Shortage du jour

For me, the biggest shortage is a shortage of (my) patience. Every time I try to order nonperishable foods from Amazon, half of them are not available. I know that I can PROBABLY get each item next week if I wait, but after all we've been through it makes me nervous. Most recently, they were out of Jif peanut butter and spam (OK, I grew up in Hawaii! :LOL: ). :banghead: And also I couldn't find any of my favorite varieties of Campbell's or Progresso canned soups. I ended up getting a case of boring old chicken noodle.

Oh, by the way, I finally got around to filling up the gas tank on my car a day or two ago. No problem, no line, no pumps shut down, price was no higher than before the pipeline hack.
 
Don't want to ascribe any great meaning to it, but Costco was out of regular Cheerios today.
 
audreyh1 said:
Peanut butter and spam together? :eek: Ha ha
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:2funny: Well, maybe? I was thinking of just frying a slice of spam with eggs for breakfast now and then, and maybe some plain ol' peanut butter sandwiches? But there is so much that can be done with spam.. hmm...!
 
I have a bike rack and ebike on order since 4/1, and a Ford Bronco since last July.

Don’t know what shortages are causing my bike rack and ebike to be delayed, but the Bronco is delayed by microchip shortages and a top shortage due to the top contractor’s inability to get their new plant built and hire people.

Other shortage was African mahogany wood. And construction lumber is not really in shortage, but the prices are 3 times or more expensive than normal.
 
Speaking of bread, last year there was a shortage of flour and yeast. I guess people stocked up, for fear of food shortage. When my wife found a restaurant-supply store that had flour, she bought a 20-lb bag of it. Later, she could get some yeast.

She learned to bake bread for the 1st time, so something good came out of this. The results have not been consistent, even though she said she followed the same procedure each time. Maybe the temperature of the room was different, and the dough rose at different speeds.

Anyway, I don't know how much of that 20-lb bag is left. I suspect that a lot of people also learned to bake bread for the 1st time, due to Covid.
 
W2R said:
:2funny: Well, maybe? I was thinking of just frying a slice of spam with eggs for breakfast now and then, and maybe some plain ol' peanut butter sandwiches? But there is so much that can be done with spam.. hmm...!
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I don't eat spam often, but see nothing wrong with it. It's just yummy pork.
 
The things Hawaiians do with spam! There was that deep fried spam and rice roll thingie at one restaurant. No, I didn’t order it!

I think it was deep-fried spam musubi. A large spam nigiri sushi wrapped in nori then breaded and deep-fried. That’s some fusion cuisine there!
 
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audreyh1 said:
The things Hawaiians do with spam! There was that deep fried spam and rice roll thingie at one restaurant. No, I didn’t order it!

I think it was deep-fried spam musubi. A large spam nigiri sushi wrapped in nori then breaded and deep-fried. That’s some fusion cuisine there!
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I kinda get why Spam became something of a "staple" in the Islands but I've never figured how it could be considered a "delicacy" and especially why it is relatively expensive. YMMV
 
RobbieB said:
None to mention.

Still buying wood, costs more.
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Maybe you can negotiate with an almond farmer. If you go to the Central Valley, look for orchards replacing their almond trees. Wholesalers buy the wood cheap, dry it for 6 months, send it to the Bay Area, and sell it for 15 times as much. Our lessee just tore down our orchard for replacement this fall. He couldn’t even get $35/cord for the wood. It sells for $470/cord in the Bay Area.

Almond trees, even old ones like ours, are well cared for and almost pest free. The wood is hard and burns clean and hot.

The mark up is appalling.
 
audreyh1 said:
The things Hawaiians do with spam! There was that deep fried spam and rice roll thingie at one restaurant. No, I didn’t order it!

I think it was deep-fried spam musubi. A large spam nigiri sushi wrapped in nori then breaded and deep-fried. That’s some fusion cuisine there!
Click to expand...



Andrew Zimmerman had some shows in Hawaii, and one reviewed Hawaiians’ love of Spam. He tried what they offered and shook his head. This is a guy who enjoyed fried tarantulas in Vietnam but won’t touch oatmeal.
 
DW just reported that a property the she oversees and is currently being painted prior to the next tenancy is on hold because the contractors cannot source the paint they started using. Not sure exactly the issue, but sounds like it's one of the pigment mixers that can't be found.
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Had some painting done a couple months ago and decided recently to extend the new paint to an additional wall. So we needed to buy another gallon of Sherwin Williams paint to match. Went to the closest store and they were out of Super Paint. They told me another store had inventory. Drove over to the second store - oops, they were out of Super Paint too. They called a third store and confirmed that there was availability there and they agreed to hold a gallon for me. Whew!
 
Ronstar said:
I have a bike rack and ebike on order since 4/1, and a Ford Bronco since last July.

Other shortage was African mahogany wood. And construction lumber is not really in shortage, but the prices are 3 times or more expensive than normal.
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At Lowe's, an 11 foot pine fence rail was $14 last year, $18 this year, so a 30% gouge. As I approached the cashier, with a burly bouncer next to her, she looked at me with a blank stare, not ringing anything up. Then she rang me up for the gouge. Was she expecting me to go ballistic about the price increase and then get a reduction? One never knows, these days, when the loudest screamers get what they want, sometimes, lol. Will the price ever come down? Maybe but probably not.
 
Ronstar said:
I have a bike rack and ebike on order since 4/1, and a Ford Bronco since last July.

Don’t know what shortages are causing my bike rack and ebike to be delayed, but the Bronco is delayed by microchip shortages and a top shortage due to the top contractor’s inability to get their new plant built and hire people.

Other shortage was African mahogany wood. And construction lumber is not really in shortage, but the prices are 3 times or more expensive than normal.
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I ordered a new Trek bicycle on 10/2/2020, using the employee discount through the store I occasionally guide for. The original ship date was June 2021. When the manager checked on the order for me a couple of weeks ago, the ship date has been moved to December 2021.

The store can’t get as many fleet bikes (for rentals) as they need. Manager has read trade journals that indicate it is not Trek’s problem, but rather they cannot get the components. Trek won’t start a batch of Checkpoints, for example, until they have all the necessary parts on hand to finish and ship.

In the meantime I’m keeping my hybrid going (ride what you’ve got) and dreaming about the carbon-frame gravel bike that I hopefully will have for next year.
 
Ordered a sofa on January 8- told due to shortages it would not come til April 22-- called in Early April to say- no now not til Early June-- called this week to say probably not til August! WTF? At what point is this failure to hold up their end of the deal? A year? 10 years?



Also I can confirm that my son who works in a business with a lot of pallets that they are indeed in short supply that is affecting them.
 
Philliefan33 said:
I ordered a new Trek bicycle on 10/2/2020, using the employee discount through the store I occasionally guide for. The original ship date was June 2021. When the manager checked on the order for me a couple of weeks ago, the ship date has been moved to December 2021.

The store can’t get as many fleet bikes (for rentals) as they need. Manager has read trade journals that indicate it is not Trek’s problem, but rather they cannot get the components. Trek won’t start a batch of Checkpoints, for example, until they have all the necessary parts on hand to finish and ship.

In the meantime I’m keeping my hybrid going (ride what you’ve got) and dreaming about the carbon-frame gravel bike that I hopefully will have for next year.
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+1 This has been my experience. After mulling it over for over a year or two I finally decided a month ago to get a new recumbent trike to replace my 23/24 year old trike I had shipped from the UK. The new one will be much nicer made by one of the most respected manufacturers and with quite a few upgrades. So I put down a $1k deposit. I was told the projected delivery would not be until February due to lack of available components like derailleurs, brakes, etc. I have heard the same from other bike stores. Maybe I should have bought it 2 years ago. :( I hope I live long enough to ride it.



Cheers
 
Think I mentioned the replacement cane chair seats that are currently in Week 3 of a 14-week estimated wait (coming from Italy). Normally, the U.S. reseller has them in open stock.

OTOH, 3 replacement teak outdoor dining chairs, made in Indonesia, just arrived in less than 2 weeks from the reseller in California. The shipping company was Daylight; they were very professional, compared to others we've dealt with.
 
I just saw an article on Bloomberg about the rising cost of polysilicon, the material to make PV cells for solar panels. The cost has recently risen up 4X, back to the level in 2012.

This is not something that the consumer sees directly, but it has already put many solar projects around the world on hold. And it adds another item to the list of industrial materials that are now more expensive compared to the pre-Covid time.

I did not see the paper mention the cost of monocrystalline silicon, which is the material used for the highest efficiency grade of solar panels, but there's no reason to think it also did not go up by the same factor.
 
Just got a 25% increase from our pool service company. They are blaming rising costs of chlorine and other chemicals, plus gas for their trucks.
 
Ronstar said:
I have a bike rack and ebike on order since 4/1, and a Ford Bronco since last July.

Don’t know what shortages are causing my bike rack and ebike to be delayed, but the Bronco is delayed by microchip shortages and a top shortage due to the top contractor’s inability to get their new plant built and hire people.

Other shortage was African mahogany wood. And construction lumber is not really in shortage, but the prices are 3 times or more expensive than normal.
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Meetoo...
only had 2 month wait last year for the ebikes and 1up rack, Bronco - hoping for September I was a day 2 early reservation.
 
Amethyst said:
Just got a 25% increase from our pool service company. They are blaming rising costs of chlorine and other chemicals, plus gas for their trucks.
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Probably true. Have you seen the prices for chlorine pucks these days? It's astronomical. I have never been so happy to have a SWCG.
 
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