They're definitely pushing the limits with how much they're charging for a unit of lumber and not doing much to increase supply by not passing a relative portion of that price on through to the timber producers / loggers / truckers / etc.
"Capitalism"
Yeah. "Free Market". It's all regulated and fake as fuck and designed to get people to demand federal regulation.
Lumber demand definitely outpaced log supply for part of the summer. Early spring orders were cut back due to muh COVID and nobody predicted the explosion in demand from the home improvement and new single-family home start sectors (people stuck at home finally working on their houses and people fleeing cities and building homes in rural areas).
But the mills are not making much effort to ramp up production. It's too convenient to play the coof game and be short on staff and not add extra shifts etc.
It sounds like there might be some cause to suspect market manipulation, but it really seems like they're not doing anything wrong. They're just running slower than the market wishes they would run.
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