Warhousing Materials: Your Thought!

mseneker

Does anyone have any thoughts on buying certain materials in bulk and transporting them to job sites or having employees maintain certain levels in their trucks or garage at home. And if so, where do you purchase them?

We are considering ordering plastic, trash bags, vacuum filters, sanding materials, staples, carpet protector and similar. Not mud and such.

We currently buy misc. items at Home Depo when needed. We pick up the extra materials at job sites and place them in our storage. Then if we are short there is a ready supply or after we get a pick-up truck load we take the extras to one job site. Does not pay to move small items one at a time.

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email: Alliancedrywall@hotmail.com

Stiletto

Is there any savings by purchasing in bulk? do they offset the cost of storing/transporting them vs having to make a trip to purchase them?

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so a baby seal walks into a club ....

SelfContract

Good ideas to save $$ if you have many small but long trips versus $3 - $4 per gallon gas this next summer!!...

dryrocker27

As a drywall contractor - my supply house gives me a discount for buying items by the case or pallet. This allows me to have items on hand when needed. We utilize a 7 x 16 enclosed trailer and have everything we need on hand. I call my salesman when items get low and he sends them to my shop.
Storing them is not a problem since the money i saved built my shop and keeps the lights on. Now i am extremly compeditive in my pricing because i have bought the product at a discount and now re-sell them to the builder at a lower cost than they can buy the item themselves. I have more time on the job, as i do not have to spend time running to the store. I am also home earlier for the same reason. The problem we faced with the salesman bringing us supplies is that they were on the road and could not service us when we needed the supplies, they would want to schedule a delivery.

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Robert

Tim0282

My situation works like Robert's. I spend very little time at the box stores or the distribution center. My phone puts me about as close as I need to be. Gives me more time to actually work and not run down material.
Tim

mud dog

I order in a pallet of mud every couple months and when I go into the store I buy boxes of bead and tape and store them on shelves in my garage. That way, its just grab them, and go. No down time. I had a plumber who worked on my basement and he said his garage is the same as mine only with plumbing tools in it.

mdshunk

I do mostly service work, so having a well stocked truck and stock at the shop is just what you have to do to keep the downtime to a bare minimum. The cost of having a bit of inventory is more than offset by the labor savings. If I did mostly construction projects, there'd be no real reason to have inventory of any sort.

dryrocker27

Hey Mud Dog - how big is your crew? it is not uncommen for me to order 2 pallets a month. some of the houses we work on take 40-45 boxes of mud each. Most will take only 25-30 boxes. 90% of our work is for smooth ceilings. Textures are not popular here in large homes. Texture ceilings mostly in homes about 2000 sq or smaller

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Robert

mseneker

I'm thinking in terms of having misc. items picked up by the crews when they come by the office. The big stuff is delivered to the job by my supply company. Trash bags, plastic and similar could be kept with the crew.

I'm wanting to reduce the labor cost of men leaving the job for misc. items. I get a good price most of my materials from the yard. That $15 box of trash bags turns into $35 when someone runs off the job for them.

When the employee takes something from storage they could report it on their time cards and we could re-order as needed.

I know a larger company who warehouses everything but the drywall board itself. Their contract crews come by, get assigned jobs and pickup all the other materials at their shop. That company is on their way out however.

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http://www.alliancedrywallservices.com
email: Alliancedrywall@hotmail.com