I don’t think we’ve talked about this. Anyone out there looking to buy or sell is experiencing an interesting auto market:
A used pickup truck sold for 78% more in April than a comparable truck a year earlier, according to auction site Manheim.
… shipped some Ram pickup trucks to dealers without an electronic blind-spot detection system, Mr. Kelleher said. One buyer was so upset his new $60,000 truck lacked the feature that he walked, Mr. Kelleher said. The man returned hours later. No one else had the trucks.
GM said it was building some full-size pickup trucks without software that helps manage fuel consumption, reducing miles per gallon.
Auto makers have sharply reduced vehicle sales to rental companies, prompting Enterprise Holdings Inc., Hertz Global Holdings Inc., and others to take the unusual step of buying low-mileage used cars from auctions and dealerships.
Andrew Arwood drove more than an hour from his Oregon home to buy a Subaru Crosstrek sport-utility vehicle. When he arrived at the dealership, the salesperson told him the car he was promised had sold.
His new-car hunt took him to other dealers, he said, but staffers wouldn’t let him test drive cars without cash in hand or a prequalified loan. “Everything is being guarded as if it’s made of pure gold,” Mr. Arwood said.
Well, to be fair this happened to me years ago (the driving to an already sold car) so it’s not that unusual.
The industry as a whole has dramatically slowed down (manufacturing) because of the chip shortage.
This is the longest I’ve gone in 12 years without working over time, going on 14 weeks this weekend. I’ve never worked less than a 56 hour work week since I started in 2010.
edit - It’s been super nice honestly for my personal life.
That link will load on mobile without the paywall. Google’s cache of the article. Same trick I use when I want to read something on the Buffalo News but refuse to sub to that leftist trash paper.
You can also make the link work on your desktop in Chrome by going to menu, more tools, developer tools and clicking the little “Toggle device toolbar” menu option to put Chrome in mobile view. I’ve never figured out how to disable the redirect on the desktop view but I haven’t looked into it much either.
After reading the whole thing… man I wouldn’t want to be shopping for a car right now.
I’ve been following the Alltrack group as I’ve been wanting to pick one up. It sounds like a lot of the guys on there were getting smoking deals on them when they bought new. Some being as low as $21k. Those same cars that were purchased at $21k are now being quoted at $25k with about 20k miles on them, some with even more. It’s ridiculous. Anyone paying for that right now is going to lose a lot of money on resale when the market takes a sharp change, which I’m guessing will be in like 6 months.
The company i work for makes products for the semiconducotor industry and we have MAJOR shortages on parts for nearly all of our products. And its not just IC’s but simple things like resistors and capacitors, many of which are made here or in mexico which were shut down b/c of covid. Lead times have jumped to over a year in some cases.
Our whole group is spending almost all of our time trying to find alternative parts that are available to avoid delays in shipments.
So the people that need to make more ICs cant make more ICs because the people that make the equipment they need to make more cant… classic chicken / egg situation.
Seeing the same with my company. I am in commodity management and am having a hell of a time with capacitors, electrical connectors, and a laundry list of other things. Seeing the same with lead times too. Purchasing to forecast combined with insane market volatility is making a lot of people uneasy.
Not just chips. Everything is stupid. Custom structural steel is 9-12 months out. Usually 3 months. Also, cost is about $1600/ton. Usually $300. Construction is tough right now. I’m bidding a $50m project and have no fucking clue how to estimate it. My estimator tried putting a 50% contingency lol
I know this isn’t chip or electrical or anything like that, but we are seeing some of the highest prices ever in the grain industry. Crops are at a serious premium and the trucking situation isn’t helping very much either and driving prices up there as well. Fuel will probably climb because of corn prices for Ethanol. Prices for anything feed related is up so we will see the costs of meats up I’m sure soon too.
everything from Economics 101 is a conspiracy theory now… and when it becomes undebatably true it was obvious but no credit to those that saw it coming… just more credit to the fake-experts who are wrong all the time on purpose for money.
