ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Price of Romex

Hey everyone. Hope all is well. I thought I would pop in and see if everyone has noticed a considerable increase in the price of romex or if I'm just "not getting kissed".

I track all of my material expenses and I have noticed a huge increase. In May I was paying about $85 for 1000' of 12/2 Rx, by September it was up to $99, by beginning of Nov., $115 and just two weeks later, $120. Does the price of copper really fluxuate that much?

No, the Cu price usually doesn't vary too much. Several years ago I had a hobby of predicting Cu price increases. I followed ore imports and found that Cu prices varied based upon the amount of imported ore. The price adjustment came within 6 months of the import report. I won many bets with one of my major suppliers about increases or decreases in the price and saved a lot of bucks also. Cu is a major expense with large EC's.
Rowdy

You think wire prices are bad, you should see what happened to plywood prices. I think a lot of this is due to the amount of material we're sending to Iraq.

From the London Metal exchange:

Copper Grade A

Average Settlement Prices in Euros

May..........1,424.67
September....1,594.97
November.....1,757.17

Going sky high here too. Ordered 25Kft of 12/2 NMB today at $118 per 1000ft.

Was paying $78 just about 5 months ago. But what do ya do.

250ft. of Southwire 12/2 NMB is $22.00 at the local big orange store.

John

I've been hearing that and I think it is such a farce!
You could sheath that whole country and still have some left over for a tool shed with our plywood stock and raw material. How much romex could they possibly have sent over there. OSB, $7 a sheet to $17 in a month?!!

It's gouging plain and simple. The government is doing it with this "war" so the suppliers are using it as a scapegoat as well.

It sounds unreasonable that all the Romex should have gone to Iraq. Iraq is poor and even if they wire a few lights and airconditioners, they can't use up large amounts of wire. It's not like they are building houses and factories at a feverish pace. The American contractors and the military might use a fair amount of cable, but they are rather few. Before the invasion, the Iraqis bought cables to British specs. Why would they switch to buying American?

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 12-02-2003).]

I guess new high-rises are going to replace all the ones that are getting bombed out and torched during this latest toss-up.

Why are they switching to American standards? Simple, the work is probably being done by people familiar with American methods, materials and standards. And if the USA government is doing the purchasing, then it's gonna be stuff that's made for our market.

So we'll probably someday visit Baghdad or Tikrit and stay in some building equipped with (Leviton's 60-cent Home Depot-special) NEMA 1-15 or 5-15 duplex receptacles that have 220 volts across live and neutral.

And if we remove the metal wall plate manufactured by Mulberry and look inside the American style box made by Raco, we'll see black wires for "hot" and white for neutral and a bare copper wire for the ground (maybe). And the wires will be all pigtailed with Ideal wire-nuts...

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 12-02-2003).]