Feb 16, 2021 2 min read

This winter has definitely left its mark on salt supplies, with some local stores selling out a few times already this season.

Bob Kuharik, assistant manager of Ace Hardware in McMurray, said the store sold out of salt for about 45 minutes Sunday before they were able to bring in more pallets of the 50-pound bags.

“We went through quite a bit of salt yesterday,” he said Monday.

Kuharik said each pallet holds about 50 bags, and they sold four pallets in an hour.

“It’s just an odd winter,” he said. “We typically don’t get snowfalls every week, but that seems to be what we’re getting and demand is high for this product.”

He said demand is also high for snow shovels and snow blowers. He said they haven’t been able to keep snow blowers in the store, so people have been buying them online.

“I could have sold 30 yesterday if I had them in stock,” he said.

Ken Westcott, public works director for the city of Washington, said municipalities, too, may soon be dealing with salt shortages.

“Our supplier is thin,” Westcott said. “They’re down on supply, so we put an order in three weeks ago.”

The city started out the winter with 150,000 tons of salt that was left from last year, Westcott said.

“By the first couple of snowstorms it was gone,” he said.

The city recently ordered 300,000 tons of salt and received half of it, Westcott said. The other half is expected by the end of this week.

“Hopefully that will hold us, but the way this winter has been, who knows,” he said Monday. “We’ll probably go through a lot of salt with regards to the ice we’re going to get tonight, but I’m confident we’ll have enough salt to at least get us through this week.”

The state Department of Transportation has not run into any salt shortages yet this year, according to Jay Ofsanik, press officer for PennDOT District 12.

“We’ve used more this year, but right now we have sufficient supplies to handle this event,” he said.