Boatnerd Discussion Forum

Thank you to all for your input. Just heard on the 8 a.m. news today that there is a Salt Shortage in Detroit especially for the "little guy", the contractor, who clears the malls, school, church parking lots. Some of these contractors paid in advance for the season. Now they must go else where and pay again at top dollar. Oh 3 -6 inches predicted this weekend.

Wisconsin contract spreadsheet:

https://vendornet.wi.gov/Download.aspx? ... oride.xlsx


Ohio winter fill contract spreadsheet:

https://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/C ... 18-18a.xls

Thanks for the great Info, Mr Link! Does anyone know if similar info is available online for the State of WI DOT? At my work we utilize bulk rock salt in the winter months and its amazing to see the price the State of MI is able to get when buying such a large amount vs the price private contractors pay! Thanks again.

A followup: I looked at the contract link. It looks like the big 3 allow DS to get the 1-10 loads per agency. I didn't see any thing big although I didn't read every page. The contract that was taken away I referred to was 2000 truck loads

The salt business isn't cut throat. The big guys collude big time in the bidding. Google Ohio DOT Salt bid rigging etc. They just got caught there.

I've spent 40+ years in the road business and 10 years on the front lines of winter maintenance. Detroit Salt was inactive for years. It reopened and started bidding on the state contract. They opened terminals served by rail since the big 3 control all the docks. They would make the big expenditures on the sites for permitting, unloading equipment ,stockpile equipment etc. They even shipped a little from a dock in Detroit - by tug barge not the usual carriers

Next round of bidding they would get undercut for the area around their terminal and not get one location. Looking at the prices it was very obvious what the big 3 were doing. DS couldn't make any money, just lose a lot.

DS got the bid for a large county on the west side. They couldn't keep up with trucks during the storms (as I predicted) and had the contract revoked. It was re-awarded to one of the big 3 ,The next year it was just coincidental that one of the big 3 delivered cheaper from the dock to the west and even quite a ways east of the county. Payback for taking the DS bid the year before. I came right out and told the big 3 rep (at a customer free lunch no less) they were colluding but I couldn't prove it. I didn't win any any brownie points that day.

DS seems to have found a niche away from the lakes where they can compete by rail with trucks from the docks and the smaller accounts like the landscapers / private guys.

IIRC, they are now owned by a company out of Canada.

Obviously Compass is Goderich and Cargill is Cleveland. Morton is Fairport Harbor, but is owned by K+S, which also owns the Windsor mines, so I assume that contract covers shipments from both ports.

Here are some of the bigger current salt contracts in Michigan. As you can see, the salt companies deliver all over the place. I believe Detroit Salt delivers everything in their Michigan contracts by truck.


http://www.michigan.gov/localgov/0,4602 ... --,00.html

Keep in mind these are just governmental agency contracts. Private snow plowing companies that clear places like big box store parking lots demand a lot of salt as well.

I've always assumed that if Detroit didn't have their salt mines, you would see salt delivered during the winter on the same scale as you do Milwaukee. Clearly the metro area needs more salt than the few loads shipped intermittently from December-February.

Also worth noting that Detroit also receives salt shipments from Cleveland and Fairport Harbor on Grand River boats, just not late into the winter. I know there are multiple docks in in Detroit that receive this stuff, not as if it is all coming in to one company who then distributes it.

Supplying road salt is a cutthroat business. The two mines have different owners and they compete for business contracts. Often these are large state or region-wide contracts that require delivery to multiple locations. So for the past several years at least, salt from Windsor has been delivered to Detroit while much of the salt out of the Detroit mine goes out by rail to other markets.

Both Windsor and Detroit have a Salt Mine just a short distance across the Detroit River from each other. The Algoma Enterprise is now delivering a load from Windsor Salt to Detroit up the Rouge River. This is the 2nd load in the past few days. Why? Can't Detroit Mine keep up with the demand of road salt?