[TowerTalk] US Tower price increase

[jimlux]

On 1/2/17 12:58 PM, Charles Farr wrote:
> I ponder where the steel used by US Towers, and others comes from. It
> makes little sense to me that raw and scrap materials are shipped to
> China and other countries, made into materials and then reshipped to the
> US.

But that is how it works. most hot rolled product I've seen recently 
comes from Korea or China. Shipping stuff from US to Asia and back is 
very inexpensive (particularly US to Asia).  I think it's something like 
$1000/TEU (Twenty foot equivalent unit), and you can get a lot of tons 
of steel in a container. Another number I heard was $50-100/ton. that's 
about 5-10% of the cost of the steel.
(http://www.oakleysteel.co.uk/steel-shipping-rates-antwerp-southeast-asia 
has an interesting graph, I think it's in Euro/tonne.. )

There's a lot of reasons for this: mini-mills in the US tend to deal 
more with specialty or precision items, or things requiring careful 
batch by batch product control that benefit from an educated work force. 
  Making rebar in the US is not a cost effective use of our workforce or 
infrastructure.

"Run of the mill" bar stock is cheaper to buy from a low labor cost 
countries with some degree of currency value management and a greater 
tolerance for worker injuries and no attempt to recover externalities 
like the cost of emissions.


  Also, just as Japan became an economic power post WWII, and famous
> for inferior quality, but now, that is no longer an issue. China has had
> the same image, but on about the same schedule, has overcome it as did
> Japan. I own a Korean car. 10 years ago, I would not have been caught
> dead in one.
>
> The bottom line is that these materials now rival other world quality.
> We don't even realize where the steel, wood, or for that matter most of
> what we use came from. As the quality goes up so does the price. This
> will be an interesting year so say the least!
>
> Chuck, W6AJW
>
> On 01/02/2017 12:07 PM, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
>> It could be that they are making a lot more money selling to
>> commercial and government agencies and we trying to give hams a
>> break.  US Tower used to be owned by HRO,  I believe they still are.
>>
>> Tripling the price of something seems crazy though, maybe K7JA had too
>> much eggnog of the holidays and corrupted the web database or
>> something :).
>>
>> W0MU
>>
>> On 1/2/2017 12:38 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
>>> Great response, Jim. BUT -- the increase noted by the original poster
>>> was that the increase was overnight!
>>>
>>> Several possible reasons for this. One is that business operations
>>> for the ham market are often supported by higher volume and higher
>>> margin operations for other markets. When those other markets fall
>>> apart, they no longer support the ham market, or contribute to
>>> economies of scale that allow lower prices.
>>>
>
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