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Did you wonder why toilet paper was swept off store shelves in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic?
Jim Luke, an economics professor at Lansing Community College in Michigan and a strategist for a toilet paper distribution company, joined the "Fox News Rundown" Tuesday to explain why.
"We have this illusion as consumers that we go to the store and the shelves always are stocked. There's always stuff there," Luke told host Dave Anthony. "So we tend to think there's always backup; there's always a bunch there. We don't see that it's actually so highly tuned, there really is no backup in the channel."
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"If you get just a small increase in that, the volume that people want to purchase at once, that really hits the store shelves pretty big," Luke went on. "We think the store shelves are always full, but they're not. They're just constantly being replenished, or they are in normal times. So if you just increase demand a little bit, all of a sudden that shelf looks a lot more empty.
"And that's what sends a message to people," Luke said. "It's like, 'Oh, my gosh, this, this is not normal.'"
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Luke added that the surge in people working from home last month also contributed to the run on toilet paper.
"The factories, the mills, run 24/7 already because demand is so predictable, there is no slack. So they just run all the time," he said. "Now, when that big surge happened in mid-March, and that was because all of a sudden now, we're starting to get into 'stay-a
t-home' orders and you're getting ... the entire country going, 'Oh, I need to stock up.'"
Luke went on to explain that there are two types of toilet paper: what people use in their homes and what's used by offices and other public places.
"The stuff you get for the home is what's called virgin fiber, meaning it's made from fiber that was made directly from wood pulp and highly processed to be comfortable," Luke said. "Stuff for commercial [use] will contain recycled paper. So it's got old office papers and all kinds of other fiber in it, not as well processed."
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"So they can't do much with that," Anthony said. "Like, they can't shift that in the production from business to the home, because it's such a different product."
"Can't is a very strong word," Luke responded. "It's extremely difficult and complex, and difficulty and complexity translates into costly."
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