Had an interesting conversation with a GA fren yesterday. Glean from it what you will.

Fren rides the desk these days, in supervisor-mode.

He works for AirGas in GA. Fren rides the desk these days, in supervisor-mode. He told me his Big Boss advised him that he(fren) needed to return to driving/delivering this fall, where he can make $20K/month. There is going to be an extended 60 day outage of CO2, nationwide. The Richmond VA plant will be shut down/out of service. The GA plant will be doing the lions share of deliveries along the eastern/southern side of the country.

I'm not up on all the various uses of CO2, besides the obvious Carbonation in beverages (soda, beer, sparkling waters, etc.), and told my friend this. He said that the frozen food world is going to take a tremendous hit as CO2 is used to freeze turkeys, chicken, and other items, etc. He advised tobuy earlyand freeze whatever you think you might need for this fall.

He said the turkey plant near him kills thousands of turkeys a day and uses a ton of co2 to freeze the turkey for market. This will dramatically hinder their operation and blow a hole in the Turkey sales well before Thanksgiving. Sure, stores can sell "fresh" items, but they have a shorter shelf life, obviously. And stores do not have enough "fridge" area to accommodate a change-over from frozen to "fresh".

The planned shortage is due to start Sept 18th-ish. Ok, that's when fren has been asked to return to driving. Theoretically, the shortage could start 2-4 weeks prior to that.) This shortage comes a solid 2 months before Thanksgiving. Obviously, we could see other forms of food shortages well before then.

This shortage also happens to coincide with the mid-terms, and the already impending food shortage we are seeing advertised on the news now. lt also happens to coincide with "sometimes you have to show the people".

Moral of the story:

-If you drink any carbonated beverages: stock up early.

-If you want a Turkey for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas: stock up early

-If you eat a lot of frozen foods (and you may have to do your own CO2-frozen-food research): stock up early.

-If you don't have one already: buy a freezer