President Obama's Approval Rating On The Economy Is Down

[Conan71]

Stick to topics you actually know something about, Nate. When I buy heat exchanger tubes, the prices vary between the mill in Sand Springs and the one down the block. They pay differing prices for the steel coils they make tubes with depending on which mill they get it from.  When I buy plate steel it varies from vendor to vendor. When I buy rolled shells it varies.

The real world operates independently of text books.

[Red Arrow]

Unions  = wage protection. ...  They shouldn't control the system or hold it hostage ...

My grandfather said the only thing the union (machinists) ever guaranteed him was a strike.

Shouldn't is the key word.

[Red Arrow]

It means we either some how force-create the jobs...

No problem, just pass a federal law requiring all employers with 10 or more employees to increase their number of employees by 10%.

[Hoss]

My grandfather said the only thing the union (machinists) ever guaranteed him was a strike.

Shouldn't is the key word.

My dad was a machinist as well.  He got guaranteed a strike also (Byron Jackson in the late 70s).  He moved from there to Sun Oil (step up, in my opinion).  I remember him going through that strike and how much he hated it.  Unions CAN be for the workers, but nine times out of ten I think they're out for themselves and their coffers.  Never worked at a place with a union.  My dad did at Byron Jackson and said he'd never work somewhere that required it again.  Sun Oil was non-union.

[Cats Cats Cats]

Stick to topics you actually know something about, Nate. When I buy heat exchanger tubes, the prices vary between the mill in Sand Springs and the one down the block. They pay differing prices for the steel coils they make tubes with depending on which mill they get it from.  When I buy plate steel it varies from vendor to vendor. When I buy rolled shells it varies.

The real world operates independently of text books.

In the real world though those are not "raw materials" as they have been processed.  But to your business it is a raw material.  Obviously there isn't much price fixing at a low price point so people will bid at varying prices.  Generally I believe most raw raw materials are traded on an exchange which sets the price?

[nathanm]

What Trogdor said. A specific counterexample I can think of is granite. It's much cheaper for me to source granite from Brazil than it is here in the US (so long as oil stays below about $200 a barrel), despite the much greater shipping cost and the presence of another middle man. Why? Labor is cheap in Brazil, and not so much here.

So it goes with many items.

I've never been a steel buyer, but I've been told (by people who work for domestic steel producers) that it's usually cheaper to get steel rolls from China rather than one of our domestic producers, depending on the cost of shipping, which is still very low today. The cost disparity was much smaller a few years ago before the financial meltdown when there weren't thousands of boats parked and waiting for work.

Obviously, different suppliers will take different markups or buy their input materials at different times, thus leading to different prices if they have a set markup like a lot of them do.

[Conan71]

Why don't you just admit you were wrong with your original statement instead of a three paragraph back-track:

"The cost of raw materials is the same anywhere. It's a global market."

And in the real world, anytime a material comes in the door to have value added to it, whether it's ore to be processed or copper tubing to be installed as plumbing pipe or used as a tube in a heat exchanger, it's a raw material.

Thanks for playing, guys.

[nathanm]

Why don't you just admit you were wrong with your original statement instead of a three paragraph back-track:

"The cost of raw materials is the same anywhere. It's a global market."

And in the real world, anytime a material comes in the door to have value added to it, whether it's ore to be processed or copper tubing to be installed as plumbing pipe or used as a tube in a heat exchanger, it's a raw material.

Thanks for playing, guys.

Why don't you admit that we're both using different definitions of raw materials (look it up, it has multiple definitions) rather than trying to win the internets? You're right. Apparently some "raw materials" (I'd use a different term to describe the things you're buying when looking at it from a wider perspective, for clarity's sake, but whatever) are irrationally priced. Presumably, the further you go along the line from "just came out of the ground" to "input for further processing" the more irrational the pricing becomes.

Still don't know why your suppliers are paying such widely differing prices for rolls of steel, though.