Global Supply Chain Crisis 2021: Megathread - A cozy thread for watching the supply chain fall apart just in time for the holidays

[Mepsi Pax]

Spoiler: Trades lmao

Auto techs are making $40/hr. where I'm at. That's not necessarily an A-tech, though you probably have to at least pass as a B-tech to get in the good shops. B-techs were commonly making $25-30/hr. in the depressed area where I was before. The catch is a lot of that profitable new stuff is flat rate. You get paid for the hours quoted on a job upon completion, not clock hours worked. While this is ultimately a nasty trick to shift costs of business onto employees, it also means that hard and capable workers get ahead.

This is a brief glance at just automotive, of course there are many variables (all employers are shit and looting isn't just a white collar thing). The closer you get to being a construction spic the worse your opportunities will be.

Like college degrees, some trades and specializations pay worse than others. A generic electrician might make junk, like the poster in this thread. A lineman or a commercial specialist might make solid money, 80k, 100k, benefits. Some slob for an HVAC franchise will make junk unless he works 80 hour weeks (haha he'll be forced to anyway), but the same slob 3 years later with his own LLC and friendly presentation will get paid $200 just to show up and give his opinion for clients... that he stole while working for the franchise (true story).

The cost of real labor in most specializations remains high so the biggest catches are finding an employer who's not a greedy sack of shit or a moron (common theme across society these days) and/or being good at what you do, which often means doing several years in the coal mines. Lots of trade employers are morons because labor work has never been full of people who could make more money with their brains. Your boss will probably just be a tech who has 20 years of experience, meaning his business or management skills might be nonexistent. Granted that may be better than having some degree fag who knows nothing about the trade OR business installed over you (wow who would ever think corporations would make hiring decisions like this?).

There's also something that old techs love to say: "You're never gonna get rich doing this job". I rate this statement "mostly true" and you can trust me because I'm not an faggot.

The trades are a good substitute for certain types of people and in specific fields. Generic "trade" for generic person is like getting some random libarts degree, just (on average) you can make 30% more for giving yourself permanent physical injuries and coming home after 12 hour shifts to pass out on the couch while the sun's still up. Do you like pain? Do you feel like a burly motherfucker when you're catching metal shavings with your face in the blazing 95 degree heat? Well then you just might be cut out for trades, and you can probably even support a family on them. Aim for finish work, because it will involve less blood and fewer herniated discs, and if you have a good eye and artistic skills you can climb to the top on the bodies of those less fortunate (it's beautiful really, life is struggle and nature is a bitch).

 

[fu͏nny]

More faggotry from the World Economic forum.

https://twitter.com/EcommunistForum/status/1444721010847092739

Hmmm....

 

[kadoink]

View attachment 2594199
Hmmm....

Oh you. Its a slow day and I thought the make believe faggotry might be entertaining

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

What if these shortages weren't shortages, and it's just Raw MAterials being sent to Pfizer to make the 2+ billion vaccines.

Raw materials need to be processed in to an ingredient, to be processed in to a vaccine. And seems as we have no idea what's in the vaccine, we have no idea what raw materials are required.

Raw Materials (RM) are not converted at a 1:1 ratio. To create 100kg of RM, you may need to process 1T of RM and that process also needs RM.

For talks sake, lets say the vaccine needs Cow Tongue. 1 Cow tongue = 5 vaccines. The farm has to raise the cow, the abatoir needs to process it. Let's ignore the raising and focus on the process and shipping of the tongue. You need c02 to stun the cow, then kill it, flay it, cut the tongue out. Then you need packaging, storage and transport to get that to Pfizer, which will be taking priority over other goods.

The random shortage of cat litter, could be because a RM in cat food, is also a main RM in making vaccines.

While i've no doubt 'staff shortages' are a cause, I do find it strange that the US and UK seem to be taking the biggest hit in shortages. Both countries have massive manufacturing and processesing plants. The North of the UK is basically one big manufacturing facility.

The of course we need trucks, containers and fuel to get these RM's to pfizer, and the vaccines all over the world.

Lastly, take in to consideration the delivery method of the jab; a needle. That's 2 billion pieces of metal for the needle and 2 billion pieces of plastic for the syringe, including rubber for the plunger, paper for the label, glue to stick the label to the needle and ink for the label. That's before we think about refrigeration options and requirements to keep the jabs cool.

Plastic comes from oil, the same place petrol and diesel come from. If the distrillery method favours plastic over fuel, as plastic is in very high demand due to the vaccines, could that be the cause of the fuel shortage?

Just a thought.

In case this isn't a shitpost, the easiest tl;dr is that one metric ton of vaccine doses would be able to serve millions of people. Even if the precursors were consuming unrelated matter in vast excess of their final yield, it wouldn't be enough to explain this. And if there was any shortage of vaccine related components, we would know about it because the MSM would be screeching about it as if there was a shortage of oxygen in the air itself.

 

[contradiction of terns]

Inflation.

You aren't wrong. I'd just call money printer goes brrr a response to Covid (along with all the vax stuff), so it's a result of policies the same way the worker shortage and the supply chain snarl are.

ANTI SEMETIC

I hear this a lot. Am I a bad person?

Can you post up a quick rundown on the more useful/critical titles of those books that you can assume any random poster could make use of? I like to tell myself I could live without being terminally online as long as I can download and hoard all the critical knowledge and information I need to live life.

The Foxfire series is good and you can probably get a free pdf of a few of them somewhere. Assuming you have some interest in learning to dress hogs, farm, and other things mountain dwelling rednecks do.

 

[Fentanyl Floyd]

I hear this a lot. Am I a bad person?

Not to me

 

[Puff]

In case this isn't a shitpost, the easiest tl;dr is that one metric ton of vaccine doses would be able to serve millions of people. Even if the precursors were consuming unrelated matter in vast excess of their final yield, it wouldn't be enough to explain this. And if there was any shortage of vaccine related components, we would know about it because the MSM would be screeching about it as if there was a shortage of oxygen in the air itself.

It's not, he makes shit takes fairly regularly. It's safe to say his job doesn't involve actually making anything.

You aren't wrong. I'd just call money printer goes brrr a response to Covid (along with all the vax stuff), so it's a result of policies the same way the worker shortage and the supply chain snarl are.


I hear this a lot. Am I a bad person?


The Foxfire series is good and you can probably get a free pdf of a few of them somewhere. Assuming you have some interest in learning to dress hogs, farm, and other things mountain dwelling rednecks do.

I have the whole first edition set. Worth a read even if you don't plan on using any of the info

 

[George Lucas]

Ex food service, current IT confirms. The customer is always brain damaged

We had automated food kiosks for a while at a few fast food places and they pulled them out pretty quickly (this was all pre-pandemic). I’m guessing people were just being retards, and it was easier to just pay people for ordering food.

 

[Übertroon]

Unfortunately there is no surefire way to get the dream job. But it's notable how it has even gotten to the point where alternatives to college seem preferable.

If you're lucky you'll get the position where no one knows how easy your job actually is. I got one of those, and now regularly get praise and gifts from my boss for work that takes on average 30 minutes per day.

 

[Billy Beer]

In case this isn't a shitpost, the easiest tl;dr is that one metric ton of vaccine doses would be able to serve millions of people. Even if the precursors were consuming unrelated matter in vast excess of their final yield, it wouldn't be enough to explain this. And if there was any shortage of vaccine related components, we would know about it because the MSM would be screeching about it as if there was a shortage of oxygen in the air itself.

Not a shit post, just an idea of maybe why were seeing certain products not on shelves that don't make sense, like cat litter.

Many ingredients make a final product. Some process use RM as a catalyst to make the final product, even though those RM add nothing to final product. For example, the graphene and stainless steel bits that were found in some of the jabs, may not be mind control chips, but left over catalysing material that wasn't removed properly (poor QC)

LIke i say, just a thought, because we still don't know what is in the vaccine.

 

[Raze]

We had automated food kiosks for a while at a few fast food places and they pulled them out pretty quickly (this was all pre-pandemic). I’m guessing people were just being retards, and it was easier to just pay people for ordering food.

Most are retarded yes, but not all. I'm a stubborn asshole that refuses to use self-checkout or automated kiosks.
Self-checkout because it actively removes jobs- even if they are shit jobs (fuck Walmart).
Fast-food kiosks because they have one of the shittiest time-consuming interfaces known to man. Every time I go to a McDonalds with the touch-screen order-yourself menus, one of them is always Out Of Order and there's a huge line behind the only other one with people who have no idea how the fucking thing works. Even the slowest of cashiers I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with are faster than an automated kiosk.
I'm a god damn techie fluent in the art of miserable touch-screen interfaces and it still took me three times as long to place an order through that piece of shit than if I just told the cashier "I want a medium quarter pounder meal". If I wanted to order digitally I'd do it by phone. Which I also never do.

Not every job needs to be automated but I'll be damned if execs aren't going to try and push us towards that nightmare society anyway.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Not a shit post, just an idea of maybe why were seeing certain products not on shelves that don't make sense, like cat litter.

Many ingredients make a final product. Some process use RM as a catalyst to make the final product, even though those RM add nothing to final product. For example, the graphene and stainless steel bits that were found in some of the jabs, may not be mind control chips, but left over catalysing material that wasn't removed properly (poor QC)

LIke i say, just a thought, because we still don't know what is in the vaccine.

Even if the Vaccine was solid steel, it wouldn't soak up enough raw materials to make the dent being presumed. Yearly Steel production is nearly at two Gigatons on its own. For comparison, the total mass of all humans on the earth is under half a gigaton.

A lot of the "Don't make sense" items are easily backtraced to "Made out of country, for some stupid fucking reason". Its easy to lose sight of the fact that the clay in that litter might be dug up in Texas, but shipped over to China to be processed into shitsand, then sent to Thailand for QC and packaging, before being shipped to Mexico for warehousing and distribution and set up through the border to be sold in Texas. The convoluted process still ultimately saves a few pennies/kg when the volume is high enough, and so they do it. Multiply this by almost every product out there, and then put it up against the port manpower shortages, the container shortages, and the fact that relieving any of those issues is being held up even harder by the trucking shortages. Its a perfect storm.

Nothings made in your backyard anymore, the issue is far less raw materials and precursors to make things and more the mass shipping required to put them where they need to be.

 

[Phalanges Mycologist]

Can you post up a quick rundown on the more useful/critical titles of those books that you can assume any random poster could make use of? I like to tell myself I could live without being terminally online as long as I can download and hoard all the critical knowledge and information I need to live life.

OK First up for power generation is -

The Secrets of Building an Alcohol Producing Still, by Vincent Gingery. This is essentially a Electric hooch still you can also power with charcoal (the design is really universal) it's main goal is to take food waste products to turn into a petrol substitute or additive for smaller engines. It's short and concise but like all things expects you will have access to some raw materials you may not have or be able to get your hands on but you can work around them with some creativity. This will produce Alcohol ideally for fuel only but you can also use it to increase your calorific load by turning food waste into Alcohol but legality and results may vary.

Next up - The Mother Earth News Handbook of Homemade Power, by various authors.

This covers a bit of everything from Wood Gasification (a normally wasted by-product of Charcoal production, Cars, Vans, Bus's, Tractors have all run off it in the past particularly during WW2 England) , but it also covered Wind power generation, Solar Water heating, Methane recovery from waste products etc. I've made a few of these projects just using hand tools (no electricity) and they are easy and quite fun to do but you can also get creative and work around supply limitations.

Do it yourself 12v Solar Power by Michael Daniek, This is a great book for low power systems, it teaches you the fundamentals of how to set up a system using commonly available parts and how to assess your needs i.e. Refrigeration, Lighting, Charging other Devices like radios, laptops etc. I've used this to help a friend right his caravan for solar and my own little wind and solar setup for portable power.

The Following 3 Books from Make-

Make: Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 1: Resistors, Capacitors, Inductors, Switches, Encoders, Relays, Transistors: Resistors, Capacitors, Inductors, Semiconductors, Electromagnetism​

Make: Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 2: LEDs, LCDs, Audio, Thyristors, Digital Logic, and Amplification (Encyclopedia of Electronic ... Thyristors, Digital Logic, and Amplification)​

Make: Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 3: Light, Sound, Heat, Motion, Ambient, and Electrical Sensors: Sensors for Location, Presence, ... Light, Heat, Sound, and Electricity)​

Those 3 books are GREAT learning aids for electronics, with them you can build or repair most things and learn how to diagnose and fault find pretty much any circuit you might have, it's one thing to have power but its another thing to have things to power in the first place. I have them and use them when I need to do anything electronic on my own but I try to keep my reliance on electronic devices as limited as I can out of personal choice.

I have other books to recommend on various subjects if you'd like them.

 

[Shroom King]

Even if the Vaccine was solid steel, it wouldn't soak up enough raw materials to make the dent being presumed. Yearly Steel production is nearly at two Gigatons on its own. For comparison, the total mass of all humans on the earth is under half a gigaton.

We are short on parts made from various grades of stainless steel. I highly doubt the vaccines are stainless steel, especially if they are magnetic like you see on those videos posted on /pol/.

 

[Jump]

You are expected to be a punching bag because managers are too scared to tell rude customers to leave. It seems Costco corporate would rather fire employees who stand up for themselves than tell customers to not abuse employees.

If your a retail worker and putting up with this today then you get what you fucking deserve. Never in my lifetime has retail workers had so much power. Now is the time to GTFO out of retail and walk in to basically any other job out there. If your fork truck certified at Costco, homedopot, Lowes, etc and still working there then your a sucker.

Same goes for food service. If if you don't like the place your at then just leave. You can get hired at 50 other places now.

 

[veri]

You can get hired at 50 other places now.

40 of which won’t call back and you’re lucky enough if the other ones have the decency to at least send a template email saying you were rejected (yes, even the “desperately hiring” ones). that and in the current state of things people can’t just take the risk that comes with up and quitting a job, and if you do get lucky enough to get hired somewhere else then their management will have a whole other set of issues for you to put up with.

 

[Sped Xing]

Thia thread is full of two types: those who see blue collar work as a misery to be avoided at all costs, and those who see it as somehow morally praiseworthy.

Both are insane. It's just a less soul-sucking way to not be poor. Not being poor is far more valuable than being rich.

 

[feral cat #6385]

A interesting shortage I've noticed today -

Non basic breads, normal breads are in stock as normal but things like Bagels, Wraps, Flatbreds, etc are either thin on the ground or non existent. This also goes for things like Gluten Free breads or the lower sodium / special dietry stuff.

Sliced white, brown and the baked in store stuff is fine and in full supply but if you wanted somthing elese or where on special dietary stuff you are kinda shit out of luck in some cases.

That makes perfect sense. If you have raw material or labor problems and can't make your full product line you are going to cut back production on items with lower demand or aren't as profitable to make.

I work in the grocery business, so I can give at least a tiny bit of clarity on some of this. Most of the big manufacturers are cutting products out to focus on their top sellers. Of all of the vendors I've spoken to, Frito-Lay is probably the most egregious with this; like half of their Lay's potato chip flavors and most of the bulk packs aren't being made at all at the moment, at least in my region. Nabisco's been doing similar with their product categories as well, so certain types/sizes of Oreos haven't been available for weeks, while we can order all the Family Size Double-Stuf we want. Fruit snacks seems to be a pretty widespread thing, though I haven't heard anything specific. Isotonic drinks have been shipping consistently, but in massively inadequate quantities (about 1/3-1/2 our normal rate of sale), and, again, certain flavors/sizes are either not being shipped or only being shipped rarely. All the soda vendors have been able to keep us in stock for the most part, though there are certain flavors that, again, they aren't making at all right now (mostly stuff like the more obscure Minute Maid/Fanta/Crush flavors, but some others as well).

Bear in mind, these are products people come into stores to get all the time, so it's kind of a nightmare for the people on the sales floor having to deal with the (understandably) upset customers who can really only be told "well, we don't really know when we'll get it back in".

For what it's worth, pretty much any vendor I've spoken to has been told by their bosses that this issue will persist for a while, possibly well into next year. So...look forward to that, I guess?

Last year when covid hit there was an immediate directive to stop production of a large amount of line items. There has been no such directive issued this year. So far. There have been shortages with seasoning and packaging. Some plants are suffering crippling labor shortages and have stopped making certain price points and flavors. This might be part of what you are seeing with multipak.

Another issue with multipak is its made (assembled) by copakers. They are having labor shortages just like everybody else and have other customers to service outside of Frito Lay. Some multipak items are transported long distances thus getting hung up by transportation shortages be it rail assets or OTR drivers.

Frito Lay is also hamstrung by other capacity issues. 10 years ago they moved from having a network of Distribution Centers to plant based order fulfillment. So they went from having 400 or so distribution centers and bins to a double digit number of plant based order fulfillment systems and a much smaller number of Distribution Centers. Convid has pushed many of these plant based order fulfillment systems way beyond their capacity.

No one Frito plant makes the whole product line. What you have available will be heavily depend on what your nearest plant makes. The rest of it comes hundreds of miles over the road or on the train and will be subject to transportation availability and at the mercy of other plants cutting product to protect their local service areas.

We have been told the same. There is no quick fix for any of this.

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

this is just a side note but it's just funny to me that one of the most water challenged states decided that almonds, one of the most water intensive crops, was a good idea to grow lmao

Every person I've heard complain about California dairies growing alfalfa for feed drinks almond milk. It's something like a gallon of water to produce one almond.

Instead of one, gigantic super store in every town/city, competing with every other gigantic super store, Aldi have lots and lots of smaller shops dotted about the town/city.

Because it's a smaller store, it's easier to stock and keep on top of, with less staff.

I know a couple guys that work at an Aldi DC. The logistical backbone they have, even in the US is impressive.

Many ingredients make a final product.

A lot of the weirder shortages can be traced back to some polymer that was produced at some petrochemical factory in south Texas where all their process equipment fucking froze last winter. Seriously, I'm not joking.

 

[NJBear]

So are the ships being docked and unloaded yet?