As most of Michigan sat under a sheet of ice Wednesday morning, the best solution was to melt it away with salt. The problem is, there’s not a lot of it to go around.
“They were sending us notices that some mines were shut down and we were going to have limited supply of salt,” says James Foltz, operations manager of Neat and Green Lawn Care in Mt. Pleasant.
In the rock salt world, the big county and city road crews get the first crack at the salt supply, then the small private companies get theirs. After two major mines went down this year, there wasn’t much more left over.
“They cut our salt amounts in half from what we could get from last year to this year,” says Foltz, “And our salt prices doubled.”
In some industries, you might be able to get the job done by doing less but when it comes to the safety of drivers and people walking on in parking lots and driveways, you can’t do that. You have to still get the job done and that just means more stress on the company.
“We have to look at other suppliers to get the salt,” says Foltz, “We really can’t change the way we service our customers. We can’t really cut down on the amount of salt we use. They require that much salt, so we end up looking at other suppliers and pay more unfortunately.”
Salt is needed for the ice and the freezing rain. While the winter hasn’t been heavy with snow overall, it has been slick.
“We actually used less salt the last week and a half than we had over the course of the season because it was deeper amounts of snow,” says Foltz.
This is not expected to be an ongoing trend, just a perfect storm of short supply and high demand.
“Next year, when the mines get up and running, our salt prices will go down and will have an unlimited supply,” says Foltz, “Until we have a big winter again.”
© 2023 - 910 Media Group
