Manufacturers aren’t producing as ….

Manufacturers aren’t producing as many smaller appliances, so Purchasing has had to be creative to keep up with demand.

“We are looking into substitutes for products that are no longer manufactured or are just not available,” Rodgers said. “And I’m reaching out to new suppliers.”

Service Maintenance is also doingitspartbymakingsureovens and other LW appliances are kept in good repair, according to Facilities Manager Ruben Gonzalez.

No one knows if this will be an extended period of disruption or if factories will catch up with demand, and ships will work through the backlog of deliveries.

But as of this week, a record 75 cargo ships—carrying almost 500,000 containers—are sitting off the coast, stretching all the way to Huntington Beach, according to K-Cal 9 News. They are waiting to be offloaded.

Once unloaded, a shortage in truck drivers is hampering getting goods to warehouses, which in turn must grapple with low inventories and an inability to meet customer orders.

Leisure World and the rest of the world is seeing first-hand how interconnected economies are, with delays and shortages in one place rippling out nearly everywhere.

Here is one scenario from a Sept. 23 New York Times story titled “The World is Still Short of Everything”: “A shipping container that cannot be unloaded in Los Angeles because too many dockworkers are in quarantine is a container that cannot be loaded with soybeans in Iowa, leaving buyers in Indonesia waiting and potentially triggering a shortage of animal feed in Southeast Asia.”

The holidays are coming. Normally, the peak demand for trans-Pacific shipping begins in late summer and ends in the winter, after holiday season products are stocked, according to the NYT story.

But last winter, the peak season began, and it has not yet ended. And that ongoing peak is morphing into the seasonal holiday rush—reinforcing the pressure on factories, warehouses, ships, trucks and businesses.

That pressure is already filtering down to LW.

So the takeaway for residents: Be patient, buy holiday gifts early, and rest assured that GRF staffers are working hard to keep supplies stocked and projects progressing.