Season
Priced on an annual clock, built on a construction season. The pre-buy is the spike.
Commodity playbook
Who ships drywall
| Shipper | Town | County |
|---|---|---|
| USG | Chicago, IL | Cook |
| National Gypsum | Charlotte, NC | Mecklenburg |
| Georgia-Pacific | Atlanta, GA | Fulton |
| CertainTeed | Malvern, PA | Chester |
| American Gypsum | Dallas, TX | Dallas |
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Five of the seven US wallboard producers, at their head offices. Each runs a plant network, and the plant is where the truck loads.
Ask for the plant traffic manager, and the buyer at the distributor. Board moves plant to distributor yard to jobsite, and only the first leg is real truckload freight. Jobsite delivery is usually a boom truck the distributor owns. Ask which leg you are being offered, because one of them is not yours to haul.
Where it hauls
Wallboard plants sit near two things: a gypsum source and a metro that is building. That means quarries in the interior west and Texas, synthetic gypsum plants beside coal power stations in the midwest and southeast, and board lines close to the Sun Belt housing markets. It is heavy, low-value freight, so the haul is short by design and the plant network is dense. The producers to know:
How to open
"Are you covering the pre-buy? I'd rather commit capacity before the increase than chase it after."
To the plants and distributors, January into FebruaryNaming the pre-buy is the whole credential. Everyone in this business plans around the annual increase, and a broker who mentions it unprompted is not calling cold.
Qualifying questions
- What does it scale, and how many sheets? Wallboard is dense and a load weighs out fast. Half-inch board runs roughly 1.6 pounds per square foot, so a trailer reaches legal weight well before it looks full. Get the sheet count, thickness and target gross.
- Flatbed or van, and does it need tarps? Both are used. Flatbed needs tarping because wet board is scrap, not damaged goods. Confirm who supplies tarps and how the load is covered, because rain on this freight is a total loss.
- How is it handled at the yard? Board is lifted in banded stacks and it breaks if it flexes. Confirm the yard has the right forklift with long forks and that they will not drag a stack. Damage claims here are about handling, not driving.
- Is this the pre-buy or a normal stocking order? Volume around an annual increase is a spike with a hard deadline behind it. A normal stocking order is plannable. They price differently and they forgive lateness differently.
- Plant to yard, or yard to jobsite? Only the first is truckload freight. Jobsite delivery generally rides a boom truck the distributor already owns. Establish which one before you quote.
When to call
January and February, around the annual price increase and ahead of the spring build. Distributors stock hard before an increase takes effect, which concentrates freight into a few weeks and strands anyone who has not committed. The construction season then runs March to November, so the seat keeps paying.
Sources
- Industry and SEC reporting on US gypsum wallboard: seven domestic producers (American Gypsum, CertainTeed Gypsum, Georgia-Pacific, Lafarge North America, National Gypsum, PABCO and USG), with USG historically near a third of domestic sales and manufacturing at 46 North American plants, and National Gypsum operating 17 US gypsum board plants. sec.gov
- The January to February call window and the pre-buy spike around annual price increases. Widely described in the building products trade but not published as a dated statistic, so treated as trade knowledge rather than a measurement.