HOT READ
Building Materials Market News & Updates

Thursday, March 10th
Welcome to the Hamilton Hot Read, your regular source for lumber and building materials market news and updates. In this newsletter, you will find quick and informative takes on the building materials market and how Hamilton Building Supply is responding to assist with your ongoing projects. We hope you find this information useful and we encourage you to give us feedback as we develop this newsletter!

-Hamilton Team
NEW at Hamilton
We're pleased to introduce our NEW WEBSITE! Features Include:


We're also introducing a new product - Ram Board Pro Sheets. Ram Board Pro Sheets come in 4 x 8 dimensions and are great for protecting floors, counter tops and odd spaces that make rolls difficult to work with.
Fuel & Energy
Fuel prices are on the rise thanks to macroeconomic factors purely out of our control. Unfortunately, the recent rise in fuel prices is already starting to reverberate across the building materials industry.

Oil is a raw material input for creating PVC resins which are used all over the industry by manufacturers of PVC products and components. More so, those PVC resins don't travel from point A to point B by Tesla just yet. The building material industry is heavily reliant on trucking and diesel trains to support logistics.

Increased fuel effects us all throughout the industry and in the customer channel. At Hamilton we're responding by increasing our delivery fee from $20 to $30. But don't fret, HBS SELECT is still $299 for the year! HBS SELECT members get FREE delivery and FREE returns ALL. YEAR. LONG. (and a purchase rebate!).
Lumber, Sheetgoods & EWP
Move over pork bellies and frozen concentrated orange juice, OSB wants to trade like it's gold and silver. Conventional lumber pricing has been steadily going up over the past couple of months, but sheetgoods like OSB and plywood have realized some pretty dramatic increases lately. During last year's market moonshot, we saw OSB retail around $70 a sheet and it seems like we could be headed that way again as the spring market starts to heat up.

CONTRACTORS - set price expectations with your customers now. Rising fuel costs and continued labor and material demands are contributing to these price increases. If you have an upcoming project with space to store material, try to get your product needs secured.

Lastly - We've expressed over the past couple Hot Reads that engineered wood product has been difficult to source. Now we've been getting notifications that pricing is going up. We don't have increases firmed up yet from our distributors, but we should expect increases around 7%-10% by early April.
Windows & Doors
There is still no relief in sight for lead times on major wood core window products. Andersen has a 52 week lead time (that's right, 5-2) on its E Series product, which has forced other product lines within their portfolio to extend as well, such as 400 Series and A Series.

Solution? Consider an alternative like Marvin Elevate, which is a wood core, fiberglass clad product. Lead times are slightly faster than 400 & A Series and if you need a dark color exterior (did someone say, black?), fiberglass cladding is the absolute best substrate for the job.
Trim & Siding
Raw material inputs for PVC resin are rising with fuel and transportation costs, so naturally price increases are trickling through on PVC trim and composite sidings. Wolf Portrait announced a 17% price increase effective on April 1 (no fooling). We expect other trim board manufacturers to announce increases as well.

DURATION Siding has NOT announced any recent price increases and doesn't plan to at this point. They did announce a new product though - BEVELED SIDING STARTER STRIP, which easily sets the first full course of DURATION beveled sidings. The strip measures 1/4” at the butt end by 3” overall and works on both the 7/16” and 5/8” material. Save time and money with this new installation aid.
Deck & Rail
With the recent rise in fuel costs and additional labor costs, Fiberon has announced 7%-10% price increases on decking and railing products. We anticipate other composite deck and rail manufacturers like to announce similar price increases in the coming weeks.

If you have projects quoted with clients from earlier this year, please have conversations about these price increases that are approaching fast. Pressure Treated decking is also readily available and an economical alternative to composite product.
Our Vision
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"To be an equitable partner with our customers by providing unique and value-added building material solutions, supported by a dedicated team that always seeks positive experiences."

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Hamilton Building Supply | www.hbsnj.com