Had a supply house guy tell me I was over ordering, got me thinking

Ngl, I was at Ferguson in Denver last week grabbing a few compressors and some drier filters, and the counter guy just straight up says "you know you don't need that many, right?" At first I was annoyed, but he showed me his spreadsheet of failure rates and part numbers. He had data from like 300 calls over the past year, and he was spot on about which parts actually die. I've been stocking up on capacitors for years based on gut feeling, but now I'm wondering if I've been wasting space in my van. Has anyone else ever had a supplier give you that kind of hard truth that changed your whole ordering system?

2 comments

2 Comments

david_henderson61mo ago

Got me wondering though - did he actually show you which specific capacitors were failing most, or was it more of a general "you're ordering too many of everything" kind of thing? Because there's a big difference between trimming back on the weirdly specific 40-year-old hard-start kits nobody replaces (you know, the ones that always sit on the shelf collecting dust) versus cutting down on the universal 45+5 mfds that I swear go out every other week. I feel like the real value in his spreadsheet would be knowing exactly which parts to keep overstocked versus which ones to just grab as needed. Did he break it down by brand or system type, or was it just raw numbers?

the_kim1mo ago

Raw numbers, no breakdowns on brands or types.