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Specialty Products And Mixed Truckloads

From New South, Inc.

TIn your daily battle over tight supply and volatile lumber prices, you need to rely on a strong supplier. Through our extensive line of treated and untreated Southern Pine products we are best armed to stand by your side. And, our specialry product line provides critical support when it comes to filling out your truckload.

Just check us out! \Ufith New South, Inc. you've chosen the right ally for long-term success. After all, at New South, Inc. we provide the building materials for a strong relationship with you.

(803) 347-42s4

FAX: (803) 347-4214

Ways To Beat Your Gompetition

(Continued .lrom pase 3l ) jungle gyms and a South Carolina dealer with specialty mouldings are some of the sales expanders and profit increasers he points out. Installed sales and industrial sales are potential profit areas for the independent dealer, McKinney emphasizes. He cautions that it takes a different type of salesperson and requires stocking products that dealers may not be used to carrying, but the business is typically steady, and quite often gooC when residential construction is bad.

Independents need to apply creativity to their operation to find new customers and new ways to sell old customers, McKinney maintains. He points out Tindell's is currently test marketing a tool truck that makes calls at job sites, selling tools and other supplies to subs on a cash or credit card basis.

I hear a lot from fellow independents about eroding sales and profits brought orr by chain competition, he concludes. When the big boys roll into town, it's not time to roll over and die. It's time for us to take advantage of our superior knowledge of the local market, our hard won reputations with customers and our ability to adjust to changing times faster than they can. Go get 'em.

Spring Prices, Supply lffy

Availability and cost are unknowns as building material suppliers and builders prepare for spring construction.

A surge of home building could mean not enough lumber, Forest Service chief Dale Robertson wamed the House Agriculture subcommittee on forests, adding the less available, the higher the cost, a truth well known to lumbermen.

James Barnes, operations manager for Intemational Paper's wood products division, Springhill, La., said Northwest Louisiana could fill the void left by the logging cut in the Pacific Northwest. If production in the Northwest continues to slide, his plant will have to increase its capacity because it currently operates at95%, he explained.

"The law of supply and demand will shift rnore demand to the south," he said. "All we can do is keep running full out. I don't see the increased capacity being long term."

Lumber yards in the Bowling Green, Ky., area reported yellow pine framing lumber up as much as 25% by midFebruary. "There are a lot of factors involved," Richard Minton, manager, Rogers Lumber Co., Bowling Green, said.

"The price of everything is up, but we can'tput ourfinger on it," Tim Doughty, contractor sales manager, Lowe's, said, adding his sales are about the same as last year.

Some feel high prices will be offset by savings in lower interest rates. Lumber costs for standard two or three bedroom homes are quoted to be up between $ 1 ,200 and $ 1,500 per house.

Windoq Door Demand to Grow

Strengthened by continued repair/home improvement demand and a trend towards larger homes using more doors and windows, U.S. shipments of these products will increase almost 6Vo anrnally to $23.5 billion by 1995.

Vinyl will continue to gain at the expense of aluminum, moving into patio doors and skylights.

Plonccr Fcnclng

Shcnandoah Stackrail, traditional style split rail fcncing asscmblcd without tools, hardware or digging postholes, is new from Coastal LumbcrCo.