850-pound steers are paying for the trucking again
Thursday's sale cleared 402.50, up two dollars, and the buyers on the phone were all from feedlots south of the river.
DRUMHELLER — The Thursday sale ran 1,400 head and the number that matters came off the board just before noon: 850-pound steers at $402.50 a hundredweight, up two dollars on the week and forty on the year.
What changed is not the cattle. It is the geography of the bidding. Half the serious money Thursday was on the phone from feedlots south of the river, which means the price now carries the trucking — a cost that for two years sat on the seller.
The auction market's owner reads it as a supply story with no quick ending: "Everybody who could hold heifers back held them back. The cattle just aren't out there, and the buyers know their pens are empty."
For cow-calf operations that hung on through the dry years and the $180 calves, the arithmetic finally runs the right direction. The advice from the ring was uncharacteristically direct: if you have grass, weigh your options; if you don't, this is the market you were waiting for.
