Shipping is through the roof, gas is $6/gal in some places, diesel and fuel oil is over $8.
I keep hearing that unemployment is way down, but locally all that's hiring is minimum wage jobs.
Truck companies are closing up in droves. Yet they say unemployment is down. I know dozens of middle age guys
who are out of work and unable to collect, a few who were avid bike guys, but they're broke. A few are flipping burgers because no one is hiring drivers. Those that are want younger drivers who they can get cheap and hopefully train.
I hear real estate is sky high, property taxes have doubled since 2008, and utilities have added huge fuel surcharges.
People are pulling back and not spending anywhere. We lost four local grocery stores, those that remain are sketchy at best. Walmart shelves are empty, it takes hitting all four remaining stores to do your weekly shopping and event hen you only find half of what you needed. Two supermarkets were out of eggs and milk for a week, one buys their eggs from company a friend owns.
I called him to see what was going on, he said nothings going on, they haven't been ordering anything. all of a sudden. He's got plenty of eggs but no buyers. A friend of my dads works for the company who delivers milk, he says they stopped going to several locations for unknown reasons, the same farmers say they're not ordering milk and its getting shipped to a processing plant instead before it spoils. He's selling off cows because demand dropped in the past two months.
A buddy has sold used bike parts on eBay for 20 years or more, lately he said nothing sells, he quit ebay a few weeks ago and plans to haul most of his stuff for scrap. He sold tools, bike parts, fishing tackle, and outboard parts for years some how maintaining perfect feedback on several accounts, but he said he hadn't had a single sale since Feb ended. He tells me it fell off drastically after the last week in October, he had 314 items sold in Oct. then 12 in Sept, 8 in Oct, 2 in Nov. and 4 in Dec. then only five in Jan and Feb. Same items same prices. He said he did have four items sell in March but none of those buyers ever paid.
He's in his 60's and tired of dealing with it all and he told me he's going to crush or burn what he's got left.
I do know he pulled several hundred aluminum rims out and was running them over with his tractor because he realized they were worth more in scrap then as rims. The same for boxes of alloy calipers and old Normandy hubs. He made a deal with local scrap yard with a grinder to grind up what he brings in on the spot. He took two dump trucks of stuff last week there. Boxes of new Suntour derailleurs, Alloy road rims, calipers, etc he was dumping out boxes into his trailer tossing the packaging into a burn barrel. He said he's tired of things not selling for enough money and plans to empty the place out, sell the house and move to FL to fish and play golf. HIs reasoning is that if buying up old parts and selling them online can't pay the taxes and the cost of doing so he's done. With fuel so high, driving 100 miles and hiring 20 guys to empty the contents of a closed down bike shop
is expensive, so is storing stuff that has a limited market.
Lately I've been thinking the same thing, with my own taxes and utility bills going so high lately, its time to move somewhere cheaper. A third of what I made last year went to property taxes alone and another third to utility bills
The original plan was to sell down what I have to help pay for the move, but there's not enough buyers who are willing to pay fair prices and the few that would in the past have stopped buying lately.
