Mr. Daniel Cline, President of KC Windustrial Company, and I were discussing the wild price swings of materials and how contractors should adjust to them.

KC Windustrial has been distributing plumbing parts and supplies to Kansas City area contractors since 1981. Dan has been with the company since the beginning and has seen it all.

Dan made some interesting observations from the supplier point of view that I thought would be worth your time. I have added a few additional observations at the end of Dan's comments.

Here is what Dan had to say about the impact rapidly changing material prices has had on contractors.

"In the last several years we have seen a huge increase in the amount of material that is being bought and stored by our customers. In the past this was common only for fixtures on large jobs that were finished in phases over a long period. Today we see it on most fixture jobs and a lot of rough material (pipe, valves and fittings).