Hey, I called 4WD to ordered my RRC front and rear bumpers and when he gave me the total I noticed it was higher than the online retail prices, even with my 10% club discount, so I had him double check it. Seems that RRC sent them a pretty signifigant price increase last week. Based on my calculations it would take the front bumper from $349 to about $430. I consulted with a manager and they honored the price because it's on their website, but said they were going to change it right away. Glad I called now to get the free shipping as well.

I ordered the rear too, but it's on about a 2 week backorder. Didn't catch the increase on it, as the front bumper price caught my attention before he got further down the list. Just thought I'd pass it along to anyone sitting on the fence as they still have the old price and free shipping on the site.

 

it takes a lot of diesel to get from china!

 

Imported bumpers

 

Steel has gone through the roof...and into the roof, and walls, of the Olympic structures built in China interestingly....but, it was climbing like a scared cat before that anyway.

EVERYONE who makes steel items is having to raise their prices, or lose money, because steel costs so much now, its nutz....its over 1.5 x more for the past six months alone.

Most manufactures need to charge customers between 3 - 5x cost of materials to make any money, less than that, and they can't cover labor, materials, transport, advertising, rent/mortgage/overhead, regulatory costs, yada yada yada.

Than means if the material COST goes up - the product PRICE has to go up.

If the steel cost $200, 6 months ago, and the corresponding charge for the product was $600...


...That means the same steel 6 months later (Now) costs $ 300, so, the corresponding product charge would be $ 900 to keep the same profit margin, etc.


It sucks.

I have hundreds of pounds of steel stock piled in my garage for welding projects, etc....and I wish I had a lot more, as replacing anything used will be a lot harder now.



Whatcha gonna do?