For two weeks, Khai Shelton has been unable to buy road salt.
Shelton, the owner of Extraordinary Detail, usually spends about $100 for a ton of salt, which he uses to melt ice in the parking lots and driveways of commercial businesses. Earlier this year, he paid $175 a ton. But now, the price is up to $300 a ton, if he can find it — and Shelton cannot.
For a business that makes its money plowing and salting, not having a main component makes it impossible to do part of the job. And Shelton is feeling it.
“It’s affecting us horribly,” he said. “If you’re not doing semi loads, you really can’t get it.”
While salt suppliers often run low toward the end of the winter season, Shelton and Snow in the 330 owner Brian Merrimack both said it was mid-December when this season’s shortages began. Merrimack said his understanding was that large suppliers had shut down their salt mines.
Neither Cargill nor Morton Salt — two major U.S. salt producers with operations in Ohio — responded Friday to requests for comment about the shortages.
Akron uses Cargill as its supplier but has been able to restock after every weather event at prices that are locked in at between $62.89 and $78.06 a ton, Stephanie Marsh, a spokesperson for the city, said in an email Friday. She said the city stocked its reserves over the summer, so it was well prepared for the ongoing winter weather — “we are in good shape right now,” Marsh wrote.
That’s not the case everywhere. Channel 3 News reported that Cleveland Heights had to borrow 150 tons of salt from a neighboring city. In a Facebook post last Thursday, the Village of Richfield said it was not sure when an order it placed a week and a half ago would be delivered because of supply issues with Cargill. And Twinsburg also said Thursday that it, too, was facing road salt supply issues due to the Cargill shortage.
“Crews will be operating in a sensible salting mode, carefully rationing and prioritizing salt for hills, curves, intersections, bridges, and main and secondary roads,” the government posted. “In these areas, we will use strategic spot salting to allow traffic to help carry salt during active snowfall. Flat, residential streets may receive little or no salt during this period.”
Shipping salt from afar
Shelton said that, with no salt, he’s had to get creative for his customers. Most customers want bare pavement, but Shelton said he’s keeping about an inch of snow on the ground at shopping centers in Chapel Hill to maintain traction. That way, he said, drivers get traction from the snow instead of sliding on bare ice when there’s no salt to be had.
“You really have to know how to do snow and ice management right now,” he said.
That’s because of the risk of slipping and falling on ice. Merrimack said that’s what he’s most worried about — an injury at a location he’s contracted to salt could cause him to lose his entire business.
“I’m mostly sick every single day thinking about it,” he said. “It’s truly an awful, awful thing that’s going on.”
That’s why Merrimack shipped 25 tons of salt from Rhode Island at a cost of $300 a ton — plus shipping. He said it cost $1,000 just to transport it from Ashtabula to Akron.
Merrimack plows apartment buildings and nursing homes. He can’t raise prices because most are on contracts, so he estimates he’s losing tens of thousands of dollars on higher salt costs.
“Next year, you’re probably going to see, across the board, all plowing companies, their prices go up,” he said. “We’re just getting hit here.”
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Kris Buterbaugh, the owner of KrisB Lawns in Norton, already raised his prices 25%. That’s nowhere near the 210% increase in the price of salt he’s had to swallow, but Buterbaugh said he needs to make up some of his costs.
He drove an hour to find salt, only to be limited to two tons, even though his normal route requires four or five.There are some locations, like a school, that Buterbaugh is contractually obligated to salt daily. But for churches, salons or other clients that are closed some days, Buterbaugh is juggling them to make sure he’s salting areas on the days they need them most.
A few clients have told him not to worry about the salt, he said.
“It’s almost to the point you can’t find it anymore,” he said. “If there’s no supply, there’s no supply. You can’t put down something you don’t have.”
When he runs out, he says, he just does the best he can.
“It could literally drive a business to the ground,” Buterbaugh said. “It can really, really put the hurting on a business.”
A record number of salting events
The whole situation, Merrimack said, is a nightmare. Especially since he expects this to be a record year for snow events. While a typical year requires between 40 and 45 days of plowing and salting, there were 56 such incidents last winter. Merrimack is anticipating 65 salting events this season.
“We’re getting just battered with small snowstorms,” he said Friday, ahead of a big one. “They require salt instead of plowing.”
When the region is hammered with winter weather, Merrimack said, everyone suffers.
After shortages last winter — later in the season — Shelton added a salt surcharge to his contracts. Now, if a customer wants salt, they’re going to pay what he pays. But that assumes he can find it at all, which, so far, he can’t.
He’s had to turn down new customers, he said, because he simply doesn’t have the product.
Shelton said he’ll continue to readjust, and next year may require commercial properties to order salt in advance and keep it on site so he knows he has it on hand. But the stress of all of it makes it hard for him to sleep.
“You’ve got a better chance of finding drugs before you find salt,” he said. “People are better off finding a guy walking down the street with a shovel than trying to call a company at this point.”