Mill shutdowns and production curtailments along with stronger than expected demand has led to a mini rally in lumber. Both yellow pine and spruce dimension, along with studs, have gone up anywhere from 5 to 12 percent over the past 5 weeks. While many buyers have lacked confidence to build any considerable inventory, demand has more than kept pace with what’s available to allow mills to continue to push their numbers. Many predicted the third quarter to possibly be the beginning of a slowdown but to the contrary, business for most remains good. While the plywood market remains mostly dormant, OSB is on a tear. The mills have kept their production to a level that has allowed them to drastically raise prices over the past month, over 25 percent and still rolling. Producers are struggling to even fill contracted orders and there is very little wood on the cash market. The roofing companies have all announced increases in the 5 to 8 percent range for early August. Owens Corning continues to struggle with their production as we are entering year two of being on restricted buying levels. This isn’t the case for any other manufacturer. Lead times on most other products continue to improve slowly but surely. We hope everyone is having a good summer!