Where's My Tires?
As bad as business was a few months ago, I never would have predicted we’d be seeing shortages, but it’s happening. I believe every tire maker closed down their American tire factories at the height of Covid-19. They were not worried about supply at that time as they had warehouses full of tires. So did distributors. And business was horrible. Then business came back - in a huge way. Now the manufacturers are scrambling to keep up. As of last week we had over 7,000 Coopers on backorder. That sounds a little worse than it really is though. They are jockeying production around and filling the orders fairly quickly.
Let’s talk entry level, tier 3 - 4, cheap, whatever you want to call them... Suddenly these are scarce - for different reasons. Looming tariffs that might not take effect for months, or not at all, have caused some to hoard up the existing supply. These tariffs are targeting tires coming out of Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Korea. Incoming shipments are dwindling as the manufacturers fear getting the bill if the tariffs pass. Throw in a wild card. Walmart closed their auto centers down during the worst of Covid. They sold a massive amount of entry level tires. Those consumers still need tires, they’re just buying them elsewhere. Maybe from you? That demand shifted over to independent wholesalers and retailers. This helped cause tire supply to dry up. Rest assured we are exploring all options. We’ve added a new vendor to help pick up the slack and we’re pushing hard to get all of our warehouses geared up for the fall rush.
