Buying road salt for a town involves guesswork — guessing how much snow will fall at least seven months in advance, how much salt the road crews will need and how much they will have to pay for it.
“It’s literally a gamble,” said Rick Radde, La Grange Park’s director of public works.
The frequent snowfalls in January and February have created demand that has slowed the delivery of rock salt, but none of the western suburbs questioned have run out of salt.
Last spring, La Grange Park ordered 600 tons of salt through Illinois’ purchasing program. The village did not find out until November which company would provide the salt and how much it cost.
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The price, $52.32 per ton from Cargill, was a pleasant surprise.
Some villages had paid more than $80 per ton for salt the prior winter.
“It’s all about supply and demand,” Radde said.
Towns in DuPage County have the option of buying bulk rock salt through the Illinois Department of Central Management Services or a county purchasing program. By combining orders from multiple municipalities, the state and counties theoretically benefit from economies of scale and get more competitive pricing.
Because they do not know the price of either contract when they place their orders, and they want the flexibility of having two suppliers, some towns hedge their bets and order half the anticipated amount they will need from each.
“We order an average of 1,500 tons a year and split our order between (DuPage) county and the state,” Oak Brook Public Works Director Doug Patchin said.
The salt order had to be submitted to DuPage last April, while the order through the state program was not submitted until August 2020, Patchin said.
The difference in cost was significant. Oak Brook is paying about $45 a ton to Cargill through the state contract and about $81 to Compass Minerals through the county.
“I’m not sure why the difference is so big,” Patchin said. “It’s the biggest I’ve seen in a long time.”
As of Monday, Oak Brook had received 294 tons from Cargill and 396 tons from Compass. Patchin said Cargill is running behind on deliveries, and that Oak Brook has an additional 200 tons on order, but still has plenty stockpiled in its salt barn.
Like Oak Brook, Hinsdale splits its order. For the 2020/21 winter, Hinsdale ordered 700 tons of rock salt through the state at a price of $45.26 from Cargill and 700 tons through the county for $81.13 per ton from Compass, said director of public services George Peluso.
“Cargill came in really, really low,” Peluso said.
That may be because last winter was very mild and towns in the area did not use a lot of rock salt, Radde and Peluso said.
La Grange Park, for example, started this winter with its salt storage facility filled to the brim with salt it had ordered for the 2019/2020 winter. “We were over stocked,” Radde said. He had to modify the walls of the storage facility to hold all the salt the village had ordered.
Municipalities are required to take delivery of and pay for at least 80 % of the amount of salt they order through the state and county purchasing programs, whether they need it or not.
But snowfalls have been so frequent in January and February and temperatures so cold until this week, that villages have had to move piles of snow from their downtown areas and public parking lots.
La Grange public workers trucked the snow to an area under Ogden Avenue by the railroad. Clarendon Hills and Hinsdale moved heaps of snow to their community pool parking lots.
Peluso said Hinsdale has already ordered 80 % of the salt from this year’s contracts and has been receiving it in partial deliveries because its storage facility is relatively small with a capacity of between 400 and 500 tons.
Deliveries have been slower, taking seven to 10 days, because of increased demand due to all the snow, Peluso said. But the village has not run out of salt this winter, which is one reason why he orders from both the state and DuPage.
“If one vendor is slow with delivery, we have another option,” Peluso said.
La Grange in Cook County is not eligible to buy salt through DuPage County’s bid. So the village ordered 1,400 tons of rock salt through the state and received a price of $47.54 from Cargill.
“That’s a good number,” said La Grange Director of Public Works Ryan Gillingham
In 2019, Cargill charged La Grange $87.55 per ton for its order of 1,425 tons, the highest price the village paid in six years. La Grange could have renewed that contract, but instead decided to rebid its order this year through the state and got the much lower price.
La Grange, which can store about 800 tons in its salt dome, has used an average of 1,699 tons of salt each winter over the past five years. The weighted average price during that period was $58.15 a ton, Gillingham reported.
“Salt is a commodity, subject to supply and demand,” he said.
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Burr Ridge chose to renew last year’s contract through the state and received a price of $77.86 per ton from Compass Minerals on an order of 1,500 tons. That price was still 4.2% less than the bid through DuPage County, village officials said.
Clarendon Hills has used more salt this winter than normally is the case, while paying the same, or a similar, amount as did Oak Brook, Public Works Director Brenan McLaughlin said.
Clarendon Hills used its salt conservatively during the multiple snowfalls Feb. 12-14, “strategically placing it at intersections, hills and busier roadways,” McLaughlin said. “There was no point throwing it down just to have it covered up an hour later.” He is hopeful the village has enough salt stored to finish the current snow season.
“Of course, an ice storm or two would change that, and we would be looking for salt on the open market,” he said.