Blows my mind.

Hi Gunner, I hear ya. There were many times, I'd pick up lumber at the rail yards from down south somewhere and deliver them to N. Wis., 50 miles from a hardboard plant and visa versa.

 

You see this all over the world.
Years ago we hauled about 4000 tons of boiler plate from a port to a fabrication facility 350 miles away.
This boiler plate was shipped from Germany to the South African port where we collected.
As it turned out all the boiler plate was produced in a facility 50 miles from where the fabrication facility was.
So it was exported to Germany then re imported back.
The fabricator said that the Germans gave them a better price on the spec when out to tender.
That steel mill was eventually taken to court unsuccessfully about the practice they called import parity pricing.
They would work out what they thought it would cost a customer to import a product including all logistics , taxes etc.
They would then peg their local price at about that level as they had delivery time advantage.
Now for customers far away or in another country they would sell at small margins or just use those sales to keep economies of scale in the production facility even if they made no margin but kept production at optimum levels.
These are not markets they calculate in to their business plan for profit so they don't mind way under pricing.
This is a strategy used all over the world.
It is one of the reasons China can produce cheaply as it is illegal to charge locals more than export customers.
Therefore their producers get the best possible price on their input materials.
In the west the trend is to make money on your own and give the best prices to those further away.

 

[QUOTE="semi" retired;4268961]Hi Gunner, I hear ya. There were many times, I'd pick up lumber at the rail yards from down south somewhere and deliver them to N. Wis., 50 miles from a hardboard plant and visa versa.[/QUOTE]
Im talking going to a Home Depot Distribution center or one of the other big box improvement stores and getting a load of lumber than taking it to a Menards, or a Lowes DC. and vice versa, Ive "heard" that happens often

 

All the examples posted so far are more common than most would believe.
I've hauled, for example, canned goods from a grocery warehouse in Tennessee to another grocery warehouse in Texas. At the Texas warehouse, you back in to the dock with doors closed. Someone in the warehouse breaks the seal and puts a new seal on. Then someone brings you a new BOL with new dates on it. Then you return it to where you originally loaded in Tennessee.

 

all that and sworn to secrecy

 

I am on an intermodal account... and I pick up loads of tortillas in Omaha NE to take to the rail yard in Kansas City MO to go to Mexico.... crazy... guess it is cheaper to make them here and ship them to Mexico.. then to ship the ingredients to Mexico. ...

 

I don't care how "they" (whoever they are) think some of this stuff makes any sense, I picked up a haul truck out of Baltimore earlier this year, took it out to a dealer in Tacoma, went to the port in Tacoma and loaded the exact same thing out of there going back to a dealer in the Midwest.

 

My friend who is a broker told me they load stuff out of one place toward the very end of the month so when they count there product at the begining of the month it differs. That ole military rule.....outta sight outta mind😁

 

not all steel is the same, it may look the same , be the same thickness, be the same length, weigh the same. but the strength, alloy, heat testing, impurity percentage , etc etc may be vastly different.