I've been on the lookout for some reasonably priced ways to cover my open stacks. Not being a big fan of tarps, I looked for cheap metal panels on CL and on FB Marketplace. So I saw these. HD corrugated steel designed for holding concrete floors. Heavier than I needed but they intrigued me. I also saw these. American Surplus out of East Providence. I called the seller and set up to go there this morning at 7:30 to look at the different panels and bring one style home. So I get there, call him and he meets me at the loading dock. We take a walk through the huge warehouse and I looked at the panels. The heavier duty style he only had 10 left, so those were out. The other style he had around 1000. So I asked if he did a price break on larger quantities. He asked how many, and I said I'd like 40 panels. Said he'd do $250 for 40. Then I go to measure them and see that they are 24" x 48" not 39" x 48" like the ad said. He said, yeah he mis-measured them because they were stacked side by side, so each row was 2 panels. Said he'd give me 80 for the same price as 40. I agreed as I really cared about the 48" length, not the width. Plus I'd actually get a lot more square footage for the same price. They were covering a 40" wide stack (2 rows of 20" wood), so a 4" overhang on each side with a 48" panel. He says he'll meet me at my truck in a few minutes. He comes up and had banded the panels with plastic on a pallet (which I asked him to so they didn't fly out on the highway on the way home). I said, so there's 80 here? He says at least! Kind of struck me as odd. Thinking to myself, so you didn't count them? I hope I don't end up with 65. Really hard to count though the way they were double stacked. So I give him $260, and say do you have a ten, I've only got 20's. He hands me back a 20 and says its fine. So I paid $240 all told for what I hoped was 80 panels. I really didn't have time to count them out anyways. I had to be at my folks house for 9 to help my mother. So I got home, cut the band, and counted the panels. He was right, there were "at least" 80. There were actually 94. I was pretty happy with that. So I ended up paying $240 for 94- 2' x 4' panels, or about $2.55 a panel. They'll cover about 750 sq. ft. What they looked like when loaded. As I said almost impossible to count without separating them. After cutting the band and counting them. Got the large stack covered And the boxes. Just have to weight them down with some pieces of wood. I can see a lot of potential uses for these panels. Generator wheelable building, chicken coop roofs, dividers, implement boxes, saw boxes for rainy day cutting, etc, etc.
East Providence eh? That's like half hour away from me. I might need to find this guy, those look wicked useful. Great find!
As I was eating dinner a nasty wind/rain/lightning/hail storm swept through. All I could think was “Oh noooo!” I never weighed the panels down. I’m scared to look. Wish me luck!!!
Wasn’t as bad as I feared. Knock on wood. 3 out of 35 panels blew off. None were damaged. Now I can rest easy with the Shih tzu under the covers
I have old 1 ton truck tires to hold them down...drill holes through the sidewall so they can't hold water for the skeeters to lay eggs in...just make sure the holey side is down.
