The title of a great song by Adele, a young big-voiced, Grammy winning soul singer from Great Britain, "Chasing Pavements" is also what contractors are often doing this time of year as they try to get the pipeline full for the rest of the season.
And if pre- and early-season conversations with contractors and materials suppliers are accurate, the industry is doing a pretty good job and those pipelines should be full pretty quickly.
That's because contractors - to a person -- say they have many, many bids out, just waiting for contracts to be awarded. Margins, unfortunately, have been tightened in some cases, especially for early season bids. But a number of contractors (sealcoaters and stripers) have gone back to near normal margins as the bidding seems to be plentiful and they figure they'll get their share of the business.
Materials suppliers are at least cautiously optimistic. The ones I've talked with say the season started slowly but they are encouraged by the number of bids their prospects say they're waiting to hear on. And just this last week we talked with a sealer supplier who not only had existing customers placing and increasing orders, he had new customers buying material.
All pretty good news, indicating property managers are planning on getting work done, and all the chasing pavements effort likely will pay off.
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