Community Chat

[icezeus]

This morning I went shopping at the super Walmart. I like to go early in the morning, because of less people and I can wander around the store at my leisure, not bumping into someone everytime you turn around. 

This is a huge store that just opened about 15 minutes from my home.  I did not see any empty shelves, every thing that I wanted to pick up was available and well stocked. Even though I have enough TP to last me for this year and through 2022  I still always look down the aisle. I call it coronavirus anxiety.The whole aisle was fully stocked.

I can only think perhaps it's regional problems or labor shortage.

[Drythe]

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@patbz wrote:

Several days ago DH and I made a 13 hr roundtrip to CA via HWYs 40 and 15.  We had our grandsons with us and they love to count trains.  We counted over 25 cargo trains and going through Barstow ( major switching station) we counted over an additional 10 trains.  I have never seen this many trains on previous trips and these included many many FedEx containers and a lot of tankers.  Most of these were very long trains with an average of four engines ( although we did see a train of nothing but 10 engines).  I think this increase in trains has something to do with supply/ demand problems.

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@patbz 

For a variety of reasons, I hope we return to using our trains much more.  They don’t stress the roads as much, and don’t use gasoline.

[stevieb]

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@Drythe wrote:

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@patbz wrote:

Several days ago DH and I made a 13 hr roundtrip to CA via HWYs 40 and 15.  We had our grandsons with us and they love to count trains.  We counted over 25 cargo trains and going through Barstow ( major switching station) we counted over an additional 10 trains.  I have never seen this many trains on previous trips and these included many many FedEx containers and a lot of tankers.  Most of these were very long trains with an average of four engines ( although we did see a train of nothing but 10 engines).  I think this increase in trains has something to do with supply/ demand problems.

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@patbz 

For a variety of reasons, I hope we return to using our trains much more.  They don’t stress the roads as much, and don’t use gasoline.

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@Drythe  Agree. A resurgence in rail transport and travel would be one of the few bright spots resulting from this seemingly endless debacle. Anything that cuts down on over-crowded roads, and has other benefits, is a positive.

[Mominohio]

In my area, stores have large areas of extremely low stock or no stock, but it is constantly changing and what you can't find in one store, you will in another (except canning lids, pretty scarce every where here), or if it's not at store A today, it will be next week, with just a few exceptions. 

There is so much chatter about continued/increased shortages of things because of everything from Covid, lack of shipping containers, ports backed up, lack of availability of components (think can shortage, or chip shortage), lack of truckers to transport, lack of employees to make it or stock it, drought and floods and food issues from picking to packing to shipping and on and on and on. 

Because of this, I think people are buying and stocking more than they did pre pandemic, I thing many don't ever want to end up where they were in March/April 2020. I think that all the stimulus money has helped to keep shelves empty, and the new payouts every month to parents is going to have people shopping/spending more. Many people will give up to triple their food stamps during this pandemic, and that helped to keep shelves low as people spent more money than they had before.

I personally don't see supply chain issues resolving on the whole for at least another year, and that will be dependent on many factors getting ironed out and back to 'normal'. 

[Duckncover]

I think Black Friday sales have been going on for the past six months! Thanks for the warning! Sometimes it see,s like they want to scare people into buying things...then the stockpiling happens, and we all know what that means. 

[gardenman]

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@Drythe wrote:

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@patbz wrote:

Several days ago DH and I made a 13 hr roundtrip to CA via HWYs 40 and 15.  We had our grandsons with us and they love to count trains.  We counted over 25 cargo trains and going through Barstow ( major switching station) we counted over an additional 10 trains.  I have never seen this many trains on previous trips and these included many many FedEx containers and a lot of tankers.  Most of these were very long trains with an average of four engines ( although we did see a train of nothing but 10 engines).  I think this increase in trains has something to do with supply/ demand problems.

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@patbz 

For a variety of reasons, I hope we return to using our trains much more.  They don’t stress the roads as much, and don’t use gasoline.

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Locomotives don't use gasoline but they do use diesel so I'm not sure there's a big saving there. The EPA passed new rules for diesel locomotives made after 2015, but most of the locomotives out there are older than that.