May I introduce you to
this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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Programming
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Oh yes. I love McMaster.
The brilliance of the McMaster-Carr website is best appreciated when viewed alongside the print version of the McMaster-Carr catalog. As a child, I literally grew up on that bright yellow book, since my parents used it as my booster seat for the kitchen table. It is a thick tome, second only to the thinner Grainger catalog, which became the next booster seat after a few years.
As a longtime McMaster user, our work recently tried to get us to switch to Fastenal and/or Grainger as preferred suppliers because of some bullshit procurement dick-waving (they wouldn't offer us a blanket 1% discount like the other guys, or something)
It's honestly astounding how bad their websites are, compared to just about anything else, even if you have the manufacturer's exact part number.
But yeah, McMaster is awesome,and there was enough hell raised that they were back on as a preferred supplier within a few months. Like, what even is a 1% discount when it means your engineers and maintenance guys are spending untold hours fighting a shitty website to find that one specific component that McMaster serves you up in 4 clicks?
inb4 coolstorybro
Best part is most of their stuff has cad files on their website. Working at a company where everything needed a drawing, being able to email the cad team like "hey, I need to swap part 15 on fixture 12345678 for this other part. Drawing for new part is attached" was a god send as I would get the drawing updated and sent back in like 10 minutes.
Also 1% discount means nothing when grainger is anywhere from 10% to 2000% more. My company did one worse and made a deal with a 3rd party who mainly purchased from grainger. So what we were supposed to do was go to grainger.com find what we need, copy part number, go to third party site, fill out a form including part number, wait 48 hours, get a quote from third party, go onto another site to request purchase, wait for boss approval, depending on cost wait for their boss's approval, finally click purchase button, wait for shipping, receive part directly from grainger in grainger box. It lasted about 6 months before it was reversed.
With every discount, asking the question "Is it overpriced so it can offer discounts?" is a justified question.
There's mass-volume incentive where discounts can make sense, but a provider could also use those gains to make smaller shipments viable to smaller buyers or individuals or just remain viable and efficient without managing any such concepts.
We used to buy plastic 5 gallon buckets. The bucket was 2.14 and the lid was 1.30 each. When they went to this system we could only buy in counts of 10(about 6 month supply, not really a big deal but annoying) and a count of 10 was 83.74, old system was 33.40 for a 10 pack. No one really cared as 50 dollars to a company making 30+ billion a year was nothing but...
Also so much time wasted jumping between the various systems which costed way more than 50 dollars.
Sites like this make me remember the brief period we had where internet speed outpaced website bloat. Everything just loads instantly. Outstanding.
Yeah Rockauto is pretty awesome, and the collapsible-tree navigation thing they have going on on their site is pretty slick. The only times I don't buy from them are when I need parts right now (local auto parts store) or if I can't find them there (eBay, misc online storefronts). My fridge is covered in their magnets
Craigslist though? Do any for sale search and you spam about motorcycles. Then there’s duplicate listings and irrelevant results.
Thats the fault of corporations and scummy dealers, not craigslist.
If only they didn't stop selling to Arizona! What a bummer. Its a great site.
Oh shoot. Regulations ?
What are smoking I can't stand thier site. Also if your mobile and put something in your czrt it doesn't show on your computer. I order many cheap part from there back in the day. But now the prices are about equal to what I can pick up locally and have added benefit of not paying for shipping and having my part now.
Oh for sure shop local if you can. I have an o Reilly's but they ship everything in anyways and the quality is usually worse than rock auto.