Ok folks, you'll have to excuse me for a moment while I vent about something... Material pricing is way, and I mean way out of control these days... I ranted a while back about plywood, and that hasn't gotten any better, its still going at around double what is was only a couple years ago... Stick lumber is up too, though nothing like the plywood... Perhaps its up 50% over the same period... Part of the increase I have found is due to regulations put in effect during the Clinton admin, that stopped any road construction through national forest areas. That meant no new access to timber areas for the lumber companies. Now, I don't exactly want them going in the forests and clearing them off the face of the earth, but the problem is that it creates a huge price inflation for the tree farmers. At this point they can charge the lumber companies just about what ever they want, and naturally that price gets passed along to the consumers... I don't really have a good solution here, but something has got to give to get the price of wood down.
Steel is another nightmare right now... Its up at insanely high prices currently, and I don't know exactly why. I've heard of shortages, I've heard of import/export woes with Europe, I've heard it was just due to a building boom... So far, I'm not satisfied with any of these reasons for steel costing almost as much as aluminum was just a year ago. I don't even want to talk about aluminum, I think they think its gold at this point...
The thing that set me off today, is I tried to price out a meat rack for a friend of mine. (we hang lighting fixtures on them for storage, I have no idea where the term comes from) Well the damn thing is a simple frame on wheels with pipe to hang the units on... I shouldn't take me very long to make, and really there isn't too much material involved... I hardly marked it up 5% since this is a friend, and the damn thing is twice what I think it should be...
This is driving me nuts... Usually I can ride out an up and down in one material by going to another, but all three of the main structural elements we use are through the roof, and show no sign of coming down... Clients still want to pay what they did last year, and they don't understand, or won't listen to the facts... All in all, this situation really sucks... ugh...
You are feeling the effects of Bush's protectionist trade policy. Big tarif increases on imported steel and lumber mean that Americans pay more. Inefficient American steel and lumber producers benefit from the higher prices they can charge consumers, and from the tarifs themselves.
About meat racks, when I was trying to buy some for my lighting co a few years ago, I found that the retail versions were ridiculously expensive. I got a welder friend to make what I wanted, and it has worked well for us. Just don't tell the welder the retail price when you ask for a quote!
Cheers,
Kate
Posted by: Kate at August 27, 2004 02:42 PM