I'm in full agreement with your thoughts on this. Many plants have to pay bonuses to keep workers. As more of the sectors come back to work, and the Canadian border reopens, prices will normalize,
I priced some plywood last week at the local store and was surprised that 1/2” cabinet grade birch plywood was $8/sheet cheaper than 7/16” OSB. $48/sheet was still too high for garage shelves, so will keep collecting pallets to make what I need
That would have bought a sheet of the finest cabinet grade 3/4" exotic species plywood 2 years ago...
I saw it on the interweb so take it with a grain of salt. Supposedly in the last year a Canadian company bought out a bunch of US lumber mills and after the combo of border closures and a pipeline being shut down a few months ago the US mills were idled creating an engineered shortage. Once again not sure this is spot on but I don't know how to research if it is right, however I would not be surprised.
Why I have a barn with no horses!! I put leftovers there! I needed 1 extra 2x6 for window install $17
I paid $36 OTD roughly for 2x10x12 yesterday. Even then the quality of the wood was poor. Poorly milled that is. Supposed to be 9.25" wide and one was 8 7/8" and douglas fir. I had to rip it narrower otherwise idve returned it. I talked with the big boss at Lowe's and he told me a similar story to what Greenstick stated. Lumber prices only good for 72 hours. Luckily the customer im working for is well aware of this and wants it done. Still KILLS me to pay these prices even though its not my money.
Lumber prices up here in Canada has gone crazy as well. Big construction projects in the bigger centers have to hire security for night time and weekends as there has been major theft of materials from job sites. Smaller companies are only ordering what they can use in a short period of time - no stockpiling.
Another score today...lumber & deck boards. 44' PT 2x10, 44' 5/4 x 6 PT deck boards, several feet of plastic decking, 1 x 12 Azec PVC board. 3x6' sheet of red Ondura corrugated roofing. Original price $370, got it for $80. There was a second one for $125 but not a lot of wood i could use.
Good point! Seems over the last month or so, more people are out and about. We drove by a local restaurant last night and haven't seen the lot that full in a year. Again, hoping prices stabilize. And there's certainly the risk of prices leveling off, but going to a level that was higher than they were prior to all this. Good ol' inflation.
Went to buy 1/2 CDX fir plywood and went from $67 to $78 and i couldnt bring myself to pay that much. Ended up using the T1-11 for roof sheathing. Six sheets were just enough.