Yes, that makes perfect sense. But for me paper towels are an evil vice You would think people would have slowly stocked up as they became available but apparently not. I probably have 20 or 30 rolls in stock. I can ride out this bit of nonsense.
what I didn’t stockpile is water. I have a very specific distilled water that I use for my CPAP machine and the store is stripped bare of it. for some reason other brands have a smell to them so I’m partial to a particular brand. And it isn’t just a recent problem. I’ve seen well stocked shelves and completely empty shelves all through this event. It’s as if someone is going in and buying 50 at a time.
ISTM that one heck of a lot of shortages we see throughout the supply chain for everything are not the result of hoarders. They’re the result of small time profiteers (or scalpers if you prefer) buying up 10 or 100x as much product as a household needs and then reselling via informal channels for a huge markup with little overhead. Yaay for the profit motive. Not.
I can see that reselling ammo via e-bay or an amazon storefront isn’t going to work due to shipping costs, regulations, website policies, etc.
Other than that, ammo is compact, shelf-stable, valuable, and the current demand level for it is largely irrational. Sounds like an ideal product for people to scalp.
Huh, the USPS person who delivers our packages is different (and comes later in the day) than the USPS person who delivers our letters/flat stuff. This has been the case for 20 years, at least. Maybe that’s because I live in a dense suburban area where mail is delivered to the door – it’s efficient for someone to walk around with a giant sack of all the letters, going door to door. The package person doesn’t stop at most houses most days, and of course, can only carry one item at a time. Anyway, I assume the person whose full-time job is delivering packages doesn’t hate delivering packages.
I bought into “time will kill it on fomites”, and I’m still quarantining non-urgent packages. (And washing my hands very carefully after handling new and urgent packages.) So I’ve never gotten into wiping down packages. But… you know… if I were, I would want to use something disposable. Why deliberately contaminate more stuff around the house and smear virus around?
I suppose I have purchased washable face masks and hair coverings. So maybe I’m not being completely consistent, here. But I understand the desire for extra disinfectant wipes and paper towels.
I haven’t been monitoring local paper goods availability because long prior to the pandemic I had stocked up on TP and paper towels simply because I kept buying them when they were on sale. I currently still have four megapacks of TP and three megapacks of paper towels; considering that I live alone, these should last me well into the next year.
Question for JaneDoe42: Am I correctly understanding that you are continually buying ammo? If so, I’m mildly curious as to why. Note that I am not interested in getting into a discussion of 2nd amendment issues; while not into that sort of thing myself, I have no problem with those who have firearm collections. Do you regularly shoot and need to restock?
Coming back to this: I didn’t need the street addresses, I was just curious as to generally where in the country; and also to some extent as to whether we actually mean the same sort of thing by “roadside stand”, though your reference to “the stand selling honey” rather sounds like it.
Roadside stands around here (including ones selling honey) are often unattended: there’ll be a cash box chained or bolted down in some fashion with a slot in the top to put money in, sometimes some change left accessible, honor system. I would guess that’s not how stands selling ammo are run in Arizona? Or are they?
– in New York State, you need to be licensed to sell ammunition.
Yes.Hubs competes and I plink. We both strongly feel that if we are going to have firearms in our home, we both need to be fairly proficient in their use. Besides, we think its fun.
@thorny_locust I didn’t give street addresses so you could go buy ammo yourself (its far too expensive), I gave locations to show that its fairly common and wide spread out here. New River is in Maricopa County and Prescott Valley is in Yavapai County.
Went grocery shopping today. No celery, alcohol or toilet bowl cleaner.
My friends have been posting to Facebook that “OMG THERES NO TOILET PAPER YALL SUX FOR HOARDING AGAIN!!!” I went to the grocery store yesterday and saw that there was a front-page story in the local paper about TP hoarding again. There was also a lot of TP there at the store. Ive been slowly building up our stock over the summer, and I last picked some up about 6 weeks ago. We have probably a year’s supply now.
I really don’t get it, but whatever. We’re good, and have some extra if my folks or friends need it.
As for ammo shortages, on any weekend afternoon with fairly decent weather, I hear many people shooting in the vicinity. For the last couple months I have noticed a marked decrease in shooting. I attribute this to people conserving their ammo supply due to the current shortages. I know that’s what I’m doing. I have switched mostly to air guns and a little .22 rimfire (because I stocked up on .22 after the last shortage).
A lot seems to depend on what store you’re in. Winco at lunch had good supply (even rubbing alcohol). Target after work, the cleaning stuff was stripped bare and lots of holes in the OTC stuff in pharmacy.
I was in Ace Hardware today. Masks, disinfectants, hand sanitizer, paper products, gloves, etc., all piled to the ceiling as always since Feb. Not brands you might see in the grocery store, but brands known to anyone in the janitor biz.
Paper towels and TP had been in consistent supply at our local WalMart Fresh Market since around August. Just this week, between Monday morning and today (Friday), there’s been a huge run and the paper products shelves there look well picked over. Some number of uneconomical small packs remained … but that was it.
Conversely, the months-long embargo on isopropyl alcohol ended about a month ago. One thing that helped with the alcohol is that they’ve started carrying a brand that uses unusually-shaped bottles (can’t find a pic online). I know a lot of people are walking by the rounded dome-top bottles and not realizing what they are.
We just went back into lockdown on Weds. I haven’t been out since then. But we haven’t seen sanitizing wipes for months. Cleaning supplies are hit and miss. I did notice that the meat was not packed sky high in the meat section. It’s still there but not in over abundance.
Stopped by Costco early this morning. There was a sign in front that they were completely out of all TP, paper towels,disinfectant wipes, and a couple other things which I’ve forgotten.
My friends have been posting to Facebook that “OMG THERES NO TOILET PAPER YALL SUX FOR HOARDING AGAIN!!!” I went to the grocery store yesterday and saw that there was a front-page story in the local paper about TP hoarding again. There was also a lot of TP there at the store. Ive been slowly building up our stock over the summer, and I last picked some up about 6 weeks ago. We have probably a year’s supply now.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing ever since the TP situation returned to normal back around June. Didn’t buy more than one 9- or 12-pack at any one time, but bought more often than we immediately needed. So we’ve got enough to get us most of the way through April by my rough calculations.
Around here, TP and paper towels are available, but you may have to buy a store brand, or some brand you’ve never heard of. But we’re well stocked up with both, so I’ll buy if our preferred brands are available, and wait if they’re not.
I’ve been seeing rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide in square bottles lately. Why, I’m not sure.
The Costco Business near DH’s current workplace was still doing OK on high-demand items, some not even having quantity limits. I did not see disinfectant spray, though (did see soft-pack wipes in a four-pack box totaling about 300 wipes).
We were getting to the point where we would have to open our last 12-pack of TP, so I asked the wife to get two of the largest available packages when she went to Walmart the other day. She came back with two 20-packs. I’m thinking about getting another one tomorrow.
Commissary has been out of frozen breakfast burritos for three weeks now, and Walmart has been out of the El Monterey steak-and-cheese chimichangas. Should probably pick up a couple tubs of kitty litter, too, but Walmart has also been out of our preferred brand of that. Haven’t seen eggnog available for a couple weeks, either. Other than that I’ve been able to get pretty much everything I wanted the last few trips to the store.