Supply lines are still troublesome for a lot of industries, but I remember when things were so bad in the beginning that you couldn’t even find toilet paper for a large amount of time.
There was a huge incentive to buy and hoard it when you could find it, which bled over into all of the other products that stayed in low quantity during pandemic related supply line disruptions.
Of course there were multiple factors leading to this situation. People were getting sick left and right and had to call out of work. At the same time, contracts were revoked, building projects were put on hold, and thousands of people lost their jobs overnight. It’s hard to imagine a functioning economy existing in a world with all of these tragedies happening within a three month time frame. Naturally, these factors compounded into slowing all of the supply lines, regardless of the industry. My friend is a building contractor and he immediately felt the pain with the wood shortage in the summer of 2020. When he had access to the wood he needed, the prices had shot up by 40% in many cases. While wood supplies have improved in the two years since, he recently had to face a supply line shortage rebar tie wire. Both bar wire and rod wire were hard to find, regardless of whether or not you needed black bar rebar or galvanized rebar. Forget trying to find stainless steel rebar, as that was being saved for government building projects and large buildings exposed to the elements.