Powder and primers supplies scarce??
 

A couple of months ago I was able to buy 5000 Cheddite primers and 4lbs. of Clay Dot. Now nothing locally or the big internet suppliers. Anyone else feeling the same. This lack of supplies seems worse than a year ago?? The powder suppliers claim they are running flat out but I never see anything available. What are you experiencing? I would buy just about any shotgun powder at this point but I haven't seen any Clays, Unique, or Red Dot for sale since 2019.

Major part of the problem is distribution. When there aren’t enough drivers and trucks and you have warehouses and shipping containers waiting to have product moved, that hurts us all. That isn’t only ammo and components, it’s building supplies, provisions, etc. This was all well orchestrated. Just sayin’.

I got 5000 Chedditte same place you did . And another 6,000 I paid the super inflated price for on GB . A friend traded me an older unopened 12 pound keg of Red Dot so my 12 target loads are covered , I’ll also adapt Red Dot to my 16 gauge loads and almost forgot I’ve got a new unopened 8 of RD at home . My 10 gauge stuff I’ve got plenty SR7625 . For the 8’s I’ve got plenty Universal Clays . For the 20’s and 28’s I’ve got a pretty decent supply of Unique and most likely enough 296 to load the 410 until judgement day . I would however like a couple 8’s of Green Dot another 8 of Red Dot and perhaps two more 8’s of Unique and my worries would be solved for several years . I’m good on all wads as well . Since I have in and tried the red bean loads most of the card wads are no longer needed . Shot I seem to be burning thru , what I brought back from Rock Mountain is going away at a pretty decent clip . Now bear in mind when I say going away it’s being loaded and stacked with the rest of the stuff I have loaded . So while I’m keeping my eyes open for certain things I am not in a bind needing them for a good long while .

There should be more people looking for work now that some of the government relief checks are ending or being reduced.

Without a doubt worse than a few months ago. But I agree with Austin, once people get off their asses and see they have to get a job to feed their kids they will start working. We've been to Maine and N. Carolina on vacation, both places most restaurants are limping along
at 1/2 capacity because of lack of servers and lack of food due to no drivers and warehouse workers. I don't know about you, but I don't relish a 4 hour dinner while one server works the floor. I tip very heavily. I have to believe it will get better when people smarten up and work.

This situation will NEVER get better as long as the public is dumbed down and scared by the virus of the month.

It is a major problem. People who made fun of me for being a hoarder are mighty quiet these days

Better than being jerks for not selling any to them. That is what I experienced.

True that. Most of my friends who shoot a lot did the same thing. My cousin buys so much he probably gets put on a terror watch list

Don't understand your post, sorry. Do you you mean you expected people to sell their "hoard" to you when you couldn't find it? I have friends with huge supplies (think half a million primers) and I just don't ask to buy it. They were way smarter than me. Godspeed to them, learned my lesson.

I got up early to search GB and bought a 8 pounder of Red Dot for $250. plus $30. shipping and NY sales tax. The Ballistics Products current retail is $228. plus hazmat plus shipping plus NY sales tax. So I think I did OK and can use RD for 10 and 12ga.

A small local gun shop had Clays and Win WST last week.

Surely a regular and hot topic at the shooting clubs ..... hereabouts in PA lead shot (Spartan) is more or less available at one place at $40. per bag plus tax (5 bags max) whereas West Coast brand shot has dried up. Common Claybuster wads also available there but prices have gone up about 20%. Some shotgun powders are irregularly coming in and over recent weeks three friends bought 4 and 8 pounders of 700-X, American Select and Green Dot after getting desperate and making long road trips. Not their regular powders but they'll work. 209 primers on the other hand are virtually unobtainable and at least at one place are earmarked for the shop owner's friends and long time customers. Small quantities only. Last week another friend was ecstatic to get a brick (1000) of 209’s at $60. plus tax but not including the expense of a 50 mile road trip in his 4x4 pickup. I see the going rate on GB for a brick of 209 Cheddites seems to be $125. or so plus Hazmat. Econo 12 and some 20 gauge target shells can be had here and there but lowest prices seem to be about $90./flat plus tax.

Well in any case many saw these shortages coming 6-8 months ago and started buying components at then somewhat inflated pricing. And now despite repeated assurances that manufacturers are running balls to the wall it doesn't seem to be getting better but prices are going up and up. :whistle:

I was talking to a gentlemen who is in charge of Winchester ammunition production the other day and his comment was, when asked when would primers be available was,“your guess is as good mine”. He led me to believe it would be one to two years before things would get going again if ever, and certainly more expensive when it does. Who knows. Carvel

I was told 6 months back by a longtime component dealer that he thought it was going to get worse before it got better.
Today Harold and I attended the fundraiser for Lawrence County Sportsman’s Youth Clays teams and also the Mahoning County Coonhunters festival near Canfield, OH. I didn’t see any shotgun primers for sale, there was a silent auction of 1K of Win 209 and 1K of Fed 209 A last I looked they were at $200 I am certain everyone there was hoping to help the fundraising, but there was still time left to write in so I don’t know what they actually brought.

Later at the festival I did notice an 8# of Universal with a $320 price tag. There was some Red dot also but didn’t catch the price.

Hodgdon and Alliant claim to be running 24 hours per day. They also claim sales to ammo producers and the government are small parts of their business. I seems you would see powder occasionally for sale at this point in the shortage, very strange.

I have a line to be able to buy just about 5,000 CCI primers from someone I know locally. I do not need them, for me it would be to resell. I have been hearing about the stupid prices that people pay for primers and figured it would be no problem making a few bucks on them. But when I started asking around to gauge need, I could not find anyone willing to pay over $50/thousand locally. Everyone has been able to get them out of BP for around that price delivered. They may have to wait for them, but they do get them.

A month back I bought a 1 car garage full of reloading stuff. Mostly various wads and hulls. There was some shot. And 2 P/W 800 loading machines in 12g. And a little bit of powder. Sadly next to no primers. I had no problem moving the powder and shot quickly.

I think things got worse if that was possible.

I was at KTP this week for the big event of the year, Septemberfest. I thought they might have been holding some things back and would put them out for it. Didn't happen. They have had plenty of 9mm and 5.56 at higher prices but shotgun ammo and components extremely thin, emphasis on extremely. One manager I have known for years told me they recently had a one million dollar backorder cancelled and the supplier said we don't know when we would be able to fill it. They had a flash ammo sale this past Friday and they had some Winchester Fast Dove in 12 ga for 8.99 a box if I remember right. A 1 ounce loading at 1350 fps, no thanks.

The local Walmarts have started to move non shooting related products to the shelves where ammo used to be.

Major Waldron's gun club is still selling loading ammo but only for what you are going to use (no taking it home), they just recently increased prices for it to $10 a box for 12 and 20 gauge.

I think if supply is going to catch up it would have to happen during the winter when hunting season is over and not as many clay pigeons are being thrown. If we go into March '22 with things still in short supply I believe '22 will be another very dry year for us.

Another point about pricing is this, of course there are those that outright gouge. But when people complain about the pricing at local gun shops and such, the thing that many do not take into account is what the shop had to pay for the inventory. And they have to make money on it. Many I know of have had their normal supply chains completely dry up. So they have to get inventory from wherever they can get it, from walk-in buys usually. Many dealers are paying what used to be normal retail so that they can have something on their shelves.

It is truly feast or famine in this business. Usually famine.

Same with Toyota 4x4's, many of the used one's at the dealer are priced higher than the MSRP for a new one on the Toyota website. Word on the street is new ones start at $2500 over MSRP and go up from there if they can find one.

I bought a Toyota TRD Pro 4 Runner last year, sticker was something like $53,500. They gave it to me for several grand off the sticker, plus gave me $16,000 on a 300,000 mile BASE model Tundra that I paid $18,000 for 8 years ago, used. They called me last month and offered me $53,500 for my 26,000 mile TRD 4 Runner. What? This world is $!#*! nuts. I said, "Well then I have nothing to drive," to which they said, "We have a nice used Prius you can buy..." :rotf::rotf:

Speaking of Toyota trucks… If anyone is wanting a Toyota Tacoma 4x4 TRD package, my brother has a 2018 or 2019 (I cannot recall) with only 4,000 miles on it!
He bought it new and 6 months later got a job with a company vehicle. So every since it has just sat in his garage. He would sell it if the price is right. He is in Hartford, CT.

I’ll trade him 5K primers and an 8 lb of PB!!! :rotf:

I think all components will be short for a long while. The manufacturers can make more money selling completed shells than simple components.

Went to 2 gun shows this weekend. One had no 209 primers at all, the other had 1 sleeve of a 100 primers for $15.00. Almost no powder and very little shotgun shells. I was lucky and got 8 boxes of 20ga Winchester AA 7/8oz 7 1/2 for $70.00.

I was lucky to run into a 1000 primer box of Winchester 209's and a pound of universal and AA Super Handicap at a local gun shop. That is the maximum I could purchase for the day, 2lbs of powder and I brick of primers.

Who ever thought it would come to this? Just posted to Facebook

RST is at Hausmann Hidden Hollows Sporting Clays.
35m · Friendsville, PA ·
Thank you to the Vintage Gunners for providing powder so we could load shells for the SxS Championship this week. There is a limited supply, so we will have a limit of 3 boxes of shells to make it fair.
Hope to see a lot of you there.

Geez . . . .

Attended the Ohio Gun Collectors show on Sunday.
Found a small increase in powders for sale- but no shotgun powders.
The primers (rifle and pistol) were about $125.00-150.00 per 1000
Showing a small decrease from the July show of $200.00 per 1000

I noticed this morning that Precision Reloading has recently reset their prices on 209 primers (all of which are currently out of stock), $70 to $86 per 1000 plus shipping and hazmat. It's a safe bet shooting and reloading will be quite a bit more expensive in the future.

I think as supply eventually balances out demand we will see a decrease in the costs of components and factory ammo. It’ll never go back to pre-shortage levels but it will decrease. Most of the shortage is from the diminished supply chain and not from a manufacturing slowdown.

When I spoke to Morris at Rock Mountain he said that Powder was their issue. They cannot get it from anywhere, even overseas. He said that some of their larger Texas ranch and game preserve customers were dipping into their hoards and sending them powder so that they could load shells to sell them.

So, the above for the VGC goes right in line with this scenario.

A sad state of affairs with no apparent end in sight Brian. The RST rep told me the same thing at Hausmann's in June, powder was their issue, no problem getting primers because they were getting primed hulls directly from Cheddite.

It seems like we are in a cycle of going through these shortages every few years. It is inconvenient for us, but I worry most about the small suppliers like RST

If the powder manufacturer is working at capacity and supply chain is the problem then there must be a stuffed warehouse waiting on a truck to a distributer.
If so must Mr. Baker wait on the distributer or can he send his truck to the makers warehouse? The whole situation is baffling if all involved are telling the truth then a hell of a lot of product is in limbo and that means a lot of money from sales not made. This unrealized income has to be hurting all involved and it seems to have spread beyond the shooting sports to most of the economy.
I have no answer just a lot of questions as to why these products, if made can not be forwarded to the end user. Ammo makers want to sell the product to make a profit and i would think if i were in that situation i would find a way.

I didn't understand Mike's comment either. I would assume trucking/transport is a big issue, as are warehouse workers. Although I can't stand Dicks Sporting Goods, they were born here in Binghamton, NY and they built a bajillion square foot distribution center here and can't move product out of here for lack of warehouse workers, forklift drivers and truckers. Likewise they can't bring all the product in to distribute. There are more recreational shooters than golfers, and we added 9 million NEW gun owners last year. Were you to add 9 million more golfers (God help us..) they would have to build 10,000 more golf courses, so there are some big supply/manufacturing issues too. This data was from another thread on here from the NSSA, somewhere, can't find it.

I can understand primers going to the ammo factories and being prioritized before the reloading market. What puzzles me are Hodgdon and Alliant. They claim to only service reloading. Lead shot and plastic wads are plentiful why not powder. The only thing i can think of is the powder feed stocks are the supply problem, maybe nitrocellulose comes from China like about everything else.

Craig, check the MSDS for a few favorite powders and you’ll find they have small quantities of anti-sour stabilizers, burn deterrents, non-clump coatings and other ingredients, and many of those additives are far more “exotic” than NC or NG. Disruption in supply of any of those ingredients will stall production of that powder.

It is now 7 months later and this remains the latest news from Hodgdon on the powder shortage. A few things stuck out for me. They mention all the new gun owners being part of the extraordinary demand for powder then they go on to say that selling powder to ammo manufacturers is just a small part of their business. Which is it? Did all those new gun owners start reloading as well?

They go on to say that normal demand for powder would not be enough to support an expansion of their production facilities. How long and how much longer will there a severe shortage? With all the new guns and shooters is the old normal demand still a viable measure?

They say they shipped a record amount in 2020 and plan to ship even more in 2021. If so why does it hardly ever show up on shelves, why are decent size gun stores with empty shelves saying they have long standing and huge back orders and having back orders cancelled?

This is a link from the home page of Hodgdon Powder that I am referencing. "Where is the Powder"

https://hodgdon.com/wp-content/uploa...ate-ver6-1.pdf

https://hodgdon.com/

Today I paid $13 for a dozen wings (on wing night). Why is the chicken becoming an endangered species? Perhaps I should stop hoarding reloading components and start reading Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.

-Victor