HOWARD, WI (WTAQ) – With plenty of demand locally, hardware stores are making sure they have the supply of salt necessary to keep costumers both happy and safe.
According to Jeff Baranczyk, store manager of Kimp’s Ace Hardware in Howard, there’s not a whole lot of other options available to homeowners to fight icy driveways and sidewalks.
“It’s either that or you do it manually with some chisels,” he explains. “Some sidewalk scrapers where you can kind of chip it away.”
But unless you’re looking to get an arm workout in, most people will opt for the salt.
And because of that, hardware stores across Northeast Wisconsin are ramping up their orders of salt to appease the masses.
“I just brought in four pallets or something yesterday,” says Baranczyk. “And I just placed an order for another four pallets.”
Demand for salt is always going to be relatively high in the winter, but it’s especially spiked since sub-zero temperatures have left the state.
“Now with temperatures kind of stabilizing to where they should be, now there’s where the demand has risen all of a sudden,” he explains.
And that spike started in part because of the wild swings in temperature, which are now finally evening out.
“It’s been a pretty steady flow of product in and out of here throughout the weekend and things started to cool back down and ice back up,” says Baranczyk.
For store owners, like Baranczyk, the gameplan is staying one step ahead of Mother Nature and always having the shelves ready for when the next wave of demand hits.
“Basically I just try to keep a real close eye on it and I can react to it fairly quick with the suppliers that I have,” he explains.
