Lumber shortage?

I just see price gouging.

 

Plenty of it around, just the demand has sky rocketed the price.

 

Doesn't seem to be any shortage that I've seen. Local contractors I know of have all the work they can handle. Just more people with the time to do stuff, that and they're making as much on stimulus payments and unemployment as working full time. Going to suck when it all catches up with us.

 

Nope. Not one bit. I haul lumber and the yards are full. The rates to haul have went WAY up and there's not enough trucks to haul it. That's why the price has gone up

 

Housing starts (permits) are up well above predictions, and stocks are low because mills are or were shut due to covid. Also many log yards are just about empty for the same reason meaning nothing to mill.
Add to that the softwood tarriff for lumber from Canada (we are keeping more here for our own needs) and you have even less supply. Canada was supplying 25 to 30 percent of the lumber to the USA.
Canada also has a Mountain Pine Beatle infestation killing trees in some areas of BC and AB causing even less SPF lumber to be available for shipping.

 

Prices here are nuts too. A few co-workers were saying a sheet of plywood has nearly tripled in cost since last year.

I think most of the loggers out in BC are on breakup now. They used to try and cram every possible stick they could into the millyards leading up to breakup in order to keep the mill fed. Last few years they haven't really done that. Don't know about this year though.

Then add in the permanent mill closures. I know Canfor pulled out of Vavenby and Prince George recently. Another mill in Merritt shut down a couple years ago. Weyerhaeuser pulled right out of BC as well I believe. Tolko in Barriere never rebuilt after the 2003 fire either. These weren't backwater, 5 man operations either. They were big production sawmills. That's a lot of board-feet of product that can't be produced.

 

We have mills in E Tx calling us for trucks because they're at 110% + storage capacity. There's no shortage, nothing but price gouging.

I'm gonna keep saying it, "Welcome to clown world".

 

The lumber mills finally figured out what OPEC learned decades ago.

shut off the supply for a few weeks or months and you can triple the price and people will happily pay it .
The price ain’t going down anytime soon.

Why would they lower the price back to what it was ?
Just think of how much more profit they are taking in now.

the fedgov paid them hundreds of millions to shut down and now they get to charge triple the price when they re open.