[Spooky23]

It’s a whiptail effect. Shifts in demand and supply cascade and create unpredictable effects.

For example, the rush on toilet paper triggered more production, which reduced pulp supplies, which constrained golf cart supply.

Why? Seats are made from particleboard, made from pulp. Plus, golf courses bought more carts than usual due to lockdown restrictions.

[wexler88]

Was the particleboard really the operative constraint? Or is the explanation about extra demand the correct one?

It seems plausible that golf cart manufacturers aren't ready to handle extremely spiky demand. Also, that the toilet paper explanation begins as a joke or a guess, and takes hold because everyone likes it as a story.

[Spooky23]

Check out:

https://charlestonbusiness.com/news/automotive/80346/

I don’t have an academic paper, but I got the same story from several pretty big rental providers. (I needed about a dozen golf carts for a project)

It was crazy - the rental places had no inventory because gold courses weren’t offloading older gold carts due to the supply chain issues.

We ended up buying a smaller number of bigger utility vehicles from Bass Pro Shops, of all places! The techs had fun with that.

[rustyminnow]

> Was the particleboard really the operative constraint? Or is the explanation about extra demand the correct one?

Probably both were contributing factors, along with a slew of other things.

This particular story does seem like it could be a folk-tale explanation, but it's not really about golf-carts - no one cares about golf-cart shortages. It's just a simple example of a broader issue for people to easily grasp. Even if it isn't particularly accurate, the same thing is happening in/across just about every industry