Price of New Steel

I don't know about MN but here in northern CA, our shop, a small metal fabricator, buys new steel for $.25 to $.35 a pound. That is for plate, bar, shapes (angle, channel and beam) and square or rectangular tube. We regularly sell to walk in trade at 25% mark up, meaning around $.45 a pound. Any processing, such as cutting, punching or bending, is added to that.
In my thirty years plus in the business, the price of steel has been one of the few constants. Everything seems to have increased by a factor of 10 since 1970, but not steel. Even the latest round of tariffs only increased our cost by 1 to 2 cents a pound and those are expected to come off soon. Stainless, with the ever-changing price adders for nickel and chrome, can vary from well under a dollar a pound to $1.50 a pound over the course of a year. Aluminum, although it doesn't have the excuse of imported alloys, can still vary from under a dollar a pound to $1.35 a pound over a year. There are enough local suppliers of these materials that we consumers have a small but effective amount of leverage over price increases. Free market still rules.

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then we can probably expect a little drop in prices, but we'll be buying more foreign steel.

I've been paying .50lb for the past year for common HR, .61lb for CR and .55lb galvanized from a local mfg, the steel mfg area rep. I usually buy 300lbs plus at a time tho of mix and match.

The steel mfg's will no longer do business with indivduals like they did in the early 90's when they were going broke.

When I last worked, early 90's, .44lb was our common price for galvanized but in 10000lb minimum quanity. SS-304 was $1.35lb and 2.45lb for Aluminum.

T_Bone