re: Lumber prices are through the roof!!!

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The guys that grow the pine that feeds the mills are getting all-time low rates for their timber. The mills are the only guys making money right now.

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Huh? That’s not true at all.

Sitting on 50 acres+- 4 to 5 inch bamboo. Let me know when you want to go Asian.

It’s a lot of factors. Supply and demand, few mills and storms from this past year. All factors in prices and was all happening at once. Factor in Covid when mills were not working at full capacity, that hurt as well. Interest rates are low to offset the cost a little. I called my materials guy the other day and he told me my estimate on supplies including lumber went from 80k from one year ago to about 100k. Bank doesn’t expect interest rates to get out of around where they are for about the main part of the year. Give or take a few points.

I work in the lumber business. Lumber costs starting skyrocketing as soon as COVID broke out. Plain and simple the mills started to manipulate the market. Normal dimensional lumber is sky high. The business I’m in, we’ve completely quit buying S4S lumber. We’ve switched to rough lumber that is dirt cheap and we can plane it to the thickness we need for our production. There needs to be more regulation in the lumber market which I’m totally against. The fact of the matter is that lumber mills can set the price in the market to whatever they want. The buying price of lumber is ridiculous yet they’ve kept the price the same to cut lumber per ton in the field. It’s basically a scam and they’re getting away with murder. If you don’t pay more to cut it but can sell it for 5 times the price there is something seriously wrong with the industry. I’ve complained till I’m blue in the face. I’m sticking with green lumber and getting it dried at a price that dimensional lumber can’t compete with. They will eventually go bankrupt trying to sell dimensional lumber at the prices they’re at now. It will eventually drop when demand comes to a halt cause of the price. We saw it happen about a month ago. Prices dropped back to normal then all of a sudden it skyrocketed again. The mills are digging there own graves.

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Plain and simple the mills started to manipulate the market.

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It’s all the mills. There are plenty of pine trees.

You are exactly right. There’s no shortage of lumber. The mills set the price. That’s the problem. It’s not based on what it costs to cut per ton. It’s whatever the mills want to set the market at. It’s a screwed up way of doing business but that’s how it’s done. I don’t run a mill. I buy lumber for our production. Until the mills realize people aren’t going to pay what they’re charging for 1000 board feet, they’re gonna keep the prices up. Green lumber dried in a kiln is the same lumber it’s just not graded like your S4S lumber. Works exactly the same. In my business we have the benefit of being able to plane it to what we need to produce. We just had to figure out what we needed it cut to in order to plane it to our production. The difference is that if you need it to meet exact spec for building purposes. Which is something we’ve had to deal with on our building projects. If I was needing small amounts of lumber for home projects I would buy it in the rough and buy a home planer and do the boards myself. You would still come out cheaper than buying in bulk. It’s not a hard process if you know anything about lumber. I don’t see prices dropping to normal levels for at least 6 months. I could be wrong but I watch the market every week. 2x4’s last week we’re 1000$ for 1000 board feet. That’s absolutely insane for southern pine. Pine shortage is not the problem. It’s the mills PERIOD

May as well be the way prices are at the moment

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How much you paying for a 2 X

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I use IOUs. Word is my bond.

I agree. I’m already seeing that for some of the building projects we have coming up. We build CLT panels. We can build the panels but are having to hold off on the projects because most contractors can’t get beams right now. They’re 8-9 weeks out even trying to get beams started to production. It’s just crazy.