2021 Supply Disruptions

[vdeane]

Rental Cars in case you are planning on vacationing.

What makes rental cars interesting is that the price of them has already been abnormally high for the entire past year. Now the prices are climbing higher still. They seem to have gotten caught in a rent-seeking market condition.

It's also been generally speculated that while rental car prices will come down to earth a bit as agencies are gradually able to regrow their inventory and the glut of backlogged vacation demand passes, they will always remain higher than they were in 2019 because there will not be as many business travelers renting cars for a week and putting 50 miles on them to help subsidize vacationers racking up hundreds or even thousands of miles taking them on road trips.

The problem is that they sold half of their fleets when no one was traveling, and now they don't have the capital yet to reup. 

Chris

Sounds to me like they made a bad business decision and shot themselves in the foot.

[Duke87]

The problem is that they sold half of their fleets when no one was traveling, and now they don't have the capital yet to reup. 

Sounds to me like they made a bad business decision and shot themselves in the foot.

Not really. They did what they had to to remain solvent. Holding onto larger fleets wasn't really a viable option.

That said, I don't think anyone anticipated last summer when they were selling a lot of their fleets off that demand would come roaring back as fast as it is. A much longer, slower recovery of demand for travel was anticipated. Of course, the vaccination process was also anticipated to be much longer and slower than it has actually been.

Meanwhile as I understand it the inability of rental agencies to build back their fleets super quickly is not limited by how much cash they have on hand (they can borrow against future revenue if they have to after all), but rather by how quickly new cars can be manufactured. Automakers don't really have the ability to surge their manufacturing capacity on a dime to meet a sudden demand spike, the assembly lines move at fixed speed. And aforementioned shortages of computer chips and rubber are in some cases forcing them to slow their assembly lines down.

[kphoger]

Used cars too.  This is NOT the time to be shopping for a used car.  Stock is limited, prices are high, and there's no wiggle room on the price.

[GaryV]

The other problem rental companies are having in getting new cars is the computer chip shortage that is shutting down production.  Rental companies are the "outlet mall" for vehicle makers.  They dump cars at at low price when they have too much supply.  Now, with the diminished supply, the automakers would rather sell to retail and get the higher revenue.

[Rothman]

Used cars too.  This is NOT the time to be shopping for a used car.  Stock is limited, prices are high, and there's no wiggle room on the price.

I had to.  I did find inventories poor overall, but did end up with a good enough deal for me on a 2020 model with 5,000 miles.

So, if you have to buy a used car right now, you have to have a broader search than usual.

[ZLoth]

Drivers could see gas shortages this summer with tanker truck drivers in short supply

[kevinb1994]

Drivers could see gas shortages this summer with tanker truck drivers in short supply

Not good for us who are planning to travel. Add this to the current rental car problem and you have a cluster****.

[ZLoth]

Glass Shortage Has Distillers, Hardware Stores Rationing Their Bottles

[Scott5114]

Glass Shortage Has Distillers, Hardware Stores Rationing Their Bottles

I wonder how much of this is because of changes in recycling policy. It used to be that you could include glass with in your single-stream recycle bin and leave it out curbside. Recyclers didn't like that because glass would break and get mixed in with other materials. So many places with single-stream recycling no longer accept glass and direct you to drop it off at a recycling station. I have to wonder if some people decided this was too much of a pain in the ass and just started throwing it away.

[Duke87]

I wonder how much of this is because of changes in recycling policy.

Doubt much if any. Per what I'm reading it's a global problem. And it ultimately has the same basic cause as shortages of all sorts of things: lockdowns in various countries at various times forced glass manufacturing facilities to temporarily shut down. And then when they try to start back up again they have trouble getting back to full operating capacity - because some of the employees they sent home found other jobs, or are unwilling to come back to working in a factory where they may be putting their health at risk by doing so. After all, most of the world's manufacturing capacity is in countries where there is not yet widespread availability of vaccines.

If nothing else, this is a good reminder that we're not an island and what happens outside our borders still affects us. It's all well and good that we're transitioning to a stage where covid is no longer a major threat to our own public health domestically, but as long as it's still ravaging countries we import things from, the availability of said imports will be negatively impacted and we'll be contending with shortages.

[ZLoth]

Why Are Thieves Stealing Steering Wheels in My Neighborhood?

[hbelkins]

I've run into an odd price difference lately at Walmart. I like my soft drinks in the 500 ml (16.9 oz) bottles. A six-pack of Coke products (Coke, Sprite, Coke Zero, etc.) costs $2.75. But Diet Coke costs $3.48. I don't understand why one product in the family costs more -- which stinks because while I can tolerate Coke Zero, I prefer Diet Coke.

[Duke87]

Why Are Thieves Stealing Steering Wheels in My Neighborhood?

Not new. I had someone smash my window and steal my airbag back in 2014. They didn't take the whole wheel though, the car was still driveable!

It was weird too because the smashed window was the first thing I noticed, but then when I went looking through the center console and around the car in general nothing seemed to be missing so I was like "what the hell did they not steal anything?". Then I saw the steering wheel...

[ZLoth]

[CtrlAltDel]

This one, to me, seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. I mean, I'm no Rockefeller, but this 15% increase in the price of gas would not be enough to change my travel plans.

[Bruce]

In March 2020, I picked up a pair of on-sale WD Easystores to shuck out the hard drives. Great timing on my part...

...except that my next PC upgrade was to be my GPU. That will take years to return to normal prices.

[Duke87]

This one, to me, seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. I mean, I'm no Rockefeller, but this 15% increase in the price of gas would not be enough to change my travel plans.

It's an exaggeration because it commits the deadly sin of not starting the vertical axis at zero.

The three graphs shown have start to finish price increases of, respectively, 133%, 46%, and 15%. All are made to look equally severe by this graphical malfeasance when they are not.

[CtrlAltDel]

This one, to me, seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. I mean, I'm no Rockefeller, but this 15% increase in the price of gas would not be enough to change my travel plans.

It's an exaggeration because it commits the deadly sin of not starting the vertical axis at zero.

The three graphs shown have start to finish price increases of, respectively, 133%, 46%, and 15%. All are made to look equally severe by this graphical malfeasance when they are not.

Oh good. I like confirmation that I'm not crazy.

[dlsterner]

This one, to me, seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. I mean, I'm no Rockefeller, but this 15% increase in the price of gas would not be enough to change my travel plans.

It's an exaggeration because it commits the deadly sin of not starting the vertical axis at zero.

The three graphs shown have start to finish price increases of, respectively, 133%, 46%, and 15%. All are made to look equally severe by this graphical malfeasance when they are not.

Yes, it's a very common way to "Lie With Statistics" - starting the veritical axis at non-zero.  See it very often.

[Pink Jazz]

As for toilet paper, ever since the pandemic started, we found Angel Soft Mega Rolls to be the best bang for the buck, providing a balance between price and quality (being priced above the store private labels, but below the premium brands such as Quilted Northern, Charmin, and Cottonelle). Angel Soft Mega Rolls gives you more sheets per roll than the premium brands, while still being decent enough quality.  Angel Soft also seems easier to get, since price-conscious customers will go for the store private labels, while brand loyalists will go for the premium brands.

[ZLoth]

Will this clarify things for gas?



I'm not going to argue about the statistics starting at a non-zero point, thus exaggerating the percentage difference. But consider:

• One of the major suppliers of chlorine, BioLab near Lake Charles, Louisiana, had it's factory destroyed last August due to Hurricane Laura. That factory, responsible for 40% of the chlorine tablets manufactured, won't resume operations until spring, 2020.
• There is a shortage of HazMat-qualified truckers who can deliver fuel at the moment, prompting fuel delivery challenges. Some elected to leave the field during the early part of the pandemic, vowing not to return.
• And, those hard drives? I was planning on expanding the capacity of my personal TrueNAS server this year from eight 5 TB drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration. That means that $140 increase is actually $1120 (before tax), and I won't actually see a space increase until I replace and resilver the eighth drive.

As for GPU prices.... yeah.... I'm still rocking my 1080 that I got in 2018. My almost-seven year old desktop (assembled in September, 2014) has to last at least another year as I'm holding off until DDR5 memory and compatible CPUs/motherboards become available.

[CtrlAltDel]

Will this clarify things for gas?

Not to my mind, no. It seems clear to me that, with increasing demand, prices are returning to more or less what they were before the pandemic, maybe a bit higher, but not by much. Here's the chart for the previous ten years:



Will they get higher? Perhaps, perhaps not. It does seem to be the trend. Nonetheless, as things now stand, I don't think there's anything especially problematic going on here.

[ET21]

Yeah everyone kind of forgot that gas was pushing $3 pre-pandemic. Prices are starting to come back down after the hack but we're pretty much back to where we were

[ZLoth]

Need a backup generator? You are looking at February of next year now.

[kphoger]

My friend took down the fence between his yard and the neighbors–and then checked the current price of lumber...