Not exactly wood pellets I know.  Some of us cook with lump charcoal as well.  I am one of those and have been using lump for decades.

 What I started to notice, lump charcoal has become increasingly hard to acquire..Costco here in Canada had it as they usually do @ the start of the season. That was it - no more.

 The hardware chains are the same, " 0 ".  It's not the usual end of season depletion. In previous years there were usually a few bags to be had late Summer and into Winter.

 It appears to me the whole issue seems to coincide with Covid-19. Other than that, I have no idea.

 Fortunately I had stock piled a few bags earlier on in the year. I have been doing this lately just in case the good deals ran out. 

 What will next Spring be like from a pricing and availability point?

 Does anyone know what is going-on in the world of lump charcoal? 

 Care to guess?
 

Probably scarce like many things are since covid-19.
Non-essential businesses were ordered to shut down and that had a ripple effect to many essential businesses.
Online I find many things out of stock.

I truly think a lot of it is the shift from people previously eating in restaurants or fast food places to now cooking their own meals at home that has depleted a bunch of food and supply items.  And there are probably warehouses full of restaurant packaged food and supply items that don't have demand.  And factories that were built to package for restaurant use versus consumer use.

I would think the demand for engineers would be high right now as a lot of company's are probably looking to redesign factories to be able to flip from industrial to consumer packaging styles very quickly to meet demand swings going forward.

I am fortunate where I live there are several saw  mills that make it, they sell it and it is sold in some locally owned stores. I really would like to get something set up to do more charcoal cooking. I saw an add once for Pira Charcoal ovens and thought I like that, but I don't think they are sold in the US.

If one had access to some hardwood and a place to burn it, they could make their own......