Steel prices a little off topic.

I bought some material from my supplier today and prices were up about 30 percent. He said he can only get a 2 week quote and to watch out for a sharp increase. So I bought all that I could afford for my next projects. I just thought I would give every one a warning,One other thing s**** metal prices have doubled in the last 2 mo.

 

I've started looking at the s**** places myself for steel tubing, etc. They save the good stuff, 25 cents a pound for 2x3 tube, 2x2 tube, all types of channel, angle iron,etc. All 20 foot lengths. Maybe thats better than the steel yards..

A great place to get aluminum extension ladders and copper wire, tubing too.
Yes I'm cheap...

 

It's Asia or basically the Chineese, They're currently using 38% procent of the world's steel production and are expecting a 10-12% for the next year. Asian steel mills use a lot of s**** for raw material and are afraid to run out.
This run s**** prices thru the roof.

Chineese steel brokers are also buying whole mill batches.
Expect the prices to get worse.

 

Hmmmmmmmmmmm..........Didn't the price of steel rise sharply before WWII? Didn't the Japanese buy every s**** piece of USA steel they could get there hands on, build there war machine and..well you know.
Scary times man....

 

since every auto part imaginable is made in china- they need the steel supply to support all those jobs that we sent over there.

 

Aluminum ain't gettin' no cheaper either!!

I've been buying lots of aluminum stock to use in making all the little brackets, supports and miscellaneous ******** that doesn't have to be ungodly strong.

(In an effort to keep the car as light as possible...I'm taking out anything I don't need, only putting in what I do need, and making all parts with their total weight in mind! Should be able to keep the car under 2700 pounds hopefully!)

Steel IS going up, although it's still cheaper than ALUMINUM...but dang it's heavy, too!

 

Yep, steel is goin through the roof. Alot of places are having trouble even locating raw material. The fab shops that used to be sittin on their ****s are so busy the wont even quote alot of jobs.

 

The s**** yard I go to was 18 cents a pound. They have recently gone up to 25 cents a pound.

 

Are the Chinese ramping up military production? They are gonna need lots of oil for their "economic expansion".
Never saw a conspiricy theory I didn't like.

 

Hmm... This will increase the price of old bombs as well... I guess no longer will the 50 dollar car reign supreme in the transportation dept.

 

I don't know if you guys have heard about it, but it's "Global Sourcing" that's causing it. The moving of jobs from here (and other places, I guess) to China and India where labor is a whole lot cheeper. Be forewarned, though, it's not just manufacturing jobs either, it’s engineering, programming and a lot of other high tech jobs. India is producing 100,000+ engineers a year quite content to work for a very comfortable $20K a year in India.
My company has been hip deep in Global Sourcing for a couple of years now and last week we found out that an industrial liquid trap we frequently purchase for $230 was already up to $750 and that price was only good until last Friday.
I don't think the short sided corporate big wigs who though up Global Sourcing ever imagined this
-HL

 

my buddy's Dell computer was acting up, so he called them. 2 different techs , both in India trying to determine problem, finally on 3rd try got a homeboy from the States which cured the problem. moral, there is no more US jobs, all are overseas and the phonelines are cheaper than keeping people on AMERICAN payroll. end of rant

 

The Chinese Govt recently shut down several illegal ore mines that had high fatality rates. The rest raised their prices 25%. Many importers are holding off ordering heavy items in hopes they can force a partial rollback.
In addition our own Govt has reinstated the anti-dumping tax against China steel imports starting May 1; that will add another 20% minimum.

Wait till the whiners find out! They cry about outsourcing and will now cry louder when the govt trys to do something. A big no win situation IMO.

Since I buy hundreds of heavy steel items from China Im waiting to see how this plays out. But I would suggest that you buy your cherry pickers, engine stands, presses, etc now.

 

out here the prices are up to 50cents a pound to buy s**** tubing

 

According to every factory rep that's stopped by to apologize, the US has cut off all imported steel. Naturally we are unable to produce as much as we can use and the steel makers have us by the balls.

We use mostly only 304 stainless and they're predicting a HUGE shortage to last through the summer, already some things we order now aren't available until May.

Prices have already more than doubled for us. A steel plate we bought a year ago, maybe an inch thick ran 305 bucks, same plate now is over 700 bucks.

If it's true that the gov't has stopped imports, they've very much ****ed us.

Chris

 

My dad used to work as a mechanic for a trucking company. He was speaking to one driver who used to work for a steel company (importer / exporter), and his job was to grind off "Made in Japan" from I-beams, so they could stamp on "Made in the USA". This was about 4-5 years ago. There's a lot of hustling going on here with steel... and by hustling, I mean profiteering...

 

arn't they using it to build the next biggest tower in the world... or is that Japan...

Idonno, saw it on the discovery/history channel..