There is a shortage of almost everything these days: semiconductors, labour, fuel (in the UK) and now winter tires too. It ensures a record number of searches on Marktplaats. Never before has there been so much search for the terms ‘winter tyre’ or ‘winter tyres’, about 150,000 times in October.
If you want to fit your car with winter tires this year, you may be missing out. In the past ten years, the stock in the Netherlands has never been this low, according to research by a tire portal. The main reasons are the skyrocketing container rates since the beginning of this year and the new winter tire obligation in the French mountain areas.
Record number of searches on Marktplaats
The scarcity has led to people looking for winter tires en masse on Marktplaats. Normally this only happens when winter showers are announced, such as in February this year, but now in October there was already a huge peak of 150,000 searches. That is three times as much as in the same month in 2020.
The offer of winter tires has actually decreased
However, the range of winter tires on Marktplaats has not increased. In October, there were even 4,000 fewer advertisements placed than in the same month last year. It also does not appear that people are looking for used winter tires more often now. The number of searches for this has remained the same compared to 2020.