Oil is still rising in price so petrol will go up.
Let’s hope that it doesn’t hit the $100+/barrel that we saw 2011-14 or £15 a gallon is entirely possible.
Of course if the wets and NIMBY’s would let us produce our own instead of objecting every time somebody proposes new extraction sites …
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I’ve just returned from a shopping trip to Tesco, there were many empty and almost empty shelves. This has not been seen by me in Tesco before in the last 15 years. Bearing in mind it’s an enormous store, some 45 checkouts plus probably about a dozen self-service tills.
Petrol at another garage (Jet) on the way there was 144.9 a litre so that’s gone up by other 4p since the middle of last week. Yet the price of heating oil the same as diesel (also bought on the same spot market) has gone down by 1p a litre to 61p a litre (including 5p tax). Something ‘fishy’ is going on with all this I reckon. Someone, somewhere I reckon is tinkering with prices.
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AIUI availability sometimes seems patchy but remember it’s a Monday.
I try never to visit supermarkets on a Monday because of bare shelves and it isn’t a recent thing, but for years on a Monday shelves have been empty after the weekend shopping rush.
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Well, bearing in mind the size of that Tesco (45 checkouts plus a couple of dozen self-service checkouts) I’ve never seen the shelves so empty, not in 15 years. There were probably a couple of dozen bananas for instance and three or four punnets of grapes. Also the ready meals had completely empty shelves in places, again I have never seen that. I only wanted two just to replace two used last week, these are always kept in the freezer so that was all I bought, I refuse to panic-buy. It was the same with the frozen vegetable freezers, empty.
Which Tesco was this please?
@Zaphod, l would think it better if we could keep Boris AWAY
from any crisis decisions, given the cock up he made of
Brexit negotiations ??
Donkeyman! 
Never seen bare shelves on a Monday .
They also deliver medicines and inputs into our own industries. If they stopped importing tea and coffee doubtless there would be a revolution.
A Just In Time delivery is just 1 tool in a kit bag full invented by Toyota to make its manufacturing as lean, mean, productive, efficient, high quality, and cost effective as possible. It really doesn’t have anything to do with food deliveries as such. In any case, JIT deliveries can be manipulated so that Factory A always delivers to Factory B on time, every time by using buffer stocks either next door to Factory B or within the factory itself.
On the way to the hospital today, I passed Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Esso forecourts and all had signs up All Grades Available. Not a single vehicle was queuing and on the way home all forecourts were devoid of cars … the fuel shortage and panic buying in my coastal area must be over.
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@Percy_Vere , But JlT was introduced specifically to save
carrying stocks in warehouses as buffers, it was deemed as
unproductive assets !!
You are correct that food was not meant to be included in this
scheme, but people being what they are it somehow got included !
Some foods obviously need to be delivered quickly for
freshness reasons and so should not be delayed ??
Donkeyman! 
I was taught that JIT was developed to eliminate supply chain problems, such as delays caused by vehicle breakdowns, accidents on motorways, etc. The only way to achieve this is to hold a buffer stock in a Kanban system running alongside JIT.
@Percy_Vere , That would make more sense Percy for sure !!
I learnt about JIT whilst working for VW in SA, and we were told
it was to eliminate carrying large stocks of spare parts on the
companies stocks, And spare parts would only start to be
manufactured once an order to purchase was recieved, it would then be manufactured and despatched once a minimum
Quantity for a small batch was reached??
This all made no sense to me for the reasons you stated!!
Maybe l was in at the very beginning of JIT and it was modified ??
Donkeyman!
One chain of supermarkets, Aldi, does as far as I know operate a type of ‘Just in Time’ (JIT) deliveries. ‘JIT’ is also just an expression for the way goods are ordered in time and delivered when required, probably all done by computer. Aldi stores apparently don’t have warehouses, the lorries deliver to the individual supermarket in time to replace produce / items sold.Their products go straight out on the shelves. It must benefit profits, cashflow and customers if there are less products, especially fruit and vegetables, in warehouses and instead in the stores being sold. I know for fact that fruit and vegetables in Aldi are far fresher than those in some other supermarkets.
With the shortage of HGV drivers any ‘JIT’ system will be severely disrupted. The empty shelves being seen probably are partly as a result of this. With this system being used for many products and food supplies, it seems obvious to me that there must be an existing maximum capability that is being exceeded, hence my post.
it was developed to eliminate bottle necks which cause problems across the whole supply chain and increase the cost of finished goods, cancelled orders, returns, etc. Long-term storage of stocks as a result of bottlenecks in capacity of input processes unnecessarily increases costs of production, results in wastage or obsolescence which cannot be passed onto the consumer. The kanban process constantly focuses on elimination of bottlenecks through precise planning and monitoring.
The risks of lean production are supply chain disruptions such as we have seen recently, but on the whole it’s a great model for efficiency and effectiveness of organisations. It works on a “pull system” based on strict monitoring of consumer demand. I’m guessing that pretty much any successful company is using it now.
Kanban IMO, was developed to place in house material control responsibility onto the suppliers, so reducing direct labor costs, and to avoid tying up capital in Inventory. 
Does skew comparison on unit prices though.
Today on the news I heard the best description of buying petrol. The guy simply said “Yeah, I filled my tank. It hurt my soul and my wallet!” 
$$$
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I find it hard to believe that these absent drivers all independently
chose to chuck it in ,in the space of two weeks, and all over the
Western world to boot !!
Seems too much of a coincidence to me ??
Donkeyman ! 
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