There’s been a question floating around in the shed- hauling community.
“Does it seem like the shed-hauling business is slowing down? What’s going to happen in the next few years?”
The answer, of course, depends on who you ask, where they are located, and what builders they work with.
One hauler might have almost too many structures to move while another is barely getting by.
Shed Business Journal asked several haulers this very question to get a sense of how the shed-hauling side of the industry is doing.
MERVIN VARGAS, UNITED SHED TRANSPORT, COVINGTON, TEXAS
We have not experienced any slowdown. If anything, it’s the opposite for us. It may be because we haul for a lot of different manufacturers, but I’ve heard of guys that have been very slow.
I ask myself the same question. Will there be more or less shed hauling in the future? I think it’s going to get tougher, or it’s got tougher already.
But it’s really tough to sell buildings, so I believe those of us shed haulers who want to stay in business or do more, we’re going to have to really work together with manufacturers.
For example: going the extra mile, spending more time at display lots, trying to help with lead times, and having way more of a team-player mentality to make it.
In the shed-hauling industry, there’s too much driver-against-manufacturer going on, and that makes it tough for both parties to succeed nowadays.
We need to be asking each other, “How can we serve you better?” instead of fighting with each other, telling each other where they’re failing, and so on.
PAUL STALNAKER, STALNAKER TRANSPORT LLC, BENSON, NORTH CAROLINA
We haven’t experienced any slowdown in our area. Sure, it’s not as crazy busy as it was back in the 2020-2021 timeframe. But I believe anyone who based their business growth on that time was fooling themselves.
We seem to be back to pre-2020 sales. Growth is a little slower and methodical, but it’s still there.
We had a decrease in units hauled from 2020 to 2021 of about 15 percent, followed by another decline in 2022 of about 12 percent. We picked that 12 percent back up in 2023 and are on track to increase about 10-15 percent on units hauled for 2024.
There are always guys out there that will be doom-and-gloom, the sky is falling types, but I see more slow and steady times in the future.
It will make the sales guys actually have to work for those sales, more so than the easy flow of customers they had three or four years ago.
JASON KAUFFMAN, KAUFFMAN BUILDERS, EUREKA, MONTANA
We are definitely slower this year than the other post-COVID years. Although, in my opinion, it’s simply back to normal; 2015-2019 were similar to this year for me.
After 34 years in the industry, I’ve come to see that it has ups and downs, and the typical suspects blamed are seldom accurate.
I hear lots of people talk about this being an election year and people are hedging their bets, etc. I think that’s mostly false. It may be true for large investors in huge projects or the stock market, but the average shed customer is not weighing things like national elections in their shed purchase.
I’d venture to guess that less than 5 percent of shed customers are considering the upcoming elections in their purchase.
What I do say is a huge factor is inflation. In my area, lumber prices have fallen significantly and shed prices have come down as well. However, the pain of inflation is hitting the average shed customer every trip to the grocery store and every household bill.
Insurance, gas, vehicle repairs, utilities, taxes—a shed is much more of a luxury purchase than groceries or car insurance. When the groceries and other necessities cost 30-40-50 percent or more than they did two or three years ago, that new shed takes the back burner.
Look at your general shed purchaser demographics. They are not the uber-rich or even the wildly successful. The majority of our customers over the last 25-30 years have been middle-class Americans.
Most of them are average Americans making average wages.
Go to the lower-income purchaser who is using RTO and the same thing applies. For them, everything in life is payments, and they simply have more month than money, so the shed takes a back burner.
I suspect that for the haulers who are positioned to ride out this time, the reward will be good. Unfortunately, a lot of haulers and builders will not survive a slowdown.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve preached for years to guys not to leverage themselves into an unsustainable position. If every piece of equipment in your hauling setup is on payment, you probably will not survive a slowdown like this. My personal recommendation is to have less than 30 percent of your setup value in loans—50 percent absolute max.
For businesses in the industry that have carefully grown and watched their debt ratios, this slowdown is fairly easy to ride out and the elimination of competitors will be rewarding in the end.
Will there be more sheds sold nationally in five years than now? I honestly don’t know.
Will haulers who survive be busier in five years? Most definitely.
MERVIN MILLER, MILLER EXPRESS, BLACKVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA
While I sometimes wish for a “crystal ball” to know what is going to happen in the future, I know that is simply wishful thinking and we don’t know exactly what the future will bring.
I have heard about quite a few haulers experiencing a significant slowdown and some getting out of the business altogether. At the same time, there are other haulers who are absolutely swamped and can’t keep up with their hauling.
In my opinion (my opinion only), I think a lot of folks saw haulers making a very good living at hauling several years ago and decided they would jump in and make a killing hauling sheds. Once again, in my opinion, we are back to pre-pandemic sales and hauling levels (or maybe even a bit below), which makes it tough for a lot of haulers to stay in business.
Speaking only for my company, we seem to be slower than normal, but we are also doing more private moves than we had been. So, as far as gross income, we are ahead of where we were last year at this time.
As I stated in a previous column in this magazine (not verbatim), I think that many haulers may have an “addiction” to having the newest, shiniest equipment that they can get their hands on, regardless of affordability, and end up getting themselves into a bind when the work slows down a bit.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using older, well-maintained equipment in this business. Most of my trucks (1 or 1.5 tons) have 200,000 miles or more on the odometer. I am a firm believer in preventive maintenance and much prefer the cheaper insurance and the fact that the trucks are paid for.
Personally, I think the demand for “upper class” buildings such as playhouses, cabins, and tiny houses is on the rise, and the demand for basic storage may be a bit lacking as people are a bit more discerning about what a “shed” can be turned into.
We are also seeing demand growing for greenhouses, dog houses, chicken coops, etc. It seems as if folks either want a very pretty building, or they are buying for a specific purpose.
There are still a lot of people who simply want a place to store things and aren’t concerned about what the storage looks like, but I think the trend is toward nicer, neater-looking buildings instead of just basic storage.
Although, the demand for basic storage will almost certainly always be there.
I have been in the shed business for nearly 25 years and have heard about the “saturation” of the storage shed market for at least 35 years. As in most businesses, sales for storage buildings are cyclical in nature and they peak and decline in cycles.
Election years always seem to bring a bit of trepidation as people worry about what the outcome will be (2020 was the definite exception to that theory).
What happened in 2008-2009 put a lot of manufacturers out of business in the shed industry, and 2020 brought a lot of manufacturers (and haulers) into the industry.
My opinion (maybe it’s just hope), is that production and hauling will see perhaps not a huge growth but a steady upward trajectory in the next one to five years.
People love to buy stuff, and they will always need a place to put that stuff. We as manufacturers and haulers should be more than happy to accommodate them.
