John Deere Landscape is our only distributor!help price sucks.

[sprinklerhead]

We'll we use to have a couple of differnt place to buy from but they all went under. John deere Lanscapes is the only place to buy from and its getting rediculess. 1 length of 1" copper goes for $18 or so a stick what happend?to 10 bucks ,copper ,poly ,pvc,
Where do you guys buy from? and are they reasonable?

[PurpHaze]

We'll we use to have a couple of differnt place to buy from but they all went under. John deere Lanscapes is the only place to buy from and its getting rediculess. 1 length of 1" copper goes for $18 or so a stick what happend?to 10 bucks ,copper ,poly ,pvc,
Where do you guys buy from? and are they reasonable?

We have two main suppliers in our area: West Valley Supply and Ewing. Both are great and are fairly competitive price wise.

[BSME]

maybe I'm missing something....

I just asked in a different thread what PVC runs... sprinklerhead... you said $18 for one stick? is that 20'? So are you looking at 90 cents a foot? I just looked at my cost for poly and was about 14 cents a foot...

I thought everyone said PVC was cheaper?

[Grassmechanic]

PVC and copper - try Federal Pipe & Supply, I believe it's on McNichols in Detroit. Or Home Depot. Copper prices have been up quite a bit, so don't look for too many deals.

[bicmudpuppy]

Everything has gone up at a very unreasonable rate lately. Worst part is I see no sign of it coming back down. 3 or 4 years ago, we saw poly and pvc prices up near $.20', but they dropped back down to an easier to swallow $.10 to .11 PVC and poly seem to be within a penny of each other for me. Which one is cheaper depends on who I ask and when. $.17 to .18 seems to be average. I have a harder time accepting that swing pipe costs the same as 1".

[koster_irrigation]

1" cls 200 pvc here is about .23 a ft

[PurpHaze]

1" cls 200 pvc here is about .23 a ft

1" CL 200 PVC here is now .23 a foot including tax. Prior to about a month ago we could get it for around .17 a foot.

[Wet_Boots]

Material prices are going to stay up for a while, whether it's an energy component, like with copper, or plastic raw material that goes into pipe and sprinklers. I was told that poly prices are tied to natural gas more than to oil, based on the resin source.

[aquamtic]

We have been with JD since day 1 but only use them for the primary irrigation oproducts. When it comes to copper pipe, brass fittings and even pvc we built a relationship with a couple of plumbing supply houses. They sell a whole lot more of these supplies than JD which in turn brings better pricing. I have one plumbing house every year try and sell me Hunter products but they can't touch JD pricing.

[sprinklerhead]

maybe I'm missing something....

I just asked in a different thread what PVC runs... sprinklerhead... you said $18 for one stick? is that 20'? So are you looking at 90 cents a foot? I just looked at my cost for poly and was about 14 cents a foot...

I thought everyone said PVC was cheaper?

NO No NO No No thats for copper, my bad!! i have to look on my invoices for pvc. You know of any other distributors. Premier went under ,but i never bought from them anyhow they had junk but it kept price low a john deere. There is one called spartan but thats way to far from us.

[sprinklerhead]

maybe I'm missing something....

I just asked in a different thread what PVC runs... sprinklerhead... you said $18 for one stick? is that 20'? So are you looking at 90 cents a foot? I just looked at my cost for poly and was about 14 cents a foot...

I thought everyone said PVC was cheaper?
Oh hey your the dumb dumb i looked back on my thread and i did say copper

[PurpHaze]

Speaking of John Deere Landscapes, we received an invoice from apparently the Fresno branch (we don't have one here) with a $41 surcharge because an invoice hadn't been paid within 30 days. Our secretatry asked me about it and I told her we don't deal with them at all. I noted that although the invoice had our district's name on it the address was the city's secondary address (where our district offices used to be located until eight years ago).

We do deal with the local John Deere tractor unit since we have several of their tractors, small to large.

[sprinklerhead]

JD"S was century rain aid at one time to did you have a account threw them?

[PurpHaze]

JD"S was century rain aid at one time to did you have a account threw them?

No such thing in our area, ever. We've dealt with West Valley Supply for over 20 years and Ewing when they came to town starting about 10 years ago. We also deal with a couple of plumbing supply houses for specialty underground items and concrete Christy boxes.

[sprinklerhead]

Really? Century rain aid was nationwide an Jd's bought them out. HMM

[PurpHaze]

There's a lot of nationwide things that never make it to our town. ;)

[Wet_Boots]

Century Rain-Aid probably didn't need to butt heads with the competitive California market. You can always comparison-shop a 'laundry list' of your intended purchases from suppliers farther away, if you think the locals aren't trying hard enough for your business.

[jerryrwm]

Really? Century rain aid was nationwide an Jd's bought them out. HMM

Actually Century Rain Aid was, for most of it's existance, east of the Mississippi River. This left Ewing on the west side. Then CRA bought out a smaller distributor that had a couple branches west of the River. Then Ewing opened a couple on the east side.

CRA was bought by John Deere who then became the largest irrigation distributor in the country. Ewing is still trudging along hoping to open their 200th store in a couple of years.

[PurpHaze]

Century Rain-Aid probably didn't need to butt heads with the competitive California market. You can always comparison-shop a 'laundry list' of your intended purchases from suppliers farther away, if you think the locals aren't trying hard enough for your business.

Good advice. Right now we feel we have the best of both worlds. We have a "closed PO" (money put into PO and Ewing deducts as we pick up parts) with Ewing and they can usually get "oddball" stuff for us in a very short time from one of their other stores. West Valley is an "open PO" (they bill the district monthly based on invoices we've signed) which helps us out during May/June each year. The district ends up closing all PO's in May or June because the fiscal year ends June 30th. This puts a big crimp on us because this is getting into the height of the season with lots of repairs. West Valley will actually carry us until the new PO's come in on July 1st and then they add all the materials we picked up after the previous year's PO was closed.

[BSME]

Oh hey your the dumb dumb i looked back on my thread and i did say copper

that's why I said maybe I'm missing something... I knew something was wrong...

What area are you in? I never used Premier either but saw a bunch of ads from them on the radio.... what happened to them? I got a message one time this summer from Central Irrigation Supply saying they were new and wanted to send me some information.... I never heard back from them

[sprinklerhead]

Central irrigation hmm never heard of them . we are in macomb oakland county.how about you?? were you guys out of?

[sprinklerhead]

Oh yeah Premier distributors went bankrupt! they were ripping people off left and right. over priced and had real cheaply made fittings and poly pipe that would stretch. I used them a couple of times when i was close to there store.
Bunch of cons thats for sure specially Dan out of the S.C.S store.

[BSME]

pretty much the same... I don't like to go all the way over to macomb though... Birmingham is the nicer area.. still working out of my brother and my four car garage in Auburn hills... what about you?

maybe I can get one of Premier's garages... it'd be nice to pick up customers who go there thinking they are still in business...

[sprinklerhead]

We have a commercial building off vandyke

[DanaMac]

JD bought out United Green Mark this summer, which is one of the places I bought from. I can't stand the JD, but part of that is also the management. Fired the existing mgr. and brought back a previous one that caused me to shop elsewhere for 2 years. And the pricing is worse even though they should have better buying power.

[sprinklerhead]

I like Jd's But i don't like the prices