Season
A housing-driven build season. The plant network exists because the product cannot travel.
Commodity playbook
Who ships insulation
| Shipper | Town | County |
|---|---|---|
| Owens Corning | Cleveland, TN | Bradley |
| Owens Corning | Fairburn, GA | Fulton |
| Johns Manville | Defiance, OH | Defiance |
| Knauf Insulation | Shelbyville, IN | Shelby |
| CertainTeed | Athens, GA | Clarke |
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Named plants from the four major manufacturers, which run more than 25 US sites between them.
Ask for the plant's shipping coordinator. The economics of this product mean the manufacturer thinks hard about freight: when a trailer holds very little weight, the cost per unit of product is unusually sensitive to how well the trailer is loaded. A carrier who understands cube utilisation is speaking their language.
Where it hauls
Regional by necessity. The four major manufacturers place plants so no customer is far from one: Ohio and Indiana in the midwest, Georgia and Tennessee in the southeast, Texas and Kansas in the centre, Arizona and California in the west, plus New Jersey, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Freight runs plant to building products distributor and then to jobsite, with the first leg being the truckload business. The plants to know:
How to open
"Are you setting spring capacity? I run high-cube and I'd rather commit before the build season than quote you in May."
To the plants, February into MarchAsk how they want it loaded. Insulation batts compress, and how much compression they will accept changes how much goes on the trailer, which is the entire economics of the load.
Qualifying questions
- How much compression will you accept? Batts are compressed to fit and the degree of compression decides how much goes on a trailer. Too much damages the R-value. Get their standard, because it determines the load and the rate.
- What does it scale? Almost nothing. This is the extreme of cube-out freight and a full trailer may be a quarter of legal weight. Think in bags and pallets, never in tons.
- Does it need to stay dry? Wet fiberglass loses performance and can grow mould, and it is not salvageable. Confirm the trailer is dry and sealed, and if it is riding flatbed, that it is properly tarped.
- Plant to distributor, or jobsite? Distributor delivery is dock or yard and straightforward. Jobsite delivery involves access, timing against a framing schedule and often no one to unload. Ask which.
- Blown, batt, board or mineral wool? Bagged loose fill, faced and unfaced batts, rigid board and mineral wool all load and damage differently. Mineral wool in particular is far heavier than fiberglass.
When to call
February and March, ahead of the March to November build season. Insulation goes into a house after framing and before drywall, so it follows housing starts with a lag of a few months, which makes demand reasonably forecastable from public data if you care to look.
Sources
- North American Insulation Manufacturers Association member plant locations: Johns Manville at Berlin NJ, Cleburne TX, Defiance OH, McPherson KS, Richmond IN, Waterville OH, Willows CA and Winder GA; Knauf Insulation at Albion MI, Inwood WV, Kingman AZ, Lanett AL, Shasta Lake CA, Shelbyville IN and Winnsboro SC; Owens Corning at Cleveland TN, Columbus OH, Delmar NY, Eloy AZ, Fairburn GA, Kansas City KS and Ladysmith WI; CertainTeed at Athens GA, Chowchilla CA and Kansas City KS. insulationinstitute.org
- The February to March call window and the lag between housing starts and insulation demand. Reasoned from construction sequencing rather than a manufacturer's stated schedule.