We obtain materials and manufactured components from third-party suppliers. Principal materials and components used in our various manufacturing processes include steel, castings, engines, tires, hydraulics, cylinders, drive trains, electric controls and motors, semiconductors, and a variety of other commodities and fabricated or manufactured items. The cost and availability of these materials, components and final assemblies have varied significantly in the past several years. While we have seen improvements in certain areas of the supply chain, it is still not operating at optimal levels and additional fluctuations and disruptions are possible due to demand changes, inflation, geopolitical and economic uncertainty, regulatory and policy instability, the imposition of duties and tariffs (including on certain Chinese origin goods) and trade agreements/barriers, freight availability and costs, wage increases and labor shortages. In an effort to mitigate this, the Company has increased the prices of our products, recouped tariffs through duty drawback and exclusions, and worked with suppliers to ensure optimum pricing and inventory levels. However, if customers are unwilling to accept price increases in the Company's products and the Company is unable to recover a substantial portion of increased costs from our suppliers, or through duty draw-back/exclusions, or otherwise offset the increased costs, then continued or increased fluctuations in costs of materials or inflation generally and continued supply chain challenges could have a material adverse effect on the Company's results of operation, profitability, free cash flows, and financial condition.
In the absence of labor strikes or other unusual circumstances, substantially all materials and components are normally available from multiple suppliers. However, certain of our businesses receive materials and components from a single source supplier, although alternative suppliers of such materials may be generally available. Delays in our suppliers' abilities, especially any sole suppliers for a particular business, to provide us with necessary materials and components may delay production at a number of our manufacturing locations, or may require us to seek alternative supply sources. Delays in obtaining supplies may result from a number of factors affecting our suppliers, including capacity constraints, regulatory changes, global logistics network challenges and cost increases, labor shortages and disputes, wage increases, rising inflation, suppliers' impaired financial condition, suppliers' allocations to other purchasers, weather emergencies, pandemics or acts of war or terrorism. Global logistics network challenges include shortages of shipping containers, ocean freight capacity constraints, international port delays, trucking and chassis shortages, railway and air freight capacity, rising inflation, wage increases and labor availability constraints, which have resulted in delays, shortages of key manufacturing components, increased order backlogs, and increased transportation costs. While we experienced some supply chain improvements in 2023, we could in the future again experience significant disruption of the supply of some of our parts, materials, components and final assemblies that we obtain from suppliers or subcontractors. We continue to actively monitor and mitigate our supply chain risk, but there can be no assurance that our mitigation plans will be effective. Any delay or disruptions in receiving supplies have resulted and could further result in manufacturing inefficiencies caused by us having to wait for parts to arrive on production lines, could impair our ability to deliver products to our customers and delay sales, and, accordingly, could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and/or cash flows.
In addition, we purchase material and services from our suppliers on terms extended based on our overall credit rating. Deterioration in our credit rating may impact suppliers' willingness to extend terms and in turn accelerate cash requirements of our business.