Companies buy fuel on long-term contracts and through hedging. This insulates them somewhat from volatile price swings. The specialty steelmaker is saving 25-30 percent in shipping costs per pound of steel by using the new system, which has been in place since February. CarTech increasingly is using the dedicated carriers for conversion work. Lifting a coil of steel is standard practice, but CarTech ships long products.
Common carriers tend to damage bar products with more specialized finishes such as nickel.
CarTech operates its own distribution system. The number of warehouses once stood at 26 but will be reduced to eight by July. The coils cool for a couple of hours before a crane lifts them out and places them on a conveyor that transports the coils inside to the entry end of the pickler. Processing time from hot band to pickling has been reduced from three days to as few as eight hours. This replaced a manual system in which haulers moved the coils.