Did you know that approximately 90% of the world’s goods are transported by sea? The current global shipping and supply chain crisis is expected to last until at least midway through 2022 before showing signs of returning to normal. Is this all because of covid-19? Global supply chains are complex, if you are curious why it seems everything you want to buy is out of stock or costs more the answer is fairly straight forward.
There has been a huge increase in demand for goods imported by shipping container.
Since the early days of the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home, people started buying more and more goods online. Rather than visiting physical locations like bars, restaurants, shopping centres and gyms, people started ordering exercise equipment, gym equipment, bikes and more to make life at home less daunting.
This caused a global shift of consumer demand away from typical services and more toward manufactured goods.
Prices are going up
For the consumer on the hunt for an electric trike or electric bike, these supply chain backlogs don’t only mean that these products are harder to find. They also often mean the price goes up. As the lockdowns spread across the globe, the volume of e-commerce orders continued to increase and show no signs of letting up. Unfortunately, many of the manufacturers and transportation providers had already started to scale back operations so needed to quickly try and adjust.
Although ordering online for the consumer is quick and easy, shipping companies and manufacturers had to try and ramp up capacity and work with Covid-19 safety protocols, and in many cases are still struggling to meet demand. We are still seeing delays in bicycle components from various manufacturers of over 12 months.
Where are all the shipping containers?
Shipping containers are the next wrench in the works, they simply are not where they need to be. As shipments from Asia increased in 2021 containers filled with exports headed to North America and the rest of the world. However, because of the Covid-19 restrictions and some shipping carriers reducing the number of ships at sea in an attempt to stabilize costs, many of these containers were not being picked up and making their way back to Asia quickly enough. Add the increased volume in shipping and there simply are not enough containers to meet demand.
This supply chain imbalance has affected all number of manufacturing and consumer goods.
Further impacting the cost of goods going up is energy resources. As economic activity starts to rebound around the world as Covid-19 restrictions relax once again, demand on fuel has gone up while inventory has not kept pace. This is driving fuel prices to record levels.
Not enough workers
Asia was one of the first to be hit by the pandemic and was also one of the first to recover. While exports from China started earlier than the rest of the world, other nations are still dealing with Covid-19 related restrictions, reduced capacity, inadequate workforce, and lower production.
The trucking industry in Canada is currently facing an estimated labour shortage of about 20,000 drivers. Some international container ports are also finding it difficult to secure enough labour to unload ships and move goods through the ports to warehouses and distribution points.
These shortages are creating further delays that snowball along the supply chain resulting in much longer delivery times and fewer products on shelves. These backlogs and shortages not only cause delays, they also raise the cost to the consumer.
Container prices in some cases have increased by over 800%
Eventually this traffic jam will clear, and things will get back to normal, when that will be is still hard to say.
We have trikes in stock now available to ship fully assembled Canada wide!
Despite a frustrating year of delays, eTrikes Canada has been able to secure inventory of two of our most popular trikes, the Commuter electric trike and the Cargo electric trike. Many lucky customers placed deposits on their trikes earlier in the year and are now riding these hard to come by tricycles.
With 50% already sold we still have stock of both models ready to ship.
Traditionally, our warehouse would see a slowdown in the winter months as customers would hold off on their new purchase till the weather warmed up. Things are a little bit different this year though. In today’s pandemic supply crisis customers are realizing that they need to grab their electric trike or electric bike whenever stock is available. And that time is now. Struggles with supply will not disappear any time soon so if you are planning on making a New Year’s resolution to spend more time outdoors secure your new electric trike today while stock still last.
