My buddy called the 2020 toilet paper panic 6 months before it happened

Back in fall 2019 my friend who works in logistics said paper supply chains were about to crack from some tariff stuff. I laughed at him but threw $200 on a pallet of TP from a restaurant supplier. Best $200 I ever spent while everyone else was fighting over single rolls.

4 comments

4 Comments

brookeellis8d ago

Samrodriguez, you said it "must have lasted like two years easy." Actually it didn't. I ended up giving away most of it to neighbors and family because I didn't need that much. A pallet is like 60 giant rolls. For two people, that's maybe a year and a half tops if you're being really careful. And honestly, storing 60 rolls of toilet paper in a small apartment was a nightmare. I had them stacked in a corner of my bedroom and it looked like a weird shrine. So yeah, it was nice to have during the worst of the panic, but it wasn't some magical golden ticket. You end up being the weirdo with a warehouse of paper products.

charles_baker288d ago

Same exact thing here. Ended up giving half mine away just to get the space back.

samrodriguez8d ago

Wait did you say a whole pallet from a restaurant supplier... that's insane. I remember driving past Costco in March 2020 and seeing cops directing traffic because people were literally fighting over 12-packs. A full pallet must have lasted you like two years easy.

sammartinez8d ago

Funny you say that but honestly I'd argue it was a perfect golden ticket for the right person. That $200 pallet probably saved you from 10+ trips to empty stores, not to mention the stress of wondering if you'd find anything. People forget that "having too much" became a currency in 2020 - you could trade rolls for favors, pizza, sanity. The storage thing is a fair point, but a bedroom corner shrine beats fighting someone in a parking lot over the last 12-pack any day. If anything, you undersold how nice it was to be the one person who didn't have to panic.