Rockwood Online Ordering

kl8ton said:

@stlcharcoal
How many bags of Rockwood do you sell monthly?  Or do you not discuss these types of numbers?  

It varies drastically.....and with unpredictable consistency.  January was one of our busiest months this year, and April & August were two of the worst.  Exact opposite of previous years.  Doesn't really matter, as we never vary how much charcoal is delivered into the two STL warehouses each week.  All that changes is the levels in storage.

The main warehouse is the old GM plant--where they made the Corvette up until the early 80's.  I think they made the Astro van there after that.  That's where most of the charcoal is sitting......10000-15000 bags usually in stock.  It sits 5 minutes from all the STL crossdocks, including Ace's.  Everything that leaves STL ships out of this location same day.  Can't ship by the pallet from the plant or the or the southern MO warehouse--LTL is way too expensive to get picked up in the middle of nowhere.  Cheaper to truck and distribute it out of STL.

The warehouse you see in the pics all the time is my "treehouse" as I call it.  I bought it last year for our St. Louis / local distribution, main office, and storage for all the smoking woods, BGE's, etc.  We have a tiny storefront, but in the back we stock a ton of Smokeware, Kick Ash Baskets, Dizzy Pig, and other products not available through our BGE distributor--all the local BGE dealers can grab that from us when they come pick up charcoal or we deliver to them in the truck pictured.  Right now the online orders are shipping out of here as well.  Usually have about 5000 bags, but that drops in the summer when I need room for the DeLorean and my "river yacht" (jon boat).  Get to keep all the wife's Christmas decorations and a bunch of other crap from the basement here too.  Wife wanted to put a bunch of Crossfit weights in here, but I stopped that sh!t.....told her she could lift charcoal bags instead.

kl8ton said:

@stlcharcoal
Thanks for the "birds eye" view and rundown on operations.  I like behind the scenes stuff like this.  I won't make any flux capacitor comments or anything like that.  I am sure you have heard them all.  Does the DeLorean have the latch system for kids car seats?  :-)

Thanks, yeah everybody cracks themselves up thinking they're the first one to make that joke.

Haven't driven it much since the kids were born.  Need to get it out on the road again.  It had been over at the farm with my dad's collection for years up until this summer when the STL Business Journal did the article on the company--they wanted it for the picture  ( http://bizj.us/1p9dka ).  I brought it over to the warehouse on my dad's trailer and rolled it in.  Then a week later when I went to take it back to the farm he told me he bought two more cars and didn't have the room!  So I drove I took his trailer to Indy and bought that four-post lift.....tried to get him to buy it for me.  He said, "Sure!" and asked me when I was going to pay my storage/rent for the last 7 yrs!!  I learned from the best.