Coal Availability for 2008-2009 Season

Mike: While the breakers have their problems it's still good to have too much business then too little. I'm curious why Kimmel was able to open up their deep mine and why you said that regulations are keeping some deep mines from opening. Also, when I called around I had no problems finding rice coal. It wasn't from the favorites usually hyped up on this board but it was available. I'm sure supplies are becoming tighter as we move into heating season. It'll be interesting to see if PA runs a big surplus with all the mining activity and related services that is happening right now.

Mike we all understand the "growing pains" and the demand on these older mines and such.But a better way to deal with it would have been to CALL the customer
back and say I'm sorry but we over sold and give them a later delivery date and say if that's not satisfactory we understand if you buy from another breaker and we're sorry.

I'm a plumber and have to reschedule work all the time.I call the customer and tell them" I can't make it on Monday but instead I can make it Tuesday" and if they say they can't wait I say" I understand if you want to hire someone else". And I always say sorry.
DON

Mike
I totaly understand about supply and demand and the mad rush that they're encountering. It's the way they handled it that pissed me off and it wasn't rite. I'm in the constuction business and durring the recent housing boom I use to get endless calls from home owners for work. Most of my work was tied up with builders and we too were working 7 days a week to keep up with the demand, but I never promised any home owners I would be there. I know a lot of guys who play the game, yeah, I'll be there in a couple weeks then in a couple weeks it's a few more etc... I don't and will be staight foward with all my customers, my contractors have to come first, if they're willing to wait(home owner), I will be happy to fit them in, some do, some can't, it's understandable. When Rodger told me they were back up and running, and he will get me my coal in 2 weeks and he would arrange it with Ray from Double Run Trucking, I thought it was a done deal. I respect a company more for coming rite out and saying "we're not prepaired for the high demand rite now and so we have to take care of our long time regulars first" instead of flat out saying there's nothing leaving the state of PA., that to me is crappy business. The should've honered the people who they promised coal to while the breaker was down, we all waited around for them when we could've been buying somewheres else. Being 300+ miles away from the coal, it's not easy to arrange access and trucking to get it here. I will say that Kandy from Summit Coal and Ray from Double Run Trucking are very stand up people and will have my business from now on.

Dave

Kimmels was able too open up there mine because they had big money to open up that mine. The rest of our mines are/were small operations that took maybe 10,000$ (and I'm being generous with that figure) in equipment to start plus the bonds, leases, insurance, etc to start up. When all is said and done you might have 50,000 invested in it. Kimmels has a couple of million dollars sitting up there in equipment. They could afford to pay a couple of thousand in fines each time a MSHA inspector feels the need to write a citation. Your average mom and pop operation would do allright most of the time untill MSHA transferred the two dictators here and they started playing games. I don't want anyone to get the impression that our mines had lax or incompetent oversight before 2001. They had to comply with any and all pertinent laws in the Code of Federal Regulations. The inspectors were there for the safety of the miners before, now a lot of them are afraid that there going to loose there jobs (and some did) if they don't enforce the laws as there written word for word so they have to write citations at every mine every time they go there regardless if theres a violation or not! As far as the State of PA making money it will definitly help our local economy to one extent or the other so I say LET ER RIP And the other thing is like I said before about the Deep Mine breakers most of the favorites on here are just that so there is were the supply problem was coming from. I do work at one of the bigger operations around here full time now and even there we run out of rice from time to time but just over the mountain from us there is another breaker that hardly ever runs out of rice.

I had called Summit after Superior turned me away and all I can say is that Candy is one of the nicest people I've ever had the pleasure to deal with. Actually several of the breakers I called were very curteous and helpful. Unlike my local dealer who is a hump and greedy. There attitude and dealing with them caused me to buy my coal and supplies from other people. I even bought my coal mice online. I would have even paid extra for coal then to give them my money. The moral of the story is that one day things will level off and the people who were turned away will remember and others will read this thread and may decide to buy from another breaker. Right now they are super busy but they may lose some dollars over the ill treatment of some of our members. Mike are u still doing tours?

I do agree that they should have called and said we over sold and we won't be able to fill your order. I'm not defending that BUT the industry as a whole in a lot of cases is just able to meet demand with no wiggle room at all. At any rate you guys were at least on the ball and ordered your coal early, what about the guys who have yet to order it . There are plenty of good breakers out there too, Sherman, Summit, Calvin Lennings, Blaschaks, Jeddo, Hazleton Shaft, and a few others. So if one can't fill your order and they tell you that upfront, there are others that could. Trader, I'm still doing tours at the No.9 on sundays. I guess i'm only involved in the production of coal 6 days a week but am in a mine 7 days a week

Trader, the 'favorites hyped up on this board' are the results of years of experience. People buying crappy coal and putting a red 'X' against that seller..
When people ask for advice, people with integrity will not give the names of the sellers with the big red "X" 's.. They recommend the sellers who have provided consistantly good product...

A person who has always burned crappy coal will always be happy with crappy coal.. that is all that they know.. those who have burnt from many sources, have a greater base of knowledge and experience and in my opinion offer a much more valid and accurate recomendation than a one source recomendation.

So I wouldn't call the favorite's 'hyped up' these are legitimate recomendations from fellow forum members sharing years of experience with the forum so they can have a good coal burning experience..

I know of several situations where appliances were sold because they were old, and just didn't burn like they used to.. but the source for coal had changed and the problem was the coal, not the appliance..the appliance worked fine for the new owner, with good coal.

There have been many threads about coal, and quality of coal, and similar issues.. without this forum everyone had to reley only on their or their neighbors experiences. Now there is a much larger number of samples being burnt and compared. The problem is that there are many different people 'testing' the different coals.. so you still don't have accurate sampling and testing.. it takes one person, one appliance, and several coal sources over years of burning the different samples.

Unfortunately this forum was TOO effective at recommending Superior as a good reliable source for quality coal. When the forum-created out of state sales causes Superior to have difficulties supplying their regular customers Superior stopped selling to new customers..

It's too bad that this happened, but it shows the power of this forum.

Greg L.

Greg you brought up a good point that I didn't mention. In the pre internet days these smaller breakers sold most of there coal locally and through distrubutors like Penn Keystone and Centralia Coal Sales. Nowadays with this forumn people can come on here and read about so and so's breaker and decide if they want to try it or not. Thst leads to people buying triaxles locally and out of state were in the past they would have just bought from a local dealer. The other thing is for the most part coal quality has risen over the last couple of years. There are a few breakers I would stay away from yet but for the most part you'll get a decent product at most breakers it's just that some are better than others. An example is there is a breaker, I won't say which one, traditionaly had a really good product. a couple of years ago there was some quality issues. It was to the point that they were going to loose some big contracts and did loose some local delivery guys over quality. Now there quality is good and consistent.

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, but I have a few questions concerning availablilty. I live in the Selinsgrove, PA area... not too far from coal country. I currently am burning wood pellets, but they are getting very hard to find and very expensive. I have 1 ton in the basement and will need 4 more for the winter. Lowe's finally got some in yesterday and they told me the new price was 298.00 per ton.... I about crapped a brick! At that price, I can almost burn oil. I'm seriously considering getting some type of stoker boiler for next winter but I want to make sure that I won't run into the same situation of availability and price with coal. Now my questions...

1. Are there many/any breakers near the shamokin area that deliver to the selinsgrove area or that I could bring my pickup with trailer and pickup two ton at a time? I expect that I would need about 2 1/2 to 3 ton to equal 5 ton of pellets.

2. Can most stokers that burn rice, also burn buckwheat? For example, the VF3000 from Harmon.

3. Is buckwheat as difficult to get as rice?

Sorry for so many questions, but I'm really fed up with the price gouging of the pellet and oil industry.

Thanks and I really enjoy reading the forums here... you guys seem like a great group of guys.

There are a couple of good breakers near Shamokin. I personally would stay away from a boiler, or any stoker, that can only burn rice. Most will burn either rice or buck. Over the winter months if a breaker runs out of coal it's usually rice with nut running a close second. As a rule they rarely run out of Buck.

Greg I agree overall with your post and I don't doubt the quality of Superior's coal. However, there were posts touting Superior along with the names of other good breakers and how they were listed as refuse dealers thus implying that these breakers were selling culm or mixing in large amounts. Many of these dealers sell good coal as evidence by members who have posted their experiences with these dealers. I try to read most of the posts although it is hard sometimes.

Trader, that is my point,, if you always bought crappy coal and knew nothing else, then you would recomend the crappy coal.. I have had the displeasure of burning coal from many different sources, all of which were recomended to me as good. I soon learned the hard way about good and crappy coal.. The recomendations were legitimate, and well meaning, but those people had only burnt from one or two sources.. their data was limited and therefore flawed

It isn't Hype,, the recomendations are legitimate, I trust the recomendations from people who have burnt different coals for decades, They have steered me in the right direction after several bad turns..

And after I bought 5-6 tons of coal from a well known often 'recomended' coal bagger and bulk seller, and I had a terrible experience with this coal.. I soon learned that I needed to do a better job in researching the coal before I drove 590 miles each way to buy and bring it home.

Greg L.

So ... can good coal be identified by an experienced person, by looking at it? Or does appearance have nothing to do with it?

You have to burn it.. however, most good coal sounds like pieces of glass when you shovel it.. but this is not 100% accurate.

Greg L.

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I'll second what Greg said. As a rule really good coal will sound like glass. I've seen it were coal was fairly dull looking but had that glass sound. I've seen it were it was fairly shiny and was dull sounding and only burnt so-so. I've also seen really bad looking coal that you would swear wouldn't burn and ended up being pretty good. But as a rule if it sounds like glass it shouldn't be to bad but you won't know for sure untill you try it.