Good point Rich. Although I dont advocate the customers setting the price level, they do in a way. The retailer has to understand that for many folks, this is their source of heat....they dont wanna use electricity, wood, gas, oil, etc, for whatever reason. By jacking the price up, they surely arent making themselves look good. On the other hand, Im in bidness to make money. Unfortunately, i cant base my price on the idiocy of my competition. We see this alot in dealing with the big box stores. They'll take price-sensitive items, and sellthem below cost, to project an air of being a great value. People see that one low price, and extrapolate that to all the other hi-prift items in the store. So far, the boxes havent done this with pellets, maybe because they have a hard time getting them, I dunno. We try to make them affordable as we can....its in our better interests, but we also have to make a profit on them, and cover the many costs of doing bidness, as well as poay our people. Whats gonna happen this spring? I dont KNOW, but can hazard a guess. Hows this: The prices will be slightly lower in '07 than '06, there will be another scarcity of pellets in the east, with more plentiful supplies in the west. There will likely be some good deals in the spring, if the end-user is vigilant. Have a good day.
