Dear Trotline Customers,
Over the past 15 years we have been selling rolls of our bait bag material to make bait bags for your fishery. Quite frankly, being from the NW and dealing mostly with Alaska based fisheries, I didn’t know about your fishery. Fishermen from Rock Hall changed that. In 2004 they started ordering our bait bag material. Always the curious one, Capt. Neptune asked questions about your fishery. I learned a lot. Over the next couple of years, trotliners learned about our bait bag product and have been buying it ever since. I thank you for your business.
Over the past 3 years we have not raised our prices. Our supplier, Norplex, has not raised our prices and neither has Neptune Marine. The prices will remain the same this year for our material. The increase has come from UPS freight. Every year they jack up their prices. Not only their basic freight price but also adding on the following : a fuel surcharge, a residential surcharge, and in most cases an extended service area charge which impacts most of our customers. The cost per roll has gone from around $55 – $60 range to around $ 74 – $76 per roll. Not a good situation.
There is a solution that might save you some money and Capt. Neptune some work. Out of our 200 + customers, we probably have 10 customers that will order 10 – 20 rolls at a time. They work with their fellow fishermen to put together an order and Capt. Neptune arranges a pallet shipment directly from the Norplex plant. This not only saves the freight cost from Norplex to Neptune Marine, it also eliminates the box charge and shipping charges from UPS. A win/win situation for you as well as Capt. Neptune. We use commercial trucking lines to move the pallets across the country.
The rolls of netting are stacked on the pallets in 5 roll layers. This makes shipments of 20, 15, 10, and 5 rolls the common sized orders. The freight discount is higher for the 20 roll pallet than the lower quantity orders down to around 10 rolls per pallet. A 5 roll pallet offers some discount but not a lot.
Capt. Neptune is also offering a lower cost per foot for these bulk orders. See attached sheet for the breakdown. Keep in mind, we have no control over the pallet freight costs. Each destination will have its own cost depending on how far the truck has to travel. Our cost per foot will remain the same unless we get a price increase from Norplex, which we have not had in 4 years.
Sincerely,
Captain Neptune