Materials are up again, three suppliers this month alone have quietly moved to shorter payment terms, and two contractors we spoke to are turning down work they'd have taken without a second thought a year ago. None of that made the trade press. It's the kind of shift you only notice from inside the trade — which is exactly why this issue exists.
Payment terms are quietly tightening
Three separate merchants have moved regular account customers from 60-day terms down to 30, or started asking for a deposit on larger orders they'd previously have simply invoiced. Individually, that's a merchant managing their own cash flow. Across a trade that mostly invoices clients on 30- to 60-day cycles itself, it's a genuine squeeze in the middle — paying for materials faster than you're being paid for the job they went into.
Materials, again
Prices haven't spiked the way they did a few years back, but they haven't settled either. If a job was quoted more than a few weeks ago and hasn't started, it's worth a five-minute check against current supplier pricing before honouring the original number. Nobody enjoys that conversation with a client — but it's a shorter conversation than the one about why the job's now losing money.
The jobs people are turning down
More than one contractor this month mentioned walking away from work they'd have taken on last year — not because the pipeline is full, but because the margin on offer no longer covers the aggravation attached to a particular client or spec. That's not a downturn. If anything, it's a healthier market than one where everyone takes everything.
That's what's actually moving this month. Nothing here should surprise you if you're living it day to day — but it's useful to know it's not just you.
— The WellServe Journal