list here, couple with higher fuel prices, shortage of drivers of all types for commercial vehicles, and well, if you have not figured it out by now, you wont. Report after report about shortages in auto industry says it may be mid 2022 before their production lines are working per normal, chips for many pieces of automobiles are in short supply. Blah, blah, blah, and on and on.
And, although I am not experiencing issues, knowing, of this issue will not derail any trips we have planned. If I had coach with codes showing, again, depending on where I was heading, and how far the rig might have to be towed would have bearing on trip. And although, I hate the thought of lawyers getting involved, my guess is, Spartan/Freightliner et-all cannot be held libel for "the supply chain to be broken and parts although on order, unable to be delivered". Yes, this has been a known problem since long before 2018, at least as longs as the DEF required pollution equipment has been on vehicles, Remember, it has taken almost 10 years for the market to be penetrated deeply enough for the engineering and design of this part to show up as defective or at least in suspect quality. As much as I want all our manufacturing brought home, I never will live in a perfect world. As long as "money talks and BS walks" is the watchword, manufacturers are going to source parts from the cheapest place, be that china or the USA. The only way this will stop, is for all of us to stop buying "made in china", and inform any and all places we do business with, it's made in USA, or Europe or we will not buy it.
, but I do know that this is possible.
