SUPPLY chain issues aren’t just an issue for food and other groceries, as motor parts and tyre suppliers feel the pinch of a combination of domestic and international disruptions due to COVID-19.

With some forms of motorsport like speedway having increasing trouble sourcing their specialised needs, even consumer-level products are taking longer to get to outlets and regional areas are often at the end of the line.

At Hamilton’s Tyrepower outlet, owner Ron Taylor said his business had had to adapt to the increasing number of situations where they could not supply the goods customers wanted and this was slowing down the course of a normal sales routine.

“There’s a lot of extra time in selling the product if it’s not available,” he said.

“Normally you’d just give them a couple of options, and they (say) ‘yeah, no worries’ and you go to order it and neither of those two options are available.

“So you’ve got to ring the customer back and say, ‘I can’t get that’.

“I had a case just before Christmas where there was only one brand of mud tyre in a certain size in the country – everybody else was out of it.”

Mr Taylor said it was not unusual now to have no estimated time of arrival on products, which usually meant six weeks or more.

With tyres, the delays and rising prices were not just caused by local issues of freight, but international shipping, which has had two major barriers – the diversion of already-sent ships to destinations that would be more profitable and the steep rise in costs per container.

“I’ve got a mate who brings wheels in – each freight container was $4000 two years ago and now it’s $12,000,” Mr Taylor said.

“He said ‘I only fit the same amount of wheels in the container, I can’t put any more in’ and ‘Who’s going to wear that? You (the customer) are’.”

Hunt's Auto Spares (Autobarn Hamilton) manager, Marsh Evans said the majority of items they were struggling to get in thankfully were not the common ones needed to keep a car running.

“Stereos - we just can’t them, there’s a lot of tools we just can’t get,” he said.

“(But) all the necessities that you need to keep your car going, there’s no worries there.

“The main stuff at the moment’s not a big concern, but there’s plenty of stuff we’d like to have that we just can’t get.

“We’re just buying from suppliers just out of Melbourne and Sydney … they all tell us they’re waiting on containers but they can’t tell us when they’ll see them.”

On top of the freight concerns, one thing that is now very limited is the highly desirable diesel exhaust fluid, AdBlue, due to one of the components of its manufacture - urea - no longer being available from China.

“They started to ration it out,” Mr Evans said.

“We used to buy it in 10-litre containers, 10 of those and then three-and-half litres and ones.

“The last supplier (gave me) 12 one-litres and said ‘that’s it – that’s all you’re getting’.

“We had to grab what we could get.”

Repco Hamilton manager, Allan Turnbull, highlighted the effect the current COVID-19 outbreak had had on domestic freight, with drivers hard to get and estimated arrivals increasing and local stock shrinking.

“(It’s been) gradually stretching out,” he said.

“As the pandemic’s gone on, we’re slowly dwindling our reserves down.”

He said an advantage they were utilising for now was sourcing stock from other stores and warehouses in their group.

“We can actually source from all over the country anyway and we can drag it out of other branches in stock,” Mr Turnbull said.

“That’s a lot more common than it was in the past.”