I totally get why it's become like this. Online retailers have hit brick and mortar shops hard. Profit margins are thin for those shops, and there's no profit in buying parts that aren't immediately needed and will just be sitting on the shelf taking up space. It doesn't help that the inventory at so many shops has switched from primarily motorcycles over to ATV/UTV sales and service. You'd have a far better chance that a shop would have a tire for a Wolverine in stock than one for a Super Tenere.
All that being said, I still feel less than generous towards a shop that refuses to order something like a tire or a battery when the stranded customer is offering to pay for the shipment upfront. I doubt that's even a phone call for them; they could probably do it on line in a couple minutes. You're going to pay their markup, you're paying the overnight shipping fee, and in some cases you're going to be paying them to install that battery or tire, and they still refuse to basically be a businessman.
If I was making a trip that I knew I'd be likely to need a tire, I'd do what Skunkworks' friend did; I'd drop ship a set of tires to some point along the route. Backpackers do it all the time when they're thru-hiking something like the AT; they ship supplies ahead to a post office that provides general delivery services (there's a list of those post offices somewhere on line), and pick them up there when they roll into town. I suspect that same trick would work if you shipped your tires ahead to a general delivery post office.
If I found myself in the predicament that Matt did, I think I'd just get a motel room somewhere, call Rocky Mountain ATV or Revzilla, and pay the outrageous overnight shipping fee to get them to ship that tire to the motel I was staying at, and I'd change it in the parking lot. Overnight shipping of a tire would be stupid-expensive, but probably still cheaper than renting a truck to get your bike back home. And if I had the time, I'd do a cheaper shipping method. It would still be better than the standard reply from a shop of "we can't order anything until Tuesday, and it'll take a few days to get here, and we don't have any sort of recovery vehicle that can transport your bike to the shop when the tire does get here, and we can't get to it until next Wednesday anyway".
I'll tell you, I know people love to bash the Bar and Shield, but back in my Harley days, I had nothing but good experiences dealing with Harley Davidson service shops. They were always very accommodating if I was passing through an area on a trip and needed something, and I never got that "screw you, we don't need your business" attitude that I've gotten from more than one Japanese motorcycle service center. I actually got a the greeting once at my local (now defunct) Yamaha shop of "what the fuck do you want?" when I walked in the door. And I wasn't a friend of the guy at the counter, he didn't know me from Adam.
And that is why I work on my own bike, for the most part.
Holy crap, I hijacked my own thread! Let me reiterate the original point of my post: Shinko 705's, at least under the current manufacturing process, suck.