Still weird shortages?

[Idaho45guy]

Anyone else noticed that Walmart and large grocery stores are out of random items?

And not the typical panic pandemic stuff like TP, cleaning supplies, canned meat, etc. But odd stuff. I went to Walmart today to grab some de-icer, frozen meals, TP, chicken strips, olive oil, corned-beef hash, razor blades, and look for a gun rack mount for an ATV.

De-icer, gone. Chicken strips from Tyson, gone. Corned beef hash, gone. Wanted some extra CR-2032 batteries for my red dot weapon lights and they were gone. Plenty of TP and Spam, and canned meat. But corned beef hash completely wiped out. Weird. Girlfriend wanted California-brand olive oil, specifically. It was gone. Plenty of other brands, but wiped out of that brand. Went to another grocery store in town and they were also out of corned beef hash and that brand of olive oil, and the Tyson chicken strips. Weird.

Seems there are lots of random bare spots on the shelves that I don't recall ever seeing before. Just happened to need certain items today and they were mostly gone.

None of the items I needed were made in China, which I noticed earlier in the year were in short supply, but seem to be available again.

It was just unsettling to see bare shelves like you see in Russia and other communist countries.

[trails4u]

Supply chain issues being my guess at this point. Wife likes a particular flavor/brand of coffee creamer.....nowhere to be found. Brand is available, but in every favor other than her favorite. She asked one store manager, and he said it's been ordered for a while, but they can't fill the order. ??

[BigAlofPa.]

Ever since covid came about. I have not been able to find fresh turkey sausage.

[Buzz Krumhunger]

Weird too to see people standing in line on the sidewalk out front to get in a grocery store that has a bunch of empty shelves. It really is like pictures from the USSR.

[Idaho45guy]

Supply chain issues being my guess at this point. Wife likes a particular flavor/brand of coffee creamer.....nowhere to be found. Brand is available, but in every favor other than her favorite. She asked one store manager, and he said it's been ordered for a while, but they can't fill the order. ??

That reminds me that almost all of the coffee creamer was gone at Walmart. Another weird random item to be almost out of.

I stopped by the former guns and ammo counter and the guy asked me if there was anything he could help me with. I asked when they are going to get primers, powders, and bullets back in stock. He said that their supplier of all of their reloading supplies decided to no longer supply Walmart partly due to Walmart's decision to remove pistol and "assault" rifle ammo from their shelves. He said the supplier has given all of their other customers higher priority over Walmart and that it could be years before WM ever gets product again.

[tai95]

Supply chain issues being my guess at this point. Wife likes a particular flavor/brand of coffee creamer.....nowhere to be found. Brand is available, but in every favor other than her favorite. She asked one store manager, and he said it's been ordered for a while, but they can't fill the order. ??

Regional storms on top of the "pandemic" have definitely added to the issues. A friend works at a water bottling plant, he was sent home the other week. The empty bottles come from PA and the storm stopped the trucks delivering bottles.

I also know a few people who work at a pepsi bottling plant. During the start of the lock downs they had to cut staff so they dropped production to their best sellers.

[Mal Paso]

I couldn't find Oven Cleaner locally, not a single can of any brand. Safeway CS says it's been like that.

[Bmi48219]

Not just Walmart. Seeing ‘Sorry, this product is temporarily out of stock’ signs at several grocery stores. Usually name brands, they seem to have the store brands of everything. Wife wanted Liptons Onion Soup Mix. Third store had it. Others had store brand or Liptons ‘Beefy’ Onion Soup Mix.
All the big grocery chains have their own warehouses. Pretty sure WM buys direct from the manufacturers. With the check out scanners tracking inventory & probably reordering via computer program too it’s hard to imagine they forgot to order. But if WM orders a truckload of corned beef it may all go to one warehouse and from there to multiple distribution centers.
Incidentally I read WM has over 8,000 full time OTR drivers and 40,000 trailers.

[monadnock#5]

Watched a youtube video by a guy with the handle CRS. He claimed that dealers like he were receiving regular shipments of ammo, powder and primers. But rather than sell to customers, and get sniped at, for selling at double the regular price, instead they were selling on gunbroker. I have an AR pistol on order that originally was advertised for delivery in 16-20 wks, then 20+ wks. Currently I'm at 26+ and still on hold. But, of course, why would they sell to me at the list price when they can move their product online for a $3-400 markup.

I'm going off the reservation here. It appears to me that slowly, inexorably, sideways, we're sliding into a black market economy. I hope I'm wrong. I do wish I had a 500 gal gas tank behind the house.

[Idaho45guy]

I do wish I had a 500 gal gas tank behind the house.

Yep. Local gas was at $2.35 a gallon for months and months. Biden gets elected and suddenly it's now $2.59 a gallon. Anyone with half a brain could see that he was going to cause prices to rise, but short of having a large storage tank, not much you could do. I filled up my spare 5-gallon cans, but will have to use those in a few months before the gas goes bad. Then I'll have to fill them up again with $3 gas, or higher.

[jim147]

We had almond extract on the list for almost two months before I found some. Yes odd things are stil having trouble hitting shelfs and it's not going to end anytime soon.

[trails4u]

Watching an episode of 'Moonshiners' the other night.... Yeah, I know. It's 'Made for TV'.... But interesting twist in that they couldn't find mason jars, even wholesale. Perhaps just a TV moment, but with all the hoarding/stockpiling, why not mason jars? Everyone is a homesteader now, right?

[Handloader109]

Dude, where have you been? The entire southeast was shut down over a week. Many plants closed, trucking stopped. We have a very short supply chain. we don't have months of stuff in warehouses.

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[rockrat]

Was in WM this weekend. Went back to look at engine oil. Was I surprised. 90% or greater empty shelves. Saw ONE 5 quart jug of Castrol synthetic 10w-30 and 5 jugs of 0w-40 Mobil 1. Few other oils, but no synthetic Shell Rotella and only two 5 quart jugs of standard rotella oil. Maybe a total of 20 jugs of different oils and maybe 30 quart container of various flavors oil.
Milk area was about 1/2 empty and the same for orange juice.
Plenty of C.B, spam, viennas and stuff, but the oil thing was unusual

[tomme boy]

Get used to it. Going to get much worse shortly. Especially when the people in power say the big cities have first chance at all goods because it would be more catastrophic to large cities than rural people.

[Bmi48219]

Watched a youtube video by a guy with the handle CRS. He claimed that dealers like he were receiving regular shipments of ammo, powder and primers. But rather than sell to customers, and get sniped at, for selling at double the regular price, instead they were selling on gunbroker. .

I saw that YouTube. He also said ammo on GB was still $$$$ but the number of bidders was down from 30-40 to 10-15. He said because of this he thinks ammo prices have topped and will start to come down some. But reloading components haven’t peaked yet. I watch his videos once in a while, kinda like the guy. Hope he’s right but with the manufacturers forecasting a year + backlog, his projections may be optimistic. If you can get $.75 cent or $1.00 a round plus shipping for 9mm on GB why would you sell it in a store for 50 cents?

[cwtebay]

I know! I tried to get fresh eggs and beef and flour and honey!!!
But then I realized...oh yeah, we make all that ourselves.
This is tongue in cheek, but truthfully - necessities are pretty much what you can make and store for yourself unless you want to deal with "shortages" (real or politically motivated).

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[redneck1]

The local savealot can't get the store brand soda I like because the bottler is only getting enough can stock to do the big brands .

[FLINTNFIRE]

Oven cleaner , great stuff but I prefer not to put that foul smelling stuff where I cook food , and it is funny watching people use the self clean setting , seems to kill the ovens , there are easy ways to clean ovens and microwaves that do not use toxic products , but then I have known people who used oven cleaner and ammonia for other purposes .

When this pandemic started I went in to the old cash and carry now smart food service only 1 bag of flour on the shelf , now we are talking about 25-50 lb bags , I laughed and said I see everyones taking up baking , as I do use about 100 lbs of flour a year , I left the bag as I had half a bag still , it is going to be worse , gas went from 2.39 a month and a half ago to 2.79 and still climbing .

Local gun shop had some ammo and a few more firearms , on another note he had a pile of lead he asked if I would make him some bullets for his own shooting , looked like 3 linotype pigs , but when melted into ingots were pretty much dead soft , oddball bucket had some squares and a partial ingot of copperhard , that melt could could pound nails .

I stocked up on oil a few months ago as it was on sale and I was doing head gasket and such on pickup , I try to stay stocked up on everything that is needed or used around house , be prepared and be able to make or do things yourself .

[Idaho45guy]

I try to stay stocked up on everything that is needed or used around house , be prepared and be able to make or do things yourself .

That's mighty tough to do for most folks. So many things that I hadn't thought of that crop up all the time.

Like the CR 2032 batteries for my weapon red dots that I have on 4 of my rifles. Went to take one to the range to make sure it was still sighted in and discovered the battery was dead. So I look in my range bag and discover that I'm down to my last battery. I go to Walmart and they are completely out of them. Found a small hardware store that had four of them left, bought them all. That's only one back up for each rifle. Then I noticed that the weapon lights on 3 of my firearms used the CR123 battery. Only had two extras. None available locally. Went online and ordered 12 of them. Should be good for a couple of years, now.

But just trying to get caught up on batteries for my weapon lights and optics was an extra $50 expense. I can't imagine folks on limited income being able to be prepared for every emergency.

Last February, I only had a couple of weeks worth of food. So, I went out and spent about $150 on various food stores just in case. About two months worth of food. Mostly canned foods and freeze-dried stuff. Most of it is expired in a month or so. I'll have to take it all to the local food bank, or throw it away.