Why Have Price and Leadtimes Changed - CNC Specialty Store

Update 3/13/2022
There is a machine oil shortage, machines are down and companies are sending employees home because there is nothing for them to do right now. Please inform your owners, managers or whoever that changing oil right now is not a good idea unless you have too. Hold off changing your oil in PM's. Do your part to keep manufacturing running in the USA! We need this more now then ever with the chaos overseas.

No way to sugar coat it. It is not good. Customers are calling us from all over the country. Already having called many distributors even before us to get machine oil. This started well before the war overseas. There are machines down because of a bucket of oil or even down because they cannot get the plastic tubes for grease. AVOID doing any preventative maintenance. Tell your management/company owners this ASAP. This is a problem for all brands - Mobil, Shell, Chevron etc......

We have purchased 3-4 times more than our typical stock of all the Mobil Oils to try and stay ahead of this. Unfortunately for us and you we are now limiting the amount per customer if we even have them. Our Warehouse is empty. Most common DTE, Vactra 2 and EP greases are out of stock. Worst part of this Mobil cancels all back orders to the distributors and there is no answer as to when and what they may get in the next shipment. Anyone that gives you an estimate is giving you a hopeful guess on their part. All we can do is hope things get better.

Update 3/7/2022

Local and global supply chain issues continue to be strained.  Raw material, additive, and labor shortages continue to expand across all product lines, with lubrication products being the hardest impacted. 

https://www.lubesngreases.com/lubereport-americas-issue/5_7/

Currently, Shell and Mobil products are impacted extremely hard.  Mobil continues to enforce allocation limits to most distributors nationwide.  Currently, most distributors cannot provide lead-time for their products. 

The trickle-down effect of all of this, is not helping manufacturers trying to keep their machines running. Nor do companies like ours, enjoy managing backorders while trying to meet expectations with customers who have machines down.

Continued price increases and long delivery lead-times?

Unfortunately, the short answer is yes.  

Listed below are some informative articles that will provide more insight as to what is going on, and how it is affecting prices.

https://jobbersworld.com/2022/02/16/more-price-lubricant-and-base-oil-price-increases/

https://www.lubrizol.com/rockton

https://www.lubesngreases.com/bor-americas/5_9/u-s-base-oil-price-report-18/

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220302005876/en

Skyrocketing demand:

The global demand is expected to continue its growth by an average of 2.7% through 2028.  Demand has already stretched lead-times to an additional 4-6 weeks for many products.

What are we doing and what are we expecting now?

While our company has attempted to stock extra product quantities during this time, the extended lead-times and allocations set by manufacturers has resulted in many products we usually stock, now being sold out. We are continually awaiting deliveries that will return our stock to normal quantities.

We are hopeful the backlog will end soon, and business will be back to normal soon.