SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — While tariffs on Canadian lumber are set to rise, per the latest Bloomberg reporting, local contractors say it’s only one of many financial obstacles they’re facing.

“As soon as COVID hit, things slowed down. Everyone was staying home, but construction kept on going,” said Jorge Gutierrez of Insight Construction.

While that normally sounds like a positive prospect, Gutierrez said it was not

Canadian lumber being slapped with tariffs meant extra costs, but it's not just imports that are going up. While many in Florida use southern yellow pine for the load-bearing structures, Gutierrez said that he’s paying more for that, too.

“The demand on it is so high, so the increase is going up a lot faster than the spruce,” he said.

Combined with a labor shortage, it’s felt like the “perfect storm,” the Sanford-based contractor said.

“All this demand gets unleashed to a supply chain that is largely ‘just in time,’ meaning, manufacturers of these commodities don’t keep warehouses full of product. They wait until orders come in to fill the product,” said Sean Snaith, a professor, researcher and director of the Institute for Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida.

Snaith explained that in general, tariffs can lead to higher prices on a commodity — in this case, lumber costs may get passed onto the consumer.

But price spikes in lumber are more so a “consequence” of “what we did in an attempt to contain the pandemic,” he said, explaining that manufacturers are still playing catch up.

“Demand hasn’t gone away, so there’s ongoing pressure from the beginning to end of supply chain,” he said.

Worried about getting stung with thousands of dollars in late-added costs, Gutierrez said that early in the pandemic his small business launched into “cost plus” mode by calculating the cost of a product, plus overhead and profit.

Now, Gutierrez said that he’s focusing more on being transparent with customers about costs of materials and labor and ensuring they understand in contracts some costs will ultimately get passed onto them. Instead of six to seven months for a build, pandemic-generated issues have meant houses take longer: Up to a year, Gutierrez said.

The contractor — who got into the business at the age of 17 and started his own company several years ago — typically takes on about six projects at a time, with a mixture of commercial and residential.

But being nimble has helped Gutierrez shepherd his company through the pandemic, because he, for the first time ever, utilized a warehouse to stock up on as many products as possible ahead of time.

“Lumber you can’t really order," he said. "It could shrink, bow, go bad. Tile, anything you can think of, door knobs, we’re just ordering in advance.”

And at a time when so many things are out of his control, Gutierrez said that he’s focusing on what he can: planning and constantly communicating about issues and timelines.

“Our structure has completely changed here — we’re a lot more organized,” he said. “Every kid wants to build something. Now, I’m an adult and still building something.”