FALL RIVER-Local companies said that the current chaos in the global supply chain is nothing new.

They said that the recent shortages of products and parts are the result of interruptions in the production of goods and service delivery. Such interruptions first appeared in early 2020, when COVID-19 was considered a pandemic.

In the past month, the backlog of as many as 100 container ships at sea-waiting for their turn to unload at the two ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California-has been increasing, which shows that supply chain disruption will not be eliminated. The blink of an eye.

Marko Bastl, director of the Marquette University Supply Chain Management Center, told USA Today that this epidemic is unique because it affects both supply and demand. Some manufacturers' operating levels have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels.

The supply chain is the way we get almost everything we want and need in life. 

This is a system that helps to manufacture and deliver our favorite products.

It involves the manufacturers of these products, the companies that provide the materials from which they are made, the ships, trains, and trucks that carry them, and the shops that sell them.

"You can think of it as a pipeline connecting supply and demand," Dai Tinglong, professor of operations management and business analysis at Johns Hopkins University, told USA Today.

Dai said that this is not just a backlog of ships-the process of unloading these ships requires a lot of work and personnel, including warehouse workers and drivers, to finally deliver these products to retailers.

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Basseter said the pandemic has also affected companies that focus on logistics, such as warehousing used to store items for overseas travel and transportation methods such as trucks and trains to transport them to all parts of the country.

At the same time, as millions of people stay at home to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, people have ordered a lot of things, from personal computers to sports equipment.

"It's almost like a perfect storm of loss of manufacturing capacity and loss of logistics capacity, then combined with increased demand," Basseter said.

"The longer these delays last, the more likely companies involved in the production, distribution, and transportation of our products will be unable or unwilling to bear this cost, and they will start to push these costs on to consumers," Basseter said. .

Robert Polakowski and his business partner Matthew Burke stated that their BikeWorks store on Swansea Mall Avenue will perform strongly in 2020 as people buy The bicycle is to keep away from the pandemic.

Polakowski said that before the coronavirus outbreak, revenue had been on the rise, and sales in 2019 were up 23% from the previous year.

Now, he says, sales are down 15% compared to the same period last year.

"We still do business with what we have. It's just that if it weren't for the supply chain (problems), our business would do better," Burke said.

Polakowski said that in addition to being difficult to obtain bicycles from overseas companies such as Shimano in Japan, he also said that certain types of chains and tire inner tubes are also out of stock.

"These are the necessities you need every day. You can't ride a bicycle without both," he said, noting that the shortage of parts will become severe by the end of 2020.

Polakowski said bicycle companies depend on the availability of parts manufactured in China, Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia.  

He said this includes foreign and domestic companies, such as Chicago-based SRAM, which specializes in high-end bicycle components.

He said that delays in the supply chain made it particularly difficult to assemble the parts needed for bicycles that cost less than $1,000.

Polakowski said that the cost of shipping a container of 250 bicycles from Asia to the United States in 2019 is about US$3,000. He said that bicycle companies now charge between US$18,000 and US$25,000 per container, which has led to an increase in prices in the low-end bicycle market.

Polakowski said that it used to take three to four days to unload a container, but now it takes three to four weeks.

He and Burke said that they usually display as many as 135 assembled bicycles in their store, with another 100 to 150 stored in boxes.

"Now we have 70 to 75 at most in our entire store," Polakowski said.

The two partners stated that their customers (many of whom purchased their first adult bicycles in stores) understand the scope of delivery issues and have been patiently waiting for special orders to be delivered.

Polakowski said that a customer is still waiting for the delivery of the $3,000-worth bicycle ordered last spring.

The 35-year-old Burke knew this feeling directly. He said that he hadn't ordered a high-end bicycle for himself in 14 months.

He said: "First, manufacturers slowed down due to the new coronavirus, and then parts were unavailable."

The Stop & Shop grocery chain has two stores in Fall River and one in Somerset.

In response to a request for comment on product shortages, a company spokesperson attributed the current supply chain shortages to suppliers that "face labor and transportation challenges due to COVID-19."

The e-mail did not mention anything else about the disruption of the global supply chain.

The spokesperson said that recent shortages in the Stop & Shop stores include "juice and juice boxes, pet food, and paper products"-he added, "The situation is constantly changing and we thank customers for their patience and flexibility with these temporary items. Interruptions. ."

Pepsi employees who worked at the store that day pointed out that some of the company's beverage products have been in short supply, not only in Stop & Shop, but also in Target and Walmart. He said he had never seen such a bad thing.

Matthew Auclair's family has owned and operated Auclair's Market in Somerset since 1918. He stated that the current supply chain shortage shows that American companies are "relying on overseas suppliers."

He said that the result is that "once we catch up with one thing, it will become another thing" and start to become scarce.

"But our industry is not unique," Oclair said in this regard.

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Commodities that are intermittently in short supply include wild boar head cooked meat and Green Mountain coffee.

The wild boar head label in the deli area of ​​the store reads "Due to ongoing problems in the supply chain, certain products may not be available at a certain time."

Amy Oliveira, general manager of Auclair's Market, said that non-food items such as bakery packaging have been in short supply.

She said another adjustment made by the store and its customers was to change the weight range of fresh turkey.

Oliveira said the turkey supplier at the store has expanded its weight range from 2 pounds to 6 pounds.

This reduces the working hours when slaughtering and processing turkeys, but it also means that customers who require specific bird weights will not be surprised if they end up paying for a 6-pound bird.

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Despite these challenges, O'Clair said his clients "understand very well."

Vivek Sankara, CEO of Albertsons Companies, which owns the Shaw supermarket chain, told Bloomberg last week, “I never thought we would be here in October 2021 to talk about supply chain issues.”

But he also said in an interview with CNBC that in terms of overall grocery store inventory, "we are not facing fundamental challenges like the early days of the pandemic."

Sankaran also told CNBC that the turkey was being shipped to the store "when we received it," and Albertsons Cos. had been buying Thanksgiving products "a little earlier" than usual to meet customer needs.

"Raw material shortages and labor challenges have had a significant impact on us last year," said Allie Wainer, regional vice president of Sid Wainer & Son in New Bedford. "We see the cost of goods continue to increase."

"When the pandemic started, raw material suppliers closed, resulting in a huge gap in the supply chain. The industry is still catching up with this gap," she said.

Weiner said she believes these challenges will not disappear anytime soon, so she said her company will "continue to adapt and overcome the new realities of the post-pandemic world."

Meredith Ponte said that in the past six months, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain car body repair parts for her family's Brougham Motors car body repair business on Bedford Street.

"It changed the way we get parts," Ponte said of the ongoing supply chain disruption.

She said, especially the delivery time of replacement parts for Asian automakers is much longer than usual.

Ponte said that in the past two months, replacement parts for Kia have been particularly scarce in general, and certain body parts for Honda and Toyota have also been out of stock.     

"We can't do anything about it," she said.

To fill this gap, Ponte said that in addition to calling more auto parts suppliers, she also bought more second-hand parts from the scrapyard.

She pointed out that under normal circumstances, original manufacturer parts (OEM) can be recovered from vehicles that were damaged in a crash.

She said that the result is "more time and effort" to get the things needed for a lot of maintenance work.

Ponte also said that she tried to predict what she needed.

"We try to order in advance," she said.

Ponte said that insurance companies have been willing to pay more for some scrapped parts. She also said that in some cases, they expanded the coverage of rental cars to accommodate customers waiting for parts.

She said that getting body parts from domestic auto companies is not that troublesome: "We have fewer out-of-stock orders," she said.

Ponte said that severely damaged vehicles were parked in her parking lot for more days than before the supply chain began to collapse.

2020 is a prosperous year for Eddie Almeida and his Alemeida lawn and maintenance business.

Five years ago, he started this work with a dozen snow removal accounts. Two years ago, Almeida said that he started to provide commercial and residential landscaping services and eventually established more than 300 customers.

He said that of the more than 300 accounts, more than 100 were customers who paid Almeida and his five staff to mowing and mowing the lawn.

Almeida said that supply chain problems slowed him down.

"This hinders our development," he said.

Almeida said that as more and more homeowners spend money on home improvement projects, his business has grown after the pandemic. He will own two industrial lawn mowers in 2020 to six in 2022.

He was prepared to accept more jobs last year, but was unable to keep up with demand due to supply chain disruption.

"In the past few months, I have lost 17 customers," he said.

Last January, Almeida ordered and prepaid $17,000 for a new Toro multi-season mower. The host finally arrived at the dealer in March, but he said that the bagging accessories are still out of stock.

"Now it only takes three weeks (arrival)," he said.

Almeida said that the price of machinery for professional gardeners has risen sharply in the past year.

He said that just before the coronavirus was declared a health emergency in March 2020, the tipper trailer he spent $5,000 is now priced at $8,500.

Since 1995, Roland Levesque has owned Swansea's Suzuki Triumph motorcycle shop on the 610 GAR highway.

Levesque said that as manufacturing plants slow down production, it becomes more difficult to obtain parts.

Recently, he said there was a shortage of batteries, spark plugs and matching tires.

He recounted a recent visit by his sales representative.

"I asked when I could get my things, and he just looked at me with a smile and said,'All these (expletives) are floating on the sea,'" Levesque said.

He said he is ending his career as a motorcycle shop dealer and is expected to end within a month.

"The motorcycle business has been in trouble for seven or eight years," Levesque said.

"This is a tough industry," Levesque said.

— Reports from Seth Chitwood, Standard Times and USA Today.

You can contact Charles Winokoor at cwinokoor@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism and subscribe to pioneer news immediately.