From BUILDER sibling ProSales:
Plan on prices for lumber and steel remaining in the stratosphere the rest of this year and transportation, trade, and labor problems that also will keep pushing up the cost of drywall, insulation, and other key building products, a clutch of procurement experts told Do it Best member dealers today.
“These numbers are uncharted territory,” Todd Hixson, Do it Best’s division manager for lumber and structural panel products, declared at the co-op’s LBM Industry Update. “I know many of you have projects for which you’ve already bid. You might have to supply lumber at a loss.”
It’s a similar story for steel products, Gary Davidson told the several hundred dealers attending the luncheon meeting in Indianapolis, part of Do it Best’s spring market. He said American Metal Markets’ index price for hot rolled coil steel—the product used in steel roofs—is approaching $877 a ton, “probably the highest it’s been since 2008,” the national accounts manager for Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp. said. “The mills are going to try to drive it to $900.”
