Dan Nielsen: Throwing a wrench into the supply chain
Nov. 17—Supply chain problems tend to be a murky concept — until they slap you in the face.
Like everyone else, I've been reading about supply chain woes for the last year and a half. Our household hasn't had any drastic problems because of them. Last year, we occasionally had to buy a different brand of one thing or another. No big deal.
On a theoretical level, I understand the chain analogy. If one link breaks, the whole chain becomes useless.
I was threading traffic on my bicycle in downtown Milwaukee when a chain link snapped, which made the entire chain inoperative. My feet spun in circles but my torso coasted to an inelegant stop next to fast-moving car fenders.
I was cruising toward Denver when the engine suddenly stopped purring and I rolled to a stop on the freeway shoulder. A roving mechanic traced the problem to a broken link in my car's ignition system.
If the system is working correctly, an alternator makes electricity, a battery stores the power, wires carry it, a coil bumps up the voltage, points click back and forth to deliver electricity at the correct time, and plugs create a spark that ignites fuel. But that day, a ceramic block had worn down so that the points, instead of opening and closing in time to the rotation of the engine, were stuck open. The electricity supply chain had broken.
A fix for the bike required a long walk home, a series of bus rides to the nearest bike shop and cash for a new chain and a tool to install it. The car required merely an adjustment and some grease.
The global supply chain issues we're now experiencing will take much more to solve.
Factories need employees to come back to work and stay healthy. Port facilities need to unload ships faster. Containers need to be recycled in greater numbers. Trucking companies need more drivers. Manufacturers need more raw materials. Mining companies need more workers. Workers hit by inflation need more pay.
For every solution that factors in, it seems there are two new problems. Just steel bike chains, our global supply system is a continuous loop that requires maintenance.
A bicycle chain requires lubrication and an occasional cleaning. The global supply chain needs much more.
This came to mind last week when I got a bee in my bonnet about a wrench.
My wife and I are in the process of equipping our camping trailer for summer adventures. We've never owned a trailer before, so we're excited about getting ready.
Our partnership is all about equality. We strive to be fair partners in life, to share chores equally. We take turns mowing the lawn. We take turns doing the dishes. We collaborate on financial decisions. We take turns with the TV remote control.
But some aspects of our life fall into ridiculously traditional male/female roles. She does 99 percent of our laundry. I do 99 percent of our plumbing repairs. We've accepted various divisions of duty, and we agree that each of us has different interests and talents. I have zero talent for properly separating clothes that require different wash cycles.
Our approaches to equipping our camper vary — along stunningly stereotypical gender roles. I'm not proud of it, but that has become clear over the last couple of months.
She is having fun acquiring camping plates, cups, bowls, towels and bedsheets that feature pictures of little camping trailers.
I am working to acquire the proper tools to keep us moving down the road.
The trailer came with a spare tire, but no jack or lug wrench, so I bought those. I bought a fabric cover to keep our new trailer protected this winter. I wasn't satisfied with the strength of the wood bed structure under those decorative sheets, so I designed and bolted in some bracing. I installed some extra 12-volt wiring so we can easily charge our phones inside the camper. And last week I became fixated on buying a wrench for the giant nut that holds the hitch ball to our tow vehicle.
I read somewhere that it's a good idea to have such a wrench in case the nut works loose. If that nut isn't tight, the trailer could wander off on its own. I measured the hex nut and determined that it requires a 1 1/2 -inch wrench. So I added such a wrench to my list of "things I must acquire before we go camping." I never was a Boy Scout, but I like to be prepared.
There was no time pressure to get that wrench. The trailer is tucked away for the winter, so it'll be months before we hit the road.
But I was out shopping last week, and hit my favorite hardware store. It didn't stock wrenches that big. So I trundled down the road to a larger hardware store. It had a spot on the rack for that size wrench, but the spot was empty. Size does matter when you need to tighten or loosen a hex nut.
The bee now was stuck firmly in my bonnet, and I was on a mission to get that wrench. So, on to a third store. It also was out of stock of that particular size.
I had no idea that extremely large wrenches were in high demand. I blamed the supply chain.
My allotted shopping time was running out, but I remembered another store that stocked lots of tools, so there I went. It had exactly the wrench I needed, and at an affordable price. I ran to the checkout and bought it before another potential buyer could wrestle it away.
So now I own a comically large box-end wrench.
Meanwhile, my wife is shopping for rain suits so we can keep dry while sightseeing in a downpour. I wonder if they'll feature little pictures of raindrops and campfires.
