On Mar 17, 9:08 am, Swingman wrote:

*SNIP of price increase justification*

What else is new, eh?

Sigh... not much. SOS, different day.

The last two years have been horrendous in the roofing industry. I do
some consulting and sales work on occasion for an old buddy of mine to
help him out (me too!) when he gets too busy.

The price of shingles has literally doubled. Owens Corning and
their competitors ahve decided to play the market in oil profiteering
when selling shingles. I was getting two increases a month sometimes.

Their claim was based on the fact that since shingles and SBS were
made from oil products, they were simply responding to the cost of
oil.

Total bull****. According to the specs, most shingles have about 17%
oil byproducts in them. So how do they justify going up 15% a month
on occasion? And how were they able to justify that line of crap when
shingles (at 17% oil saturation) 15% a month, and the price of oil
based asphalt metal primer (a well refined product) or cold process
sealer didn't move an inch for a year? Even felt paper only went up a
bit over a year's time.

Worse, just like the oil industry, the profited well from the price
increase at the barrel head by immediately increasing their prices.
That included a price increase on all products in transit to
distributors, in manufacture, and on all stock materials on hand to
manufacture.

Then on top of that, they added a "fuel tax" to the invoices. So on
top of almost weekly price increases, it is now so bad that I have to
put a 7 day window on the contracts I write for roofing.

The fun part is that event though prices of oil have gone down from
where they were generating a near $4 a gallon cost of gas, the prices
of shingles, felt paper, cold process, asphalt, etc., hasn't come down
a cent.
A little healthy profiteering, you think?

They used to put the sales guys all in a room and tell them how to
explain to angry contractors why they had two price increases from the
time they wrote a contract and the time it was accepted.

We heard about oil being diverted for heating purposes up north,
hijacked tankers, refinery explosions, cost of fuel for material
transportation, speculators, shortage of shingles due to hurricane
damage, seasonal demands, and on and on. There was just no end to the
pointless drivel we were told. There was always an excuse that
sounded like a helluva good reason to increase the price, even if it
wasn't true.

After losing a bit on a job I had bid based on their prices just a
week before hand, my sales guy and I had a pretty spirited
discussion. Maybe more than spirited....

Now, we cut all the bull. He calls me and tells me "hey, we're
getting ready to bend you guys over again, pretty hard this time, and
I thought you would want to know now".

I can deal with that a lot easier than I can that horse hockey about
world events affecting shingle/paper/tar price sitting a yard on a
daily basis. I just keep my belt loose so I can drop my pants at any
time as needed when ordering materials.

Robert