Why is White Cedar Hard to Get?
In the last two years, every industry from health care to retail to lumber has experienced product backorders, shipment delays, labour shortages and many more essential components to running a business because of COVID-19 protocols throughout 2020-21 and the supply chain.
What is the supply chain? A supply chain is an entire system of producing and delivering a product or service, from the very beginning stage of sourcing the raw materials to the final delivery of the product or service to end-users.
We’ve been hearing in the news and online that all of the delays businesses have been experiencing since our first lockdown is all due to “supply chain shortages” but what does this actually look like to the average person? Sheply Wood breaks it down like this:
“The major factors are a critical shortage of labor to manufacture goods, a major shortage of drivers to transport raw materials and finished goods, a worldwide shortage of shipping containers, big backlogs of ships at our ports who can’t unload because of the aforementioned labor and driver shortages, and resulting run ups in cost of shipping that are making some products economically unviable.” (Sheplywood)
With every industry taking a huge hit, all aspects of a project can be delayed and therefore increase more costs while also increasing frustration. So when it comes to doing your own DIY project, think about every piece that you need, where it comes from, how it got to your location, and how many others might be needing it as well.
And in the thick of lockdowns, what else was there to do but start all those at-home projects you now have all the time for. It became a simple case of supply vs demand; the demand was incredibly high but the supply was incredibly low with no way of measuring how to combat it. As Sheply highlights, if even one piece of a project is delayed… everything is impacted.
“Suppliers are air freighting components in just to make sure production lines can keep running, because even if you make the entire window or door, if you are short one critical piece of hardware, the production line goes down, you lose production and schedules are pushed out all the way down the supply chain.” (Sheplywood)
How does this relate to white cedar?
Well just like any company in COVID, white cedar mills faced the same cuts and staff shortages that were unpredictable during lockdown. This unpredictability resulted in these mills to not fulfill orders/demands.
Even before this pandemic, white cedar was always high in demand as it is the most popular wood used for fences for many decades. Many people prefer white cedar because of its durability, so when people decided to begin yard projects during lockdown the demand increased to unforeseen levels and the cedar mills could not keep up.
Reported in 2021:
“The largest single producer of white cedar shingles, located outside of Quebec, typically runs three shifts per day with 20 sawyers on each shift. Currently, they are only running 1 shift per day with an average of 14 sawyers. They tell us they don’t even know who will show up for work each day. The story is exactly the same at every other white cedar mill. Canada still has serious COVID issues and is still paying workers to stay home as we were in the US, up through September. It takes several years to train a good sawyer so we can anticipate that there will be white cedar supply issues for quite a while to come. Red cedar shingle mills face the same labor challenges but also have a shortage of red cedar logs to further complicate and constrain their production.” (Sheplywood)
It is now summer of 2022, two years later and things have started to get back to normal in Ontario at least. The supply chain is still repairing but most industries are able to keep up with their orders while also keeping customer expectations realistic. The manufacturing world is still experiencing labour shortages but will hopefully be able to repair in the near future.
Are you working on a new fence or yard project and want to ensure you have all the right pieces? Contact us today and we can help you get started!
