Insty linked to this post yesterday:
Retailers and logistics operators are struggling to find space to store the flood of goods that have swamped warehouses and weighed on their balance sheets.
Warehouse owners say more retailers are looking to add storage capacity, both for goods now reaching their networks of stores and distribution centers and as they prepare to keep more inventory on hand long-term to guard against stock-outs.
Well, yes.
What the article does not mention is that “forward buying” (the industry term for this activity) is also a retailer’s hedge against inflation: buy at today’s price, to sell at tomorrow’s (higher) inflated price, and use the profits to forward buy still more, until inflation comes back down.
We Americans have been sheltered from the latter by our traditionally-low inflation rate. but now we’re going to feel just like consumers in Third World countries, for whom continuously-high inflation is an everyday fact of life.
Yet another reason to hate this fucking Democrat government.
Roll on November 2022, and roll on November 2024 even more quickly.
Check the expiration dates on EVERYTHING. I ordered a #40 bag of Iams dog food for my mutt. I fed her 6 times from that bag and she got very ill. I checked and the expiration date on that bag was from March of 2021, over a year past expiration. I dumped that bag in the woods for the coons and possoms and bought another bag at Rural King where I could verify the date with my own eyeballz. Turns out the mutt had an intestinal bacteria that could have come from moldy food. Probiotics and a wormer got her straightened out. Check dates on EVERYTHING. Especially stuff ordered online.
My retirement exercise program is stocking at Walmart. A few months ago the store got flooded with merchandise….largely clothing and other no perishable goods.
This was crap dating back to 2019 that had been sitting in the regional warehouse because sales were down.
They pushed it to every store where it was shoved to floor kept in trailers etc.
Where the regional warehouses are had had l9w inventory tax. Not anymore. This hit all nongrocery retailers to various degrees.
Also at inventory this year several stores had shrink from 2.5 to 4+ million. Normally they expect 1 million. No heads rolled.
They no longer follow pest control procedures, they have a couple million a year in spoilage losses in addition to the inventory shrink…..and they no longer bother with theft control.
The area here is white affluent to rich with house prices kept high due to proximity to DC.
It is easier for the corporation to write it all off then fix it all because that would require a lot of woke arousing firings….plus of course assumption of responsibilty.
One guy tried, regional manager. After 6 months and no support, he laterally shifted back to rural western states region where he is from to make his money go farther and start barricading in his home town.
So check expiration dates and know that the people who care most are the old men stocking, a handful of youngmen and women who are trying and a crapload of immigrants from failed third world countries who do NOT want that here.
Oddly the muslim and christian africans are the m9st reliable and work together well.
But at least the correct pronouns get used. Got no problem with stocking up. Hell I do it with ammo. Inflation is here to stay because too many shitheads think you can make an economy work by command, those shitheads are in solidly blue districts and are untouchable.
Thanks for the heads up on expiration dates.
There is a small supermarket very close to home that has changed hands around 3-4 times over the past 15 years. When we moved to the area the market was pretty good. But now the dates of everything need to be checked. This was well before COVID.
JQ
November will come and pass with little to no change. No one has gone to jail yet, And as long as that is true we will see no change anytime soon.
We are past the ballot box.