There's absolutely no shortage. My town has 3 mills and all workers have been considered essential throughout this ordeal as have those who harvest.
Lumber prices are up near 340% or more over last year. Delivered log prices are only up around 20ish%. They may be running at capacity but the milling side of the lumber market is certainly taking advantage of "muh covid shutdowns" to string things along, nevermind that the entire forestry sector was umbrellad under agriculture as an essential industry in most states.
And if you entrepreneurially wanted to start your own mill since you can see there is money to be made, if you could ever scrape the capital together, the established players (of which there are functionally only one or two for each wood product in each woodbasket) would coordinate to drop their lumber prices low enough, raise their delivered log rates, and buy/sell at a loss long enough to starve you out. And then they'll buy your facility and present it to the public as a benevolent acquisition to keep the industry afloat since clearly the small player couldn't hack it.
With all that said, there is constant fuckery on the import/export side of the industry. There are strict controls in place under the softwood lumber agreement that keep Canada from flooding US markets with cheap wood. As tariffs change, yards like this one in Vermont will back up. Pretty convenient for our globally oriented or owned milling companies who try so hard to pass themselves off as pillars of the good old blue collar American lifestyle.
There's some definite fuckery going on. We produce this stuff in my town. We have 3 mills, all major players. Despite this, we're still seeing sheets of plywood sell for four times what they did a year ago and production have never stopped or slowed down here.
Well when you print 23% of the entire supply of US Dollars ever made in the past 4 months, perhaps those dollars are buying less.
Yep this is bull shit manufactured price raises to fuck the construction and housing market which is doing good somehow. I went to lowes they had fucking tons of lumber on the side of the building more then inhad seen in the past. Someone is getting rich while trying to destroy the housing market at the same time.
Who ever said there was a shortage? This is inflation showing up in things that are actually necessary.
Yup this is just what happens when hyperinflation shows up everywhere. If it was lumber only, we would see inflation prices only in lumber, but the inflation is showing up everywhere from basic groceries, to rent, and everything in between.
Up until the election last year I would see and hear truck loaded with lumber all the time "rural area" and now I've seen about 2 in the past few months. It's like someone said to just stop cutting or approving trees to be marked for cutting or the mills have shut down so if they cut it sits and rots.
I wish I had made one of those home saw mills. I could cut one tree and made a years pay on just that alone and paid of the cost of the mill also. A few 4x4's or 8x8's are a months pay. Even the low quality shit is worth bank now. I know not even dried the prices would be extreme and they'd just go old school and stack and tarp the stuff for 6 months in a sunny spot.
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