‘Everybody’s been building up stockpiles’
Road salt companies say supply chain issues shouldn’t affect snowstorm response this winter
Massive salt piles along the banks of the Calumet River on Chicago’s Southeast Side loom like mountains several stories high. For now.
Tamped down beneath acres of black plastic, their massive presence serves as testament to an unusually mild December.
The stockpiles also represent a widespread strategy to stave off supply chain issues concerning a commodity that can suddenly kick into high demand during severe winter weather.
“Everybody’s been building up stockpiles, and I’d say everybody’s in a holding pattern until the first big snow,” said Leon Benish of Chicago Salt, a salt and de-icing products company that operates a 43,500-foot storage and production facility in Riverdale.
In the aftermath of last winter’s heavy snowfalls, Chicago began using its new $12 million salt dome on the North Side at West Grand Avenue and North Campbell Avenue. The dome, which is 250-feet in diameter, holds up to 60,000 tons of salt. It is just one of the city’s 19 storage locations.
“You can’t predict what the weather is going to do, so we start the snow season with 425,000 tons of salt,” said Cole Stallard, the city’s commissioner of Streets and Sanitation.
“That’s our comfort level to feel safe getting through the snow season, which runs from Nov. 1 through April.”
During warm weather, trucking companies contracted by the city of Chicago haul rock salt from the large piles operated by manufacturers like Morton Salt, Compass Minerals and Cargill along Chicago’s waterways to the city’s storage locations, Stallard said.
“We basically talk snow all year around. It’s a lot easier to move
salt in warmer weather than wait until the weather turns bad,” he said.
Heading into winter, the city’s stockpiles grow. So do the bulk stockpiles along the Calumet River and elsewhere along Chicago area waterways. These swell to enormous proportions, fed by barges that make their way up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers or through the St. Lawrence seaway and Great Lakes.
Even before the pandemic, Stallard said, the City of Chicago would stock its salt storage locations to capacity before winter sets in. The city’s large storage capacity enables it to forego buying additional salt during winter and ride out occasional delays in winter shipments due to the Illinois River freezing over.
National Salt in Lemont, a family-owned business started in the 1970s, contracts with a trucking firm to move salt directly from large piles along the Calumet as well as the Cal-Sag Channel in Lemont and Des Plaines River in Joliet.
“Most of our salt comes in by barge, but during a heavy winter with high snow demand and when there are delays due to ice forming on the rivers, we have relied on rail to bring salt from the East,” said Randy Mermel, vice president of National Salt. “But that’s been really rare.”
“Salt is not a high-priced commodity, but it’s a necessary commodity,” said Del Wilkins, chairman of the American Waterways Operators. “It mostly moves in spring and summer, but during a heavy winter, we’ll see salt moving on the waterways as well.”
Despite staffing shortages in the barge industry, transit of commodities like salt by barge has not been impacted as greatly as the trucking or rail industries, Wilkins said.
He also said it takes a lot to keep barges from moving.
“They will cut a path through the ice for others to follow, even when rivers begin to freeze over,” he said.
National Salt’s customers are mostly within a 40-mile radius of Lemont, where the company, which operates out of Mermel’s house, is based. Those customers include the town of Cicero, several landscaping and snow removal businesses serving commercial customers, as well as a car dealership, hospital, mobile home park, and apartment and condominium complexes.
National Salt has no storage area for the salt it sells but remains undaunted as far as serving customers in the face of possible supply chain issues.
“Since the pandemic, the cost of salt has only risen about five or six bucks per ton and trucking costs have only risen 5% due to the rise in fuel costs,” Mermel said.
H i s c o m p a n y ’ s long-standing relationships with salt producers guarantee him set quantities, he said. Those guaranteed quantities are held at stockpiles maintained by the suppliers along waterways in Chicago, Lemont, Joliet and in Romeoville.
National Salt’s strategy for surviving any supply chain disruptions differs from the stock-up approach employed by City of Chicago and Chicago Salt.
“We have relationships with lots of different manufacturers and providers, which keeps us in salt,” Mermel said. “If there’s even a long wait with lots of trucks lining up at one big pile, we can tell the driver to go to a different pile. Because we draw from many piles, many providers, our customers won’t be without salt.”
Having enough salt becomes crucial for keeping traffic moving during heavy snow seasons and particularly intense ones. In 2021, Stallard said, “we had basically an entire snow season in three weeks.”
State contracts for keeping highways and bridges free and clear generally go to large salt producers like Cargill, Compass and Morton, which also sell to smaller entities like National Salt, Mermel said.
Smaller snow removal product providers like Chicago Salt, which also buy salt from these larger companies, only have so much salt storage capacity. They sometimes must restock salt stores before winter ends. So must their customers who only have limited on-site capacities.
“The question is, how fast can you replenish?” Benish said. “Most of us are good for about four or five snows, or maybe one big snow, 14 to 20 inches, and a couple of light hitters.”
Either way, those in the business of providing salt and snow removal products, are happy to see the white stuff fly.
“My customers love that I answer the phone 24-7,” said Mermel, of National Salt. “Even if it’s the middle of the night or Sunday afternoon and there’s a Bears game, I answer.”