Anybody Seeing Crazy Lead-times on Parts at Work?

I had a good 4-5 week wait for parts on a JD tractor repair. 
 

Getting farmers through harvest breakdowns seems like it might be a bit dicey this year. 

Had a meeting with the contractor and the Firestone rep Thursday.  Couple days ago the Firestone rep told us it was 90 days out on Polyisocyanurate insulation,  glue and fasteners. In the meeting he drops the bomb that they are now taking orders for February delivery and will not guarantee the price.  Contractors are loosing there minds. 

My Toro mower died and I couldn't unberkeley it, so I called the crew I bought it from.   4 - 6 weeks easy.   "We can't get parts.  We have had a lady's rider here since April waiting on a damn O Ring!"

Covid put all those 10 year old Taiwanese girls out of work .....

Had to make an oil pan because the manufacturer listed them as "nationwide backorder"

Automotive shop, and I think I've been lucky.  No parts backups, but getting engine machine work done is pretty bad.  There are two machine shops in town, the youngest guy at one is about 50, the other shop mid 40s.  It's a four week wait to get a head rebuilt, and there are exactly zero young machinists to hire. 

None.  That's a Mike Rowe Works kind of situation, there.

And, there are no flat tappets available for a small block Chevrolet.  My supplier had 15...

I think I told this story elsewhere on this forum, but a customer in a building material warehouse says its brutal.  Caulk is not available because there are no plastic tips for the tube because of Texas freezing last year and ruining plastic production facilities.

Lumber is short because the BC gov put a large enough stumpage fee that a bunch of sawmills just auctioned off their equipment and closed their doors.   Builders are buying whatever they can get.  Houses are back to being sheeted with plywood because there is no chip board...

NickD said:

In reply to bobzilla :

Magneride shocks? Hah. I have a 2021 duallie with a leaky front valve stem. The valve stems are a unique design for the wheel. Backordered. So I've had a customer driving around for a month now, having to add air to the tire every other day because the valve stem is unobtainable.

My solution to problems like that, or building a tail light that takes an hour to change a bulb, or an engine mount that the belt wraps around, is a ninja with a sword wandering around engineering departments, looking for the guy with the stupidest idea that day...

Peterbilt Fabco/Meritor 4wd front end plastic king pin bushings.  Been waiting since early April.  No lead time, they'll get here when they get here. That's a quarter million dollar pressure truck and driver down because of 4 pieces of unobtanium plasic.

Streetwiseguy said:

Automotive shop, and I think I've been lucky.  No parts backups, but getting engine machine work done is pretty bad.  There are two machine shops in town, the youngest guy at one is about 50, the other shop mid 40s.  It's a four week wait to get a head rebuilt, and there are exactly zero young machinists to hire. 

None.  That's a Mike Rowe Works kind of situation, there.

And, there are no flat tappets available for a small block Chevrolet.  My supplier had 15...

This..

So much this.

Six engine rebuilder in town. Four are not answering the phone because they're too busy.

Fifth is retiring.

Sixth is squeezing us in, hopefully have the engine back in a month.

We need engine machinists but trades are for the dumb kids.

Show up, do what you say you're going to do by the time you said and you can charge pretty much whatever you want. 

Streetwiseguy said:

Automotive shop, and I think I've been lucky.  No parts backups, but getting engine machine work done is pretty bad.  There are two machine shops in town, the youngest guy at one is about 50, the other shop mid 40s.  It's a four week wait to get a head rebuilt, and there are exactly zero young machinists to hire. 

None.  That's a Mike Rowe Works kind of situation, there.

And, there are no flat tappets available for a small block Chevrolet.  My supplier had 15...

20+ years ago I was the young guy working at a machine shop and the old guys kept telling me to find something else.  Work was drying up and it was getting hard to keep the lights on.  Shop closed up in 2001.

Timing is everything!

Ha ha ha ha ha!  *whew*  I needed that!  I work at an Acura dealership in the parts department.

Before covid we would usually have less than two pages of backorders.  Maybe 20 parts total at any one time.

I think today we have 20 PAGES of backorders.  10 parts per page (I think) and...

The parts business has gone bat *%&# crazy with the rest of the world.

And there is hardly any new vehicles on the lot.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

I'm an engineer and I agree!!

My horror story is small, low horsepower industrial motors and drives. Stuff that was 2-3 weeks is 8-10 weeks easy; if it's available at all. 

It's been very difficult to get European malts for brewing. Things that used to be reliable stock are now out.

trucke said:

Parts at home too! 

• Just got a clothes washer last week.  12-16 week lead-time.  Took 16 weeks to the day!
• Ordered a whole house generator.  First look on website, ships in 1-2 days.  Looked the next day, ships August 3rd.  The next day it was September.  By the time I confirmed the configuration with my electrician and placed the order 8-12 weeks!
• And at work, no lead-time on parts to repair A/C!  I hate sweating at my desk!

Was just notified that there is no longer a delivery date for the generator.  Distributor has no idea when they will get any!  They even reversed the cc charge.  

On the bright side, I'm working from home this week.  It's nice and cool here!

Construction supply chains are a disaster. 
 

Absolutely nothing is available in anything less than 5X- 10X normal lead times.

Its a disaster. We are losing millions. 

noddaz said:

Ha ha ha ha ha!  *whew*  I needed that!  I work at an Acura dealership in the parts department.

Before covid we would usually have less than two pages of backorders.  Maybe 20 parts total at any one time.

I think today we have 20 PAGES of backorders.  10 parts per page (I think) and...

The parts business has gone bat *%&# crazy with the rest of the world.

And there is hardly any new vehicles on the lot.

It's just as bad everywhere. I've heard thesame from Toyota, Hyundai, Ford and our GM stuff is outrageous. IF we can get it is becoming the norm. Not when. 

Corporate america is using covid as an excuse to take lean managment to new levels of lack of service.

I've got $10 that says that lady would have no problem obtaining a new mower, but not the Oring.

A sheet of plywood did not go up exponentially in price overnight because of inflation.

Prices are up because they can. All the small mills are gone, no competition means they control the market.

bentwrench said:

Corporate america is using covid as an excuse to take lean managment to new levels of lack of service.

I've got $10 that says that lady would have no problem obtaining a new mower, but not the Oring.

Not from my perspective ... we'd LOVE to be able to get spare parts out to customers, we just cannot get raw materials and assembly components to make them.  I also am of the belief that not having spare parts, or supplies for that matter, is even in remotely the best interest of those who sell them.  

Stopped at the local multi-brand motorcycle dealer on the weekend. 

You could throw a rock in the showroom and not hit anything. 

This place is probably 13,000 square feet and jammed full all year long. They've maybe got 50 bikes in there if they're lucky.

In reply to bentwrench :

I've seen it in some businesses, yet other's seem to be stepping it up. The bank Mrs. P deals with is typically backed up so much we don't go unless it's absolutely necessary. Driving by the small town branch this morning there was a line 100 feet long - still. My bank was like that in the beginning. Now the service is as good or better than it used to be.

I'm not seeing any problems ordering industrial parts, and personally have had few problems with my automotive stuff. I did want to order a set of tires last week but figured I'd sleep on it. They were gone in the morning and not avaiIable anywhere in the country, so I had to order something different.

bentwrench said:

Corporate america is using covid as an excuse to take lean managment to new levels of lack of service.

I've got $10 that says that lady would have no problem obtaining a new mower, but not the Oring.

 

A sheet of plywood did not go up exponentially in price overnight because of inflation.

Prices are up because they can. All the small mills are gone, no competition means they control the market.

Sorry. I don't buy it.

Do some homework. This is simply not the case. 

In reply to bentwrench :

Cool theory bro.

Corporate America would love nothing more than to sell as much stuff as they possibly can.

But you can't sell what you can't get.

Which makes me wonder, if companies are losing millions, there's empty car and motorcycle dealer lots because they can't get inventory, and no one can get parts or supplies for anything without 400% longer leadtimes........why is the stock market continually at all time highs?

OEMs, large companies, and others, are posting record profits......but even if your margins are higher now on an F150, if you can only make 10% of normal production due to the chip shortage, aren't you still coming out worse overall? 

It honestly keeps me awake at night, wondering if we're heading to a hard stop somewhere:

The global supply chains were built out over decades to be as efficient as possible. Excess capacity is expensive. Excess inventory is expensive. Customers wants everything as cheap as possible, and cheap shipping means slow shipping. There wasn't any elasticity built into the system because that's expensive.

Then COVID hit and a bunch of stuff stopped for a while. And WHAM demand spiked up. We're still feeling the reverberations. It's going to make for some really interesting case studies in the future.

I think Bentwrench was talking service, not product.

In reply to Flynlow (FS) :

One would expect to see some sort of hard stop at some point, but in a normal world we should have seen a recession, and everything that brings, by now. Instead we're seeing interest rates at all time lows, housing prices at all time highs and insane gains in the market. But since the US government propped up the economy during the housing crisis that's become the new normal, and this time that's what our government did. How long can they keep taking on debt on our behalf? Who knows, but as long as they do the economy will no longer play by the rules