By Brian Hefty
We already talked about prepaying crop inputs earlier, so why talk specifically about prepaying for tile? While tile has been used abundantly for many years in other areas of the country, it’s now becoming quite popular in the Western Cornbelt.
The issue over the last 3 years has been product supply. Fortunately, many tile manufacturers have ramped up production, so now there are literally hundreds of millions of feet of tile available each year. Here’s what this means for you…better early season buys. Think about it from the tile company’s perspective. They are running 24/7/365. Tile will get installed all the way through December many years, but January through April are very slow times in terms of getting tile in the ground. If you are a tile maker, that means by April you could have tens of millions of feet of tile in your yard, and that’s not what you want. Therefore, these companies offer huge discount programs for early pay and early take. This comes at a time of year when you hopefully have cash available, and you undoubtedly have somewhere on the farm you can put tile; so it’s a win-win.
One concern some farmers have is storing tile outside, but keep in mind…the tile is already made. It is either sitting in your yard (hopefully under some trees) or in a tile company’s yard (out in the open). Thanks to the UV protection each tile roll has, it can safely be stored outside for 1 to 2 years with no problem. However, we do encourage you to keep tile in the shade if possible. The only tile we know of that has an issue with outside storage is socked tile. Talk to your tile supplier about this, but our recommendation is to have your socked tile delivered shortly before you will put it in the ground.
Even though tile supply isn’t as big a concern as it was a couple years ago, there are still trucking issues and short-term supply problems. What I have found in our operation is I’m only going to tile a certain number of days each year, and the last thing I want is to be out of tile or parts when we’re going hard. Between having that supply around when you need it and the huge savings you can get at this time of year, we strongly encourage you to prepay and take delivery of your tile this winter.