Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: Triple_Se7en
Originally Posted By: TmanP
I took a lap through the oil section at Walmart this morning and it looked like a tornado had gone through it. Probably 1/3 of the spaces were empty.
Today is Sunday, the third day of a busy weekend.
Also, most Walmarts have 1-2 particular days for restocking. Ours here in Roseville is Tuesday - then they refill with whatever backstock they have Thursday night. So by the end of the weekend (like today), many items are missing from the shelves.
Find out what 1-2 days your store restocks their shelves. If the shelves are empty the very next day after restocking them, then there's concern about things being phased-out.
Walmart is one of those stores with a crazy theory that if you don't spend that much money paying people to stock the shelves, you save money that way. Not sure how not having any product to sell works out for them, but they somehow make it work. So you also end up with some stores better stocked that others.
Interesting group of quoted points.
- Ive always encountered WM stocking issues, across multiple stores in multiple states over a long while. Nothing new there. WM sells a LOT of stuff and has just in time logistics of some sort, which aims to restock mid week.
- "conventional" oils are meeting more and more stringent specs. While it's disengenuous to sell SA oils next to the others, having some legacy spec oils good to SL or so might be useful given how much lives have changed since.
- Walmart doesn't care if you have to spend a few more dollars. If they could sell a lot more oil by offering more obscure viscosities or older spec oils for older cars, they would.
- newer spec oils serve older cars too. In fact, better than their older oils. I'm sure there's part of the math that savings from DIY outshadows the added coat for oil.
- I have to wonder if like all of retail, there's a shift to online/e-commerce, and reduced shelf space. It seems to me that WM is trying to do an Amazon Prime minus the delivery, so you can buy what you need from online portals, and get it at the Walmart pickup counter. So the store only keeps on hand what is sold and to be picked up in the next few days. At least for less-sold stuff that takes valuable shelf space and store footprint.