During the day – Is your car still stuck in the garage? Blame it on the lack of spare parts

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Global supply chain issues weigh on US auto garages.

The challenge of finding replacement parts as mundane as oil filters or carpets has forced repair shops to rack up inventory, find workarounds, and beg customers to be patient until they are finished. ‘a shipment is coming. Typical delays of a day or two have extended to weeks in some cases, traders say.

It is a self-feeding loop. A global semiconductor shortage has reduced the production of new vehicles, leading to increased demand and prices for used cars, and forcing people to keep their old ones for longer. In turn, these vehicles need repairs, which are now increasingly driven by grunts in the supply chain.

In suburban Seattle, mechanic Bryan Kelley twice waited for parts for 60 to 90 days while he repaired pickup trucks. One of the parts, a crankshaft position sensor, used to take half an hour to get from the distribution center, said Kelley, owner of Valley Automotive Repair and Electric. The wait was so long that the customer was ready to ditch their Dodge Ram 1500, he said.

“He went so far as to say, ‘I’m going to tow it and buy another truck,’ said Kelley, who is also the president of the Automotive Service Association Northwest trade group. “It got worse when he found out he couldn’t just go down and buy one.”

The $ 300 billion auto parts and repair industry faces widespread operational challenges, ranging from soaring prices for steel and other materials to labor shortages. work and, like everyone else, to delays in unloading cargo at US seaports, said Paul McCarthy, general manager of the Association of Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers.

No garage is spared, whether it’s franchise dealers who source their parts from major automakers, independent warehouses or small corner garages, McCarthy said.

“This is the most difficult supply chain environment I have ever seen,” AutoZone Inc. CEO William Rhodes said on a earnings conference call in September. AutoZone runs “the lowest level of inventory I can remember,” said Rhodes, who started his career at the Memphis, Tennessee-based auto parts retail giant in the 1990s and who has been CEO since 2005.

For now, front-line mechanics need to get creative while keeping car owners calm as they break the bad news. It helps when so many of these customers have experienced pandemic shortages of all kinds of commodities over the past year and a half.

In suburban Philadelphia, Lisa Matlock’s Nissan Sentra was flooded when Hurricane Ida hit the northeast in early September, leaving the interior soggy and smelly. “I can’t begin to tell you what the smell was like,” said Matlock.

Unable to find a replacement carpet, the mechanics at Colket Technical Services in Lansdale, Pa., Did the next best thing by pulling out the existing carpet, having it professionally cleaned, and putting it back in place.

Matlock was understanding when store owner Ross Colket explained that he couldn’t find carpet anywhere. As a convenience store employee, she can’t even find plastic containers for takeout sandwiches from her store lately.

“I wasn’t surprised or disturbed that Ross had a hard time finding carpet,” said Matlock.

Hoarding has become standard practice for particularly sought-after items.

“Oil filters are getting harder and harder to get, so when I buy them, I buy them in as large quantities as I can,” said Danny Tomasian, director of River Road Auto Service in Bethesda, Maryland.

Auto repair delays appear particularly large in the United States, as spare parts produced in Asia become entangled in global traffic jams and congestion in seaports.

Xu Haidong, deputy chief engineer of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said that the production and supply of parts is sufficient in his country. In Japan, some electronic parts are increasingly difficult to find, such as navigation systems, but other parts are readily available, said Hiroshi Arai, general secretary of the Japan Autoparts Wholesales Association.

For now, the US aftermarket parts industry is bracing for shortages possibly next year, said McCarthy of the supplier association.

Colket, the owner of the Philadelphia-area garage, takes it in stride.

He even has a nickname for persistent delays: “We affectionately call him the intergalactic backorder.”

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