Construction Material Costs - When Will It End?

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Appleseed :

For what??

For stuff you'd have hacked up a 2x4 without even thinking about it 2 years ago.  

In reply to Appleseed :

Dude... I'm remodeling and cleaning out the theater right now.  Normally I would chuck, burn, or otherwise give away lumber as kindling, or take it to Habitat ReStore.  I just recycled some 2x4s from the 1960s during a room demo because I didn't want to pay $9/each to replace them.

I'm starting to get budgets together for shows now that we're reopening.  It might actually be cheaper to build my new wall flats out of square tube steel than it is 1x3 common pine.

I just called to get some steel tubes quoted for some other projects.  I learned that the LMP360 which is going to be about $600 worth of steel would be $1200 today.  There is simply no way possible that at todays prices I could build it as a challenge car.  The build table cost about $100 last year and would be ~$300 today.  It's still doable to persue these things as a hobby because so much of it is time vs. materials, but like Curtis said I'm probably going to keep a lot more scraps around and re-use them.

locally I've seen a few articles about tree poaching, I guess some people are seeking new ways to reduce costs.

Duke said:

The government dumped several metric buttloads of printed money into capital improvement  projects for every agency that ever had a budget. This isn't going away until most of OUR money is spent.

 

Fixed that for you

When covid hit, the log buyer told me that the large commercial orders (home builders) had stopped, but box store market was out of control. Now that housing is up again, I'd assume that commercial market is online now too. We've been considered essential agriculture, so nobody ever shut-down. It was also a pretty dry winter, so logging didn't really stop up here.

The California pine/fir/cedar market is still saturated with logs, and log prices are still considered bad. If the State decides not to be on fire this year, log prices will start to climb back up with the demand. 

I don't see any new mills opening in California as long as the majority holder of the states timberlands-the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Region 5, continues their current forest management strategy of doing nothing. 

Keith Tanner said:

Rons said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

However the price of aggregate is often way lower than the delivery charge. concerning lumber there's been pine beetle kill, wild fires, and other external factors that have reduced the fibre supply so there has been mill closures even in the last few monthes.

Delivery charge is driven by fuel costs, which are at about an average level right now. Or you pick up with your own trailer. I'm just saying - gravel hasn't changed. 

I had 50 (48 really) tons of 411 delivered last week, it was $12 different from last august when I had the same amount delivered.

Also, I'm not sure if I believe the border shut down thing. I have shops along the border and the lines coming in are the same backed up mess that they were six months ago and a year ago and a year before that. 
 

That's only two border crossings of course and both come out of Ontario.

Yep, $8 for a single 2X4 at the Depot in East TN.

These 2x4s have been stacked in a shed from our diy dance floor at out wedding many moons ago. Guess I should've sold them on the marketplace and bought an ikea bunk bed instead

Whitepaper about lumber prices from economists at Wells Fargo. The summary at the top is an easy read:

https://wellsfargo.bluematrix.com/docs/html/1776e7f0-bae4-4963-897b-441ae870972b.html

chandler said:

Also, I'm not sure if I believe the border shut down thing. I have shops along the border and the lines coming in are the same backed up mess that they were six months ago and a year ago and a year before that. 
 

I agree, the borders never closed for commercial activities, trucks have been crossing the same as they always have, and drivers don't have to quarantine or anything.

Prices still going up!   $71.00 a sheet for 15/32 plywood here today, up another $4.00 from last week..

Following up on this: is there a place to quickly and easily check "Generic Lumber Prices"? 

In reply to pheller :

What's generic lumber?  That's a little bit like asking "How much does a tire cost?"

You could check the commodities timber trading indexes...

How long until the meth-heads who break into abandoned houses to tear out the copper start disassembling structures for the lumber?

I have several sheets of 15/32 that I bought for boarding up windows prior to one of the hurricanes a few years ago. Definitely too thin for code, but certainly stronger than glass, and it was all that was available at the time.  
 

I was planning to replace that with some heavier material this year. Lucky for me, some neighbors are moving (two households) and they keep throwing out plywood. I've got five half sheets and a nearly complete whole sheet, all in good enough condition for the purpose. 

In reply to pheller : The Wells Fargo report gave you the number.$1.64 bd ft.  
 So a 2"x4"x8' would be. $8.75. 
   

Wow!  It wasn't that long ago I bought a few for $1.74 and thought they were high. 
Phew!!!  I wonder how much the wood in the shop is worth?  

JamesMcD said:

How long until the meth-heads who break into abandoned houses to tear out the copper start disassembling structures for the lumber?

Far too much work for them, demoing houses is tough work

Lucky me, I'm in the middle of building a post frame shop myself. Mostly framed, but the 16'  center section with rafters is going to cost over $2K just for the rafters. Over $120 each.

OSB is what really gets me, used to be $6/sheet, now its over 50. I have heard that the resins to make plywood and osb is even harder to get than the wood...like soon will be unavailable at any price.

I just ordered a bunch of rigid foam insulation for under the slab on the new shop. I was braced for that; the shocker was the $320 deposit on the four sheets of OSB used to protect it in shipping! Mercifully refundable, but holy crap!

When we remodeled and built an addition two years ago I scrounged a mountain of wood from the builder's dumpster. I thought I went overboard with my scrounging, but now it seems like it was a wise move. I may auction off the plywood sheets at this point.

I'm an architect and in Florida - the construction boom in both commercial and residential is breathtaking, as is our lack of homes for sale.  Everyone in any part of the building industry is running wide open, and begging for employees. I had a shower thought about this year's hurricane season - if we get one or two big ones there is no excess capacity in construction to react to it, material or labor-wise. Florida's home insurance is going up around 25% this year as well. If we get hit by a storm I suspect they will increase again. Interesting times.

Some crackheads were stealing 2x4s out of a local, disused chicken barn. It was all going smoothly until the roof collapsed on them.

Like the fire department says, never trust a truss.