Anyone know of a website for online pricing of building materials, etc? Preferably in the Northeast. It’d be nice for me to be able to get a double check on my estimates at this early stage of my business w/o having to shlep to a yard all the time…
Thanks!
Paul
Upgrading the footings and columns that support a girder beam is an opportunity to level out the floor above.
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what will that tell you about your local prices?
believe HD has a CD with their prices
have seen local lumberyards have prices on the net and some have "contractor sites" that will give quoates/prices
but what the prices are in Ma won't be the same in Conn, or even yard to yard in the same place.
might be better off asking the yards you use if they have web sites with prices
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bobl Volo, non valeo
I agree Bob... I'm just looking for approximations. Right now I have a guy who's asking me for a quote with a couple of different exterior options for instance and I'd like to not pester anyone with quoting three different sets of prices. I'd "pad" the prices enough to be sure I CMA...
someone asked a similar question before
I did a google and came up with a couple of different sites pretty quickly. I didn't save the urls
a google might help_____________________________
bobl Volo, non valeo
The HD Pro Book CD will link you to your HD of chioce and will update to daily prices with a click of a button and has the capability to jobcost. My lumber yard will price anything I can fax or e-mail to them.
Hmmmm... that sounds like just what I'm looking for... I'll have to ask my buddies at the Pro Desk why they haven't offered me that...grrrrrrrr
Thanks for the suggestion!
Think there'd be enough demand for this that it would be worth putting together a website where contributors could post the most recent price paid for common commodities?
I'd be willing to work on organizing a site if it seems like enough people would take the time to post prices paid from various vendors...just curious.
Paul
With the fluctuations in pricing lately, it might be out of date before the data is entered. Keeping such a thing current would be a full time job for a small army. Nice idea, but such a site would have to be limited in scope as to what is available for pricing due to the enormous number of items that can be bought, and as I said, it would be the devil himself to keep current.
I never met a tool I didn't like!
I hear ya Nick... I guess what I was thinking of was something like this-
Let's say we had a site that was member only (free but sign up required) and as part of your membership you would be required to provide say... 10 posts a year. There would be a database where you'd enter an item, where you bought, how much you bought and what you paid, mostly from drop down menus to make the entries painless. Then the site would provide a list of commodity with lowest and highest prices paid within the last... 10 days? by zip code perhaps: for instance
******************************************************************
Category - Plywood Type- CDX Size 1/2" 4x8
Lowest Price in 06470- (10/12/04) $1.95 at: Taunton Lumber (based on 300 sheets)
Highest Price in 06470- (10/14/04) $49.95 at: TOH Lumber (based on 100 sheets)
Avg change in 30 days: +24%
********************************************************************
After the initial setup, all entries and reports would be by drop down menus or the like, so it would be easy to enter your reports and get queries answered. And the data entry work would be distributed to the members in manageable bites.
Anyway... I must be bored today, my inner geek is emerging ;)
It might be a boon to those who are miles away from a supplier and need to know pricing. But I keep HD's Probook updated from the store 10 miles away, so I probably wouldn't see the need for it, and it would require additional time and commitment by all to maintain current, and I can confess that I would not be as deligent as I should.
Still, someday, it might become feasible, or some version. Perhaps if everyone's computers were networked and when we ordered the material list on-line, it would track, etc. I'm sure the software is available, I'm also sure there would need to be 'safeguards' to prevent a 'hostile' takeover of computers : )
I never met a tool I didn't like!
I've got to go see my buddy at the Pro Desk and see what thats all about. I had the old Pro Book but I wasn't aware of the CD.
Once you install the HD CD you can update the price list as often as you want. It will NOT have everything offered for sale at HD but should be enough to keep you off the phone hours at a time.
Their price listings will be compatible with Lowes because the proximity of both chains makes it easy for the consumer to price shop and work the 10% payback price guarantee in their favor. Those two chains work hard to keep like items priced the same.
Because the independent yards have different setups, merchandise, service levels and often delivery included in even the smallest order you can expect them to be somewhat higher in most areas. The quickest example I can offer is OSB pricing. My genuine yard of choice is always a minimum of $1 per sheet higher than HD and Lowe's. The difference is that I can call and have that sheet delivered. On a past job I needed a heavy duty Simpson connector. The $34 item showed up, as the only item, on the yards flatbed. NO EXTRA CHARGE.
Once you figure out what the price differences are, even if you aren't exact, your estimating will improve. Of course, you will be adding a markup to your materials cost before you offer your quote so even if you are off, you won't be on the short end of the stick.
Hmmm... paid a visit to my buddys at the Pro Desk (even brought coffee as a bribe) and they tell me that HD doesn't issue CDs anymore... anyone else have any experience with this? Spent an hour pricing out stuff for two jobs, doesn't seem very efficient in this day and age.
Paul
The original cd's were avail in store but for a while they were available to have sent to you or in the store. If you can not find one I may have one around. The first versions were regional but I believe you could link to the nearest store.
I have a Great Lakes (West) Edition and a South Edition1.0 that are extras. They have the Craftsman National Estimator as the main program. They include the HD Maintenance Warehouse catalog also. E-mail me at
[email protected]
PaulB your sort of touching on something that is close to my own heart and interests too but if you take a step back from your idea regarding getting up-to-date material prices online to look at the core problem you think that will solve; having accurate price information to estimate with, there is a already a fairly common business methodology that will if implemented properly handle that problem for you. That would be to start using a Purchase Order System to order your materials and update your own materials price database.
The way that works for us is the materials costs items in our estimating database are linked to a cost for that item in a materials table. After producing an estimate and landing the project when it goes into production we then review the estimate and create Purchase Orders which can really be simply seen as the lists of material that we are buying from particular vendors at different points in time during the course of the project. As we create those Purchase Orders the system references the same table of material prices and plugs them into the Purchase Order.
The PO is then sent out to the vendor and when the materials are picked up or delivered the costs we thought we were going to pay for lets say a 2x6x8 Douglas Fir, is checked against what we were actually really charged. It's during that checking of the actual delivery against the PO (which is also done to check and make sure you've received everything you ordered) that the material cost is updated to reflect the new price that our vendor is now charging us for that material.
What then happens is all the line items in our estimating database which happen to use the cost of a 2x6x8 Douglas Fir are then automatically updated to reflect that new cost for that item.
Some of the contractors I work with to set up and help implement Purchase Order systems often question the methodology saying that if you find out after the fact that 2x6x8 Douglas Fir has gone up 20% then you're plum out of luck but that rarely happens in actual practice. First of all 99% of all price increases a gradual and not that dramatic at all. When material costs go up they go up only 1-5% percent at a time. And as an example in the case of my carpentry company which does finish woodwork we rarely purchase 2x6x8 Douglas Fir and virtually never in any kind of great quantity so even if the price of 2x6x8 Douglas Fir did jump 20% that price increase would only affect maybe maybe less than 1/4% of the money we spend on material so the increase for us wouldn't ever appear on the radar.
We're more concerned with the prices for materials like moldings which make up a much larger percentage of the materials we consume. So when we estimating a job and we see that a high percentage of the material we are going to order are molding we will call to confirm the pricing information we have and are using in our database. Likewise if we were framing contractors and 2x6x8 Douglas Fir represented a significant portion of any lumber order we would call to confirm the pricing information on that while the price for colonial casing might be insignificant. It all depends on just what your company really does.
The best way to look at and apply this is to think of it as a form or Pareto's Principle which is otherwise know as the 80/20 Rule. While named after the observation a italian economist had regarding wealth distribution the Quality Management guru, Dr. Joseph Juran, in looking at the "vital few and trivial many" expanded it's use out further into general business management in general saying that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results. I think you will find if you actually look at what you use in the way of materials for what ever type of work you do that you really only need to have precise or exact price information for 20% of those items while the other 80% prices that are "close" are really good enough.
You can believe me when I say understand appreciate your idea for web database for material prices in that I once had the same idea myself until on further examination I realized what I really wanted was to get current pricing information from MY specific suppliers easier and on on demand. And there are some lumber yards that actually do accommodate that (I forget what the name of one of the systems is that they use but maybe it will come to me later).
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I agree with you entirely Jerrald, I'm very familiar with the practices you describe. My concern at this early point in my career change is that I've yet to generate enough consistancy in my material purchases. For instance, I had to price a job that required me to buy clapboard and present the options, something I rarely need. It would be nice to price them online in my area, even within a reasonable margin of error, to avoid having to shlep somewhere to just harvest pricing data... I guess we're just ahead of our time ;)
PaulB - "... I guess we're just ahead of our time ;)"
Yup, I guess so. Do you find it's lonely and cold out here too?
Where in the northeast are you? I might have something I might be working on (a web based application) that might like to throw your ideas and criticism in on. What's this career change you made to get into the building and remodeling trades?
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I'm in CT, Jerrald. I was, long ago and in a galaxy far away ;) in the electronics industry, but for the last 20 years have owned a large, primarily commercial photolab. Need I say more? ;)
Sure, always happy to venture an opinion or suggestion to repay the many kindnesses I've gotten here...feel free to drop me an email if you'd like.
Paul
grrr, I hate typos ...
Edited 10/18/2004 3:29 pm ET by PaulB
PaulB - "I'm in CT, Jerrald. I was, long ago and in a galaxy far away ;) in the electronics industry, but for the last 20 years have owned a large, primarily commercial photolab. Need I say more? ;)"
Okay right I do seem to recall that now from another discussion here. Okay I'll be e-mailing you soon enough to fill you in on what I'm working on. I'm Westchester NY based here but right now everything we have going (carpenry-wise) on is over in CT. What I'm interested in getting your feedback on is a computer application project I'm working on developing and it sure enough relates to what were talking about here.
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Nice.....don't ask me for MY opinion of your new fancy-pants web application.......lol.
Bob
What? You are already many months behind in giving my your commnets and ideas. If I asked you for any more you would choke!!!!!
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Well, ya coulda at least offered.....lol.
I'll send you an email later or in the AM and fill you in on what's new and exciting.
Bob
better off costing out at the locals you'll do business with online pricing won't be apples for apples on quality, availabity, can affect price to detriment of your bid find local sources offer advice, have alternate/specials on material when pricing out w them it's one more contact, keeps your business in mind, helps w pricing
Paul,
I've got the HD CD and it's a pain to use. Everything is organised by UPC so you have to look up each item (2x4, 2x6, etc) individually. It's an older CD so maybe they changed it.
I found that Lowes online has tables with everything grouped, ie. lumber, sheet goods, DW tools, etc.
I cut and pasted their tables into Excel and added quantity and times-price columns and a column total cell. On another sheet, I totaled all those cells. Instant material costs.
Samt
Sam-
I looked all over Lowes' site, and I couldn't find any online pricing anywhere. Got a link to a particular page? Do you need to have a commercial account set up to access it?
Thanks,
Bob
Oh noooo... I've always had such bad luck at Lowe's that I stopped even thinking of them as a source, but Sam is right. Their website has 90 + % of everything I need.
Gulp... do I have to turn to the Dark Side??? Cmon HD, you can't let them skunk you like that, can you???
Just as an example Bob:
http://www.lowes.com/lkn?action=productList&catalogId=DOUG_FIR_SELECT_BOARDS
Paul (looking up directions to Lowes ...sobbbb)
Bob,
Did pauls link work for you?
It tells me that I have to have cookies enabled, (they are) and I can't get pass that page.
Any way, IIRC, by selecting a department from the left menu, you can navigate to price lists.
SamT
Bob the problem/advantage to Lowes is that everything is store specific.
So if a store does not have that exact product (sku #) then it will show as being unavailable.
Start at Lowes.com then Lumber & Building on the left. Then you have all kinds of rough building materials from lumber to DW to concrete.
You don't need a commercial account to use it.
But the do have Pro web site. http://forpros.lowes.com/ The link is "hidden" at the bottom of the main page in small type.
And they do have a pronews letter and offer specials from time to time.
A couple of weeks ago they had a week long series of specials to celebrate their new Tool World display.
I did not get any tools, but I got a $200 garage door opener with $50 instant rebate.
So, thanks to Rascon I finally got to see the fabled HD Pro Book CD, but it wasn't usable for my regon apparently. I called my friend at the Pro Desk (again) and he asked everyone there... they said not available. I notice an 800 number on the sleeve of the CD and call them (turns out to be Craftsman Books). The couldn't be nicer and within 5 minutes they arranged to have one sent to me...
Thanks again Rascon!
Paul
Home Depot.
I have the program loaded...but I haven't looked in there except the first time I loaded it.
blue