May be the wrong forum but... where do I get a good source to buy cromoly tube ay a wholesale prices to get over here to New Zealand because it is WAAYY overpriced here!! like the last quote I got was $280 for a 18 ft stick of 1 3/4 .120 wall!
Thats daylight robbery..............

Any help is appriciated as I want to ship it in and help bring the cost of quality fab materials down to a realistic level!

Most of the material used for cages here is mild steel steam pipe! its like butter and about as safe as it too!

I want to go fast and feel safe and Im sure more people here do to but the cost from the other importers here is rediculous!

Thanks

What kind of quantity are you looking to buy?

I get mine from Priority Metal in Santa Ana California, Ventura Steel in Ventura California and Pattons in Ontario California. All are usually around $6/ft for 1.75x.120, it various by $0.50/ft from place to place, but one of those 3 is always the cheapest around here.

Probably buy about 500ft to start in various Diameters then go from there, I would buy up to 1000ft if I get the right price! I really want to get a good relationship with just one supplier and have a good rate to buy at rather than shopping around for smaller amounts.

Hmm you're paying roughly $15.50/ft, and prices here in the US where a lot of steel is made tend to vary between $6-9/ft. With the cost of shipping this heavy stuff all the way across the globe, I'm not sure you're gonna be able to beat the prices you're already getting if you're only gonna be ordering 25-50 sticks at a time. That seems like a lot of tube for a single shop, but its really not a large order at all when you're talking about being a supplier. Hell 500ft is really only enough for about 2-3 buggies.

Where are you planning on importing from? Where are the current importers getting it from? If it's coming from here that's a lot of time and money in shipping.

As far as pricing, and discounts. I get a decent discount on any order, from the places I buy metal from, but as a new customer, expect a slight discount for 100ft or more of any 1 size, and then a bigger discount at 1000ft.


I agree with Dallas, for 500 feet, not sure you'll save anything in the end. It's going to be hard to convince customs officials that the large crate of tube is a wedding gift to try and avoid import duties. Factor in shipping, and having to have an agent on this side of the ocean to handle stuffing it in a container. If you were looking at enough to fill a whole container, you mite be able to see some decent savings, but at such a low quantity you may end up spending more.

Have you priced out DOM? While most chro-mo is manufactured here, the majority of DOM these days seems to come from either India or China, and the Indian tube is actually really good stuff. You may still have the same problem as with chro-mo though, I don't know a ton about New Zealand's economy, but it doesn't seem like there's much heavy industry, which is what most of the high strength tube is manufactured for.

Another possibility is the metric system. Sounds stupid, but have you asked for a price on the metric equivilent? The prices may be crazy high because SAE sized tube is such an oddball thing in the rest of the world, we're the only idiots still using feet and inches.

Try http://www.mfg.com

I can get you a price to a dock but beyond that, it would be your baby. There just can't be that much play room in the difference in cost here to what you are being quoted there once you figure in all the crap it takes to get it from point A to B. Let me know if you are interested in doing the leg work and I can get you pricing (BUT the pricing would only be good for a day or two with steel going through the roof as we speak right now so pricing can't be held).

Adam

Thanks for all the input, even if it is only $2 a ft saving at the end on a 1000ft thats $2000 so worth my while..

I have the shipping sorted thats $150 m2 and I pay sales tax on it here, it gets landed basically at my door. At $6 USD a ft I will be saving about $5NZD a ft here landed, I ship stuff here all the time its easy..

Yeah I know 500-1000ft is small orders by your standards but New zealand is about 1-50th the size of the USA so you can understand, I am doing about 4-5 trucks a year just in my off time after work so I wont use a whole lot but I would like to on sell to the rest of the market here which isnt huge but I want to see more trick trucks, so lowering material cost will help encourage more people to use then the more I can buy the beter the pricing for the consumer here.

Better trucks all round!!:D

Thanks for all the input, even if it is only $2 a ft saving at the end on a 1000ft thats $2000 so worth my while..

I have the shipping sorted thats $150 m2 and I pay sales tax on it here, it gets landed basically at my door. At $6 USD a ft I will be saving about $5NZD a ft here landed, I ship stuff here all the time its easy..

Yeah I know 500-1000ft is small orders by your standards but New zealand is about 1-50th the size of the USA so you can understand, I am doing about 4-5 trucks a year just in my off time after work so I wont use a whole lot but I would like to on sell to the rest of the market here which isnt huge but I want to see more trick trucks, so lowering material cost will help encourage more people to use then the more I can buy the beter the pricing for the consumer here.

Better trucks all round!!:D

Do you want a couple of sticks of 1.5", 1.25",and 1" for the smaller internal stuff on the chassis? Let me know and I will give you a ballpark figure so you can start looking into shipping to see if this is doable and if so, we can figure out the money and what not and proceed from there. This would either be coming out of the port of Oakland, CA or a port out of Las Angeles, CA (probably LA). Let me know about the other tube and I can have numbers back quite quickly.

Adam
Any Seven Offroad

Edit: I sent you a PM

Ttt