Looks like most of the lube suppliers are announcing a 10-12% price increase for all lubricating oils and greases. My supplier sent an announcement today that stated this; “These pricing adjustments are attributable to continuous rising costs of base oils, additives, packaging, and transportation”. Now is a good time to top off your bulk tanks before the new prices. I attached a spreadsheet with the majors and their price adjustments.
We're not burning near as much fuel, gas, diesel, Jet A, asphalt, bunker C, all of it. They literally have to raise prices because they're not selling enough, rather than there being too much demand. Flucked again.
My supplier likes to send me those notices after they raised the damn price last week.
I don’t think it’s worth a separate thread yet, So I’ll bump this one. Motiva just announced a Force Majeur and has closed their lube oil base stock operations, methanol and glycol because of the cold weather in Texas. What this does to the lube oil biz is yet to be seen. I haven’t seen any thing from Chevron, XOM or P66.
Yet oil prices are still in the ####ter. Figure that one out.
Bump for quarter two. I heard today lubricant manufacturers have announced another 2021 general price increase of 10-15% for April. Attributed to the weather shutdown and force majeure.
Bump for quarter 4. I want to share this recent memo from Royal Dutch Shell/SOPUS. Summary is; don’t expect product until January 2022 and minimum improvement after that. Rotella T6 tends to be very difficult to source. Pennzoil synthetic is unobtainable in my area. Just a personal observation, I started using Pennzoil ultra platinum 5-30 because it’s good oil and I was getting 5 quart bottles for $17. Only product available today is quarts for $21 each. I’m hearing rumblings about another cross-the-board price increase this quarter from all the players.
The mark up on injection pump parts went up 65% across the board.!! Making it almost impossible to rebuild a pump for the diy’r.. like me.. The only thing it did was cut my meager profit margin.!’ I can’t raise my prices 65% to help u guys out.. cuz what would be the point.. I do this to help u guys out, not make a house pmt. or send my kid thru college.!! I do this because “A” I love it.. & “B” I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I get emails thanking me for getting their old tractor running and by saving them 1000.00 in the process.. (Walking them thru removal and giving them a quality rebuild, saving them 2-300. or more compared to the big fuel shops)
What a shame ! It will be the end user that ponys up the $$$ increase as usual. pumpguysc; you will still be cheaper than all the other re-builders because they are going to raise their prices to cover the parts increases .
Yeah we've been seeing the shell availability issues here. I'm buying places out of jugs and pails a lot.
I buy Rotella from Tractor Supply, and it has been very hard to find. Luckily, I stocked in one oil change so I have it in reserve.
Many of the car dealers in my area have National contracts with SOPUS for Pennzoil product. A couple of them have thriving lube bay traffic. But, they can’t get bulk Pennzoil product, so they are using whatever they can get. Meanwhile, that’s cutting into their profits. I’m seeing price increases for oil/filter change specials at the lube centers.
So, got confirmation today that all the majors are doing price increases in December, except P66 & Chevron. SOPUS is the winner@ 15%. With the SOPUS lack of allocation, my local distributor is now out of inventory of all other brands of bulk PCMO’s. Trying to fill the gap. Case quantity’s only of bottles and eco-packs. Interesting. Thats a lot of packaging getting tossed into dumpsters. DEF. not lube related, but interesting nonetheless. Heard a rumor today about a major DEF manufacturer running into issues. I don’t know who it is, but we will probably expect the news in a couple weeks. This was also very interesting: The NOLA index for granular urea averaged $679.40 during the month of October. This represents a $162.03/ton increase in value from September’s average of $517.38 and will have a .24/gallon price impact on bulk DEF price points. In addition to urea values, the raw materials for everything we procure to package DEF continues to rise.
I didn't hit the like button because of the increases. I like hearing from someone in the industry willing to pass the information along.
Thanks John. The bad news just keep coming. The grease situation is improving, but the heat transfer oil, hydraulic oil, DEO and PCMO situation just gets worse everyday, in price & availability.
Here in the UK,I buy a lot of timber from the UK sawmills and Sweden. We’re around 100% up on material costs in reality. On another note,we will be loosing the ability to refuel earthmoving equipment next year with red diesel. It will be the same tax on any equipment as it is at the filling station. I’ll be able to take a 631 to fill up at the supermarket
Good grief Nicky ! That fuel situation is terrible news for the construction industry in the UK. I think the price increase will be devastating to the economy. Where I live road taxes are nearly $.40 a gallon.
You may be right Tinkerer. Hard to know. However,we’ll survive.Inflation is running at a fair pace here and things often end with a bang. I’ve been at it 30 years and have done ok in recessions. We’ll see how it turns out over the next 3 years.
For the P66 Guardol fans, bad news today. The Lubrizol plant that makes the HDEO dispersant for P66 went down today. P66 just sent this out; We recently became aware that our additive supplier discovered unexpected issues during their planned maintenance efforts—specifically the chlorine line feeding their dispersant unit. The line and unit are expected to be down for 2-3 weeks. This has further impacted production capability for HDEO products and ability to supply at previously projected levels. As a result and effective immediately, HDEO allocation will drop for the month of November.
They fell victim to one of the classic blunders, underestimating your chlorine line maintenance needs. Too bad.
Update 3/28: Chevron today announced an $1.95 per gallon across the board, price increase on HDEO, Automotive, and industrial lubes today. $.90 for bulk products and $.20 increase for re-packaging.
Been awhile since I provided an update. So, let’s bump this thread with more doom & gloom. Chevron just announced a ( up to) 15% across the board price increase on lubes and grease, July 11th. Stock up, Delo fans. Here, you can read it yourself. I guess there is good news. Coolant prices are dropping. The next information is just rumor, but it’s spreading like wildfire. Supposedly, a major DEO additive manufacturer just announced force majeure today. It may be B.S, but the implications are concerning for the N. American lube market.