Check out our October Steel Spring Market Update!

Read on to find out how we source our 100% traceable materials and how steel prices are affecting the steel spring industry

Since the one-two punch of the pandemic and ensuing supply chain bottlenecks, we’ve been working to keep prices as steady as possible. Our thanks to those of you who placed orders early and put your trust in us to find the high-carbon steel wire we need to make our high-quality steel springs.

Maintaining Uninterrupted Steel Spring Production

Throughout it all, our mission was to keep your doors open by doing the right thing. We see it as our duty as an American manufacturer to keep production lines running — for the economy, for your employees, and for your customers. It’s a big responsibility, but here at Tennessee Spring & Metal, we keep the big picture in focus.

Like every other reputable spring manufacturer, regrettably, we were forced to raise our prices. The culprit: Low wire availability and skyrocketing shipping costs. However, unlike most spring manufacturers, we were able to keep wire in stock and continued making our high-carbon, high-quality springs — uninterrupted.

You read that correctly: We have never missed a single deadline or spring shipment. And we never compromised on the quality of our products. When it comes to springs, cheaper is never better.

How Do We Reliably Deliver Your High Carbon Steel Springs?

Here’s a snapshot of what’s been keeping us up at night for the past few years:

Our team was very active in the drawn wire marketplace in securing high-carbon wire and shipping supplies.
We proactively purchased wire, before our customers placed orders, to ensure that we had the wire they needed to make it through a tumultuous year.
Our purchasing team was able to procure far more wire than the market would have ordinarily allowed by actively sourcing — even a fraction of a truckload at a time.
We managed to purchase enough wire that we had to secure additional storage!
We followed the very same proactive process when purchasing packaging and shipping supplies.
We worked with multiple transportation and freight companies to make sure that we had the ability to ship our springs in a timely fashion.
Our team was protected from COVID-19 early on, we made sure our plant was as safe as it possibly could be, and we’re thankful that our team was able to stay healthy and keep on making springs for our customers.
We paid premium prices on wire and shipping supplies to make sure we could produce the products our customers needed to keep up with increasing consumer demand.
These practices meant that we were able to avoid several price increases — we did NOT pocket this profit. We passed the savings on to our customers.
We believe there’s something to be said for loyalty, so we made the hard decision to turn down any new business that would jeopardize our existing customers’ spring supply.
Our team worked weekends and overtime to compensate for delayed shipments of raw material to make sure our steel springs were delivered on time, as promised.

To be sure, this isn’t our preferred way to run our business, but we’re proud of our efforts. It was the right thing to do. And we trust that our customers see this and appreciate it.

What to Expect in the High-Carbon Content Wire Industry

True to form, we’ve been contacting our raw wire material suppliers and we’ve been keeping a close eye on the custom spring manufacturing market, especially as it relates to our products, which are made from high-carbon content wire sourced from specialty steel mills from across the globe.

You’ve probably heard that steel prices are coming down and availability is going up. While that’s true in the steel market, things look a little different in the high-carbon wire segment.

It’s true that allocations are easing and we’re beginning to see more materials become available. But it's nominal and incremental. And it’s also true that prices are going down. Again, these reductions are likely to be nominal — just 1-2%. Unfortunately, rod suppliers see this as an opportunity: most of the savings will boost their bottom lines and it’s unlikely we’ll be able to pass much of the cost savings along to our customers.

However, the bottom line good news is: wire allocations are going up and prices are trending in the right direction!

What Can You Do to Help?

Trust us. Keep sending us your business. We’ll stand by you and we hope you’ll stand by us.

For more information about Tennessee Spring and Metal and our transparent price policies, contact us at 1-800-497-3545 or email us at info@tennesseespring.com.

Thank you for your business!

Tennessee Spring and Metal is AS9100 Rev D, ISO 9001:2015 certified.