From: believer@telepath.com Subject: IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 11:22:46 -0600 To: believer@telepath.com Source: Wired http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/16035.html?3 Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers by Declan McCullagh 4:00 a.m.5.Nov.98.PST The phones are already ringing when Steve Portela arrives at his office every morning. Orders are piling up as they never have before. Walton Feed, his bulk food company, doubled its workforce this year to 125 people and a new warehouse will open in late November. It isn't enough. Orders placed today won't be delivered for six months. "I'm falling further behind every day," Portela complains. The source of Portela's woes? Widespread worries about the Year 2000 computer problem. The looming bug has sent thousands of Americans scrambling to load up on bulk food, generators, solar cells, and gold coins. Some of the products, if ordered today, won't arrive on a customer's doorstep until spring 1999. And delays are expected to grow. Spikes in demand are nothing new to Portela. The Mount St. Helens eruption, the Los Angeles riots, and the last major California earthquake all spurred people into grabbing their credit cards and phoning Walton Feed. From a perch 6,000 feet up in the Idaho mountains, the company has grown into one of the nation's largest bulk food suppliers. But nervous jitters caused by those disruptions are peanuts compared to growing fears that Y2K will snarl electric power, telecommunications, and the banking system. "Add it all together, and Y2K surpasses everything," Portela says. This time it's not just survivalists stockpiling sealed barrels from Walton's extensive selection of wheat, rice, and other dried foods. "It's common everyday folks, people just like you," Portela says of his customers. "We're not talking about any radical people." Other food companies have similar bellyaches. "The demand is amazing -- 99.99 percent of the people we deal with are preparing for Y2K," says Tamera Toups, office manager for Montana-based Peace of Mind Essentials." Unlike Walton's, Peace of Mind Essentials doesn't boast a storeroom full of towering bins of grain. Instead, it places orders that are later filled by warehouses. Toups estimates volume has leapt 500 percent this year. "If anyone doesn't have an order in by the end of April, their chances of getting it before 2000 are pretty slim," she said. "The window might be even smaller than that." You'll still be able to buy bulk food after next April, of course. America Inc., a food exporter, has plenty of it. But Walton Feed makes a niche product prized by Y2Kers: sealed 50-pound drums of food with the oxygen removed, a process that delays spoilage and eliminates grain-munching critters. A year's supply tips the scales at 600 pounds and costs $300, plus shipping. Trying to procure a diesel generator, on the other hand, is shaping up to be increasingly difficult. Loren Day, president of China Diesel Imports, spends a good portion of each day puzzling out how to crank out more and more generators to meet a swell of Y2K orders. Shipments of his company's most popular 8,000-watt model are already running six months behind. "Orders are up about 1,000 percent since the first of the year," Day says. "And the amount of people who will want a generator now is nothing compared to the amount of people who will want a generator later." Day, whose 50-person company is the largest US distributor of diesel generators, usually sells to rural customers who live beyond the reach of electric power lines. "Now with this Y2K thing it's gone crazy," he said. He said he now has the both of the world's largest generator manufacturers running at near capacity to satisfy US demand. Why don't Y2Kers simply pick up a $500 gasoline generator at Home Depot or their local hardware store? Day believes they're so worried about the oft-criticized reliability of the portable units, that they're willing to pay diesel prices, starting at $1,750. "The main thing is the longevity and fuel economy of the diesel," he said. Diesel fuel is an oil, so it keeps longer than gasoline, which spoils after a year. Those Y2K consumers who dread running out of fuel are also turning to renewable energy. "We're totally swamped by Y2K," said Laura Myers, a sales representative for solar equipment distributor Sunelco. "We're beginning to see some lead times on some of our products. By next spring it's going to be insane." Sales at the Hamilton, Montana-based Sunelco have tripled because of Y2K, Myers said. She predicts that orders placed after next spring won't arrive until 2000. "It's been a huge increase," said Davy Rippner, a vice president at Alternative Energy Engineering, a California-based firm. "The things that we're out of and we can't keep in stock are the Baygen [hand-cranked] radios and the Russian-made hand-dynamo flashlights." Then there are the full-blown home solar systems, which start at $3,000 and can range up to $30,000. "A lot of small installers around the country that have been struggling to make a living are now booked for months in advance," said Karen Perez, who publishes Home Power magazine with her husband Richard from the couple's off-the-grid home outside of Ashland, Oregon. The Perez family won't do anything to prepare for Y2K -- except spend time handling the sharp uptick in recent subscriptions to their magazine. "We're six miles from the nearest phone and power line," she said. "As far as Y2K with us, the only thing that I'm planning on doing personally is getting a stash of non-hybrid seeds." Non-hybrid seeds are particularly prized by Y2Kers who stay up nights worrying that potential widespread computer crashes could disrupt food distribution. Most hardware store seeds are hybrid varieties. They grow well, but they can be sterile. Since seeds from hybrid plants may not germinate, some Y2Kers are stockpiling the non-hybrid varieties. "[We've been] getting calls about bulk seeds and buying in quantities and packing them for storage for some period of time," said Dave Smith, vice president of Seeds of Change in Santa Fe, New Mexico. "We definitely think that there will be an increase in sales because of this problem." Burt Blumert doesn't need to speculate. The Burlingame, California, company he owns, Camino Coin, has seen sales of precious metal coins double from last year because of Y2K jitters. "It's widespread now," Blumert said. In May, Blumert began to run ads for a "Y2K Life Preserver," a $3,500 collection of coins that includes British gold sovereigns, silver dollars, and pre-1965 silver dimes and quarters. He markets the collection as a kind of financial Y2K insurance policy, just in case banking glitches or more widespread problems call for a permanent currency. "When people buy gold, they're dropping out," he said. "This is the ultimate dropout, when the institutions themselves aren't working." Copyright © 1994-98 Wired Digital Inc. ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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