Welcome to my world everyone. Tire prices are skyrocketing. We are having price increases it seems like daily. It's more than just the oil prices. The cost of natural rubber has went thru the roof. It has doubled in a year.
They are telling us (and you know how they do us), that there has been so much rain over in the asian-pacific countries that most of the rubber trees are in, that the supply is way down. I suspect the real truth is the market speculators (just like oil) are driving the prices way up.
There is also a real tire shortage here. There are many tires and sizes I can't even get. Here again, 'they' say that China and India are consuming so much with their growing economies, that we are going to have to compete with them. I am seeing a lot of tire companies, in trying to keep up with their own demand, have stopped or curtailed even producing a lot of the private label brand names......which just let's them charge an even higher premium for their own brand of tires........by taking some of the competition out of the market.
Another thing was this 3 year import tire tax that your president put on Chinese tires. That made some tire manufacturers shift or stop their production of US bound tires....which has also helped fuel the crazy tire price increases we are seeing here. The ones that do get here are tacked with a 30+ percent import tax. Like it or not, these tires did sorta help keep other tire prices down.
Here is an example, which my manager and I looked up the other day while we were discussing this same thing. The exact same tire that I sold right at 3 years ago for $96.64 is now $183.89......and climbing.
The trade journals keep telling us to not expect anything but more increases for the forseeable future. I will forwarn you a little, we have already gotten notice that Goodyear is going up another 8% the first of May, so if you are holding off buying tires, you might want to think about it. They are about to cost you even more.
