The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the supply of heavy-duty truck parts, as with so much else, has not been understated the last few years.
Yet while some products have become easier to procure now more than three years on since the first reported case of COVID in the U.S., that’s not necessarily the case for truck parts. Nearly 70% of respondents to a recent Overdrive survey centered on part purchasing issues indicated that the difficulty and delays associated with sourcing parts either got worse or stayed about the same in 2022 as it was in prior years. Only 19% of respondents said their parts sourcing had gotten easier.
Additionally, more than 50% of Overdrive readers indicated they experienced difficulty or unusual delays in sourcing parts in at least two of the last three years.
Engine-related components have been the most difficult parts category to source, or have been accompanied by lengthy delivery delays, with 57% of readers signaling difficulties. Other categories ranking high for sourcing difficulties included tires (43%) and oil and various filters (41%).
Similarly, results of a survey conducted by Overdrive sister publication CCJ showed leased owner-operator respondents indicating tires as representing the biggest sourcing difficulty (41%), followed by aftertreatment components and oil/lubricants at 36% each. Electrical parts (34%) and filters (32%) each ranked high as well.
Given the challenges, owners have had to take different roads to parts sourcing. Exactly half of survey respondents indicated they do most of their own preventive and general maintenance, and parts for that maintenance are primarily purchased at a truck dealer or heavy-duty parts distributor. Yet 7 in 10 owner-operators are either regularly or occasionally purchasing parts online for delivery -- that's in the last three years, with 31% saying they have increasingly ordered parts online as a result of recent sourcing issues.
Those perspectives are in line with what some of the nation’s largest parts distributors are seeing, too.
