Our production queue length in time should be decreasing due to increases in technology, machinery, and staffing. I posted in another thread that compared to 2-3 months ago our production rate was already up about 40%. We've had quite a lot of delays due to COVID this year; things like CNC tech reps not being allowed to travel leading to machine turn-on delays, things of that nature. Right now staffing is a little bit weird due to COVID-- I think we would probably have another shift online if not for its complicating factors.
The vast majority of our orders are dealer orders. Most dealers do not "pre sell" all the cans they have on order. I'd estimate that easily more than half the cans we ship, the dealer has not pre-sold or pre-allocated. We give visibility into the length, in time, of our production queue, but this only applies to new orders direct from us. There are tons of cans going out every day to distributors and dealers, and it's going to be most efficient to get a can from them. Think about the difference between ordering a new car or truck (IE 8-13 weeks) vs. finding one that you want already at a dealer.
Also, for any of our products, if you need something and really can't find it at a dealer anywhere, first call us and we might be able to point you to a dealer that has one. Next, if there really isn't one sitting somewhere: get on our backorder list. If we have even slightly more demand than supply of an item, checking back every few weeks to see if it's back in stock is probably not going to get you what you need, since in the interim we've been filling existing (mostly dealer) orders.
Hope this helps
You can lie to yourself, but not to us!
