2009 was my first year burning and I took the advice of those who came before me and stocked up early while adding as I go just in case. Each year I seem to end the burning season with more and more: except this season. Will still have at least 1-1.5 ton when done but had 2.5 to start with-math shows I would have been a ton short, BUT I did buy 1 less pallet than normal in an effort to use up some of the excess. Downfall is that I will be using my better pellets in the spring cause the big box stuff ran out earlier than usual as my plan was to end with all my 2 ton of Spruce Pointes. This year will be at least a 4 ton buy, probably 4.8 as the ones I buy in spring are generally 1.2 per pallet. Bottom line, you cant have too much. I have the spring buy put in the garage and move by hand to the basement by end of fall. They are stacked 90 high and yeah those last few layers are tough to get up there. The older I get, the lower that stack will be. Usually I have 1-2 pallets left in garage by burn season and those get used when I deem necessary. If they are good stuff they sit there, if shoulder season they are burned first.
The shortage in 05 and into the 06 burn season was a pita. Not only were pellets in short supply but so were stoves due to the burst of people buying stoves to get relief from oil that was headed over $4 a gallon. Jay you weren't on the forum then but I seem to recall it was a fairly widespread issue though. At the time I didn't know about pellet houses. Got my pellets mostly from farm supply shops. I bought this stove in october 2005. At that time all the stove shops in this area had no Harman stoves and if you wanted one there was a wait time of at least six months.
I became very serious during the 2008 season-luckily I had pre paid my oil at a good price for that season and was able to wait out the stove shortage and get what I wanted at a good price in the summer of 2009. Also I was waiting and hoping for a better tax credit-worked out on both ends as used every bit of that energy cap with the stove and a few improvements here.
You were the smart on. I wouldn't wait another year for the stove. Rocky's stove shop was not able to get me a Harman that year, and the price differences of stoves left me cold. I won't say I made a bad decision getting the Napoleon, it just wasn't up to the capacity needed to keep the wife happy. That is all behind us now. I still have the other stove and haven't made up my mind what to do with it. We have had some really cold temps lately that our new stove has kept up with.
Sounds like 2008 was the same deal as 2005. Oh I got the stove I wanted, no regrets here. Was just mentioning that Harmans weren't available and the rage was Harman but I wasn't interested as I knew and confirmed by my purchase that there are comparable stoves that are reliable, cost less, but will heat the same. A comparable equipped Harman was a thousand dollars more than my st croix prescott. It was not worth that extra coin imo.
We will see how funds go, but I might put a small addition on the shed this year to keep a ton of pellets. I currently can only keep a ton at a time, so having storage for 2 ton would be nice. I have 10 bags left, and suppose to pick up 25 on Wednesday!
It's a bit scarce here too. Will and I have our eyes out all the time for pellets. Looks like our best bet to top off the stash is GT's are being delivered in two weeks to Lowe's.......unless we happen to find some in the meantime and oink up.
Holy crow....this has been some winter. We have a small (very small) planned price increase on our new Gold product that should start bagging week of March 10th. That on top of a very small price increase for the Douglas Fir that took place on Feb 1st and we raised the price on our Platinums last Sept 1st. We are holding the line, even though it would be easy to jack prices right now and could probably pull an easy $10-$15 more per ton, but that is short term thinking. First it's not how we and I think most manufactures want to do business (taking advantage of the situation) and two, I think that would be bad for our industry. I have never interfered with what a dealer charges for our product. I take the stand that the market will set their own level and I firmly believe that the dealers need to make a fair profit. (The price increases were planned well in advance and were just to cover increased costs on our end). My point is that if some dealer ups his/her price, it wasn't because we jumped in and suddenly raised prices thru the roof on them. That said, there is a legitimate shortage in NE and there are lots of dealers who are not only out of our product, but many others as well. Every manufacture is trying to get product out the door just as fast as they can and I don't think anything is sitting in anyone's yard or warehouse for any length of time, but we can only supply so much and want to be fair and consistant with who gets what. That means, we can't supply every dealer with product every week, which means there are holes with inventories all over the place. It's impossible to meet demand when a dealer can sell out of 24 tons in less than an hour (that happened numerous times this past week, not just our product but anybodies). If you don't really need to buy product, please don't and leave it for those that have no choice but to buy week to week. There will be people that will go cold because they can't find a supply of pellets and nobody wants to see that. Just about every dealer I know of will right now will only sell a limited amount (read about 10 bags) to each person so what supply they do get, can be spread over more people. Tempers can get short when you go cold, so please consider those less fortunate than you if you have enough to get you thru, but just want that extra ton just in case....
No one should go cold.....pellets are not meant to be your only heat source. If there are good pellet deals around then I will scoop them up and not feel the least bit of remorse. Just because others were ill prepared or don't want to use other forms of heat does not mean I should not stash as many as I physically can and take care of my family first. One never knows what the future will bring and if I can secure next years pellets now, that is exactly what I am going to do
Propain...you are certainly entitled to your opinion...probably not the best time of year to find any deals, but knock yourself out.
see there go...I think that is the deal of this winter...I said earlier in another post, if you can find them....load up as much as you can at that price...
Load up in the off season and leave it for now for those that are in greater need than yourself...obviously not everyone agrees with this theory....
Yes I think that is quite obvious lol. Perhaps not raising prices during such times would also be beneficial to those people.....
I have been asked several times about selling direct to a "club" or "group" ..... I know there are mills that have done this in the past or might going forward. I'm not one of them. Simply put, I'm not going to risk pizzing off one of dealers who probably buys dozens or more trucks from me a year, for one load, so you can save a couple of bucks. The dealers are with me, 12 months a year. They have 10's of thousands of dollars tied up in their business and most were there for me when nobody knew who the hell Okanagan was. I don't mess with the public directly for good reason and one truck will not make or break my sales goals. Everybody wants to save a buck, but do yourself a favor and call the dealer nearest you and if you can take a full truck direct, chances are he/she will give you a break (in the off season) as long as you have a way to unload it (forklift, tractor etc) and you have one check or cash, not 3 credit cards numbers, 4 checks and 2 IOU's....there is not as much margin in these as some of you might think, so buying direct won't save you anywhere near what you might find in other consumer goods with far greater margins than there are in wood pellets... Besides you never know when you might need that dealer for a stove issue that will keep you warm in the middle of a nasty winter....like this one.
