Where’s My Rotors?

It has been a banner irrigation year so far! The year 2020 started with a bang for the irrigation world. As weather allowed, irrigation installation and upgrade activity boomed. That is good news, however, now we are experiencing shortages of certain key products, but not of all products. A handful of contractors have called me asking to explain this situation. So why is there product shortage? In summary, because of huge demand, missing parts, and lost production time. While we don’t have all the details, here’s our current understanding.

The COVID

Rain Bird, Hunter, and Toro have assembly lines in Mexico. When COVID hit, the Unions shut down their facilities because of fear among their workers. It took them a few days or weeks to iron out how to reopen.  Even after reopening it was difficult to get full crews to show up for work. The impact of this is that several weeks of production were halted or at a snail’s pace. 

The OEMs

All these manufactures rely on other manufactures to make parts for their products such as springs, clamps, electronics, etc.  In the early days of COVID, those manufacturers suffered their own slowdowns and stoppages. The result is that our irrigation makers could not procure all the parts they needed, and ultimately not supply the products you need. 

In addition, another cascading effect happened. Once distributors ran out of Rain Bird 5000s, contractors moved to buy Hunter PGPs. Then when those rotors became limited, contractors started buying any other rotor their supplier could provide, such as K-Rain and WeatherMatic. The result was that more companies were not able to keep up with demand.

Fear Not!

Manufacturers are not going to allow to lose sales in a great year.  Lines are operating 24/7 and they are hiring every capable person to add capacity.  Our typical 2-week order to delivery times were extending out to 30-50 days, however, manufacturers are now saying that the worst of delays is over. Shipments are increasing every day and at Wolf Creek we are seeing that happening; that shipping timeframe is actively shrinking.  

Wolf Creek has been working to keep products rolling for you. We realized that supply may become an issue early on and began heavier ordering.  This allowed Wolf Creek to hang in the game longer than most.  Wolf Creek has plenty of product back-ordered with manufacturers, and more of those orders are beginning to ship.  Some items are in short supply right now, but this is a temporary condition that will alleviate over the next few weeks. Hang loose as this cloud passes.

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