[ceasley7]

I am a long time reader and have enjoyed the forum off and on through the years. I first became aware of Peak Oil at the end of 2004. My first reaction was the memories of 1979, when as a 8 year old kid, I became scared to death that we were running out of oil according to President Carter. Then came the 80's and the Reagan Revolution and was fully brainwashed believing cheap oil was here to stay forever. This belief was only reinforced by the 90's. So when I first came across the concept of Peak Oil in 2004 I should have dismissed it with the denial phase that it so deserves if you want to have a healthy positive mental outlook. However, I was still struggling with the blatant lies leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion and thought Peak Oil would explain our county's action concerning Iraq. Well, the rest is history. Although, I disagreed with the invasion, I sincerely hope they ramp up production there fast. We all know Peak Oil is a fact not a theory. Some believe the Peak is 20 to 30 years off normally defined as cornucopias and others believe it was 2005 and the end is nigh. Conventional, nonconventional, substitutes, tar sands, shale oil, economic peak oil, geographic peak oil, natural gas, electric vehicles. It is complicated and makes you want to pull your hair out trying to discern the truth. Well, I decided to focus on one industry that is the lifeblood of my community. And have come to the unenviable position that everything is connected in a more fragile way than I wanted to believe. And unless there is a miracle we are in for hell.
50% of carpet is made with Nylon fibers which is a derivative of petroleum by the way of a product called caprolactam. The price of Nylon has lost 22% market share just in the past decade. That's fine if the overall market was growing but due to the housing collapse and unemployment crisis the Carpet market has fallen 40%. There have been massive layoffs in my community and it ain't coming back. Two things have killed us. The first is globalization which is most responsible for our economic crisis then Peak Oil. Globalization was the motherfucker who shot you in the lungs and while your laying on the ground trying to breath Peak Oil comes and pisses on you minutes from passing away while cornucopias are laughing in the background. I believe the cornucopias are the same naive people who screamed there was no Housing Bubble while any rational person could see it was all fantasy and so shortly after the dot com bubble. How can people be so idiotic optimistic sometimes? I was in the lumber industry and it was easily apparent to me it was unsustainable. Let me tell you something, for the poor, the Collapse has begun. There is no hope this time for the economy to pull them out of the black hole. The question is how fast it will spread from the bottom of the pyramid to the top. One thing that is not being reported is the huge increase in property crime. There won't be enough money to incarcerate all these people with depressed tax revenues. What gives? Back to carpet. 6,000,000 houses will be foreclosed this year. So much for new housing which was 20% of new carpet sales. Where are these families going? If that isn't Collapse, I don't know what is? Is it all related to Peak Oil? No, if we had our manufacturing base we could grind our way through it but we don't and won't. It is Finished. We would have to transition around 50% of our car fleet to electric and natural gas cars. This is at a minimum 20 years off, and the capital won't be there for the vast amount of Americans and that is not including population increases. But then we have to bring back our industrial base. Forget it. It is a fast motion collapse for a vast swath of America. Does anybody really believe we are going to be able to start growing our economy again? The 1930's still had an industrial base and America was living on a vast sea of oil. What do we have now? A whole generation of students coming out with more than a $1,000,000,000,000 in student debts with worthless degrees. Is the doctor any better off? Who the fuck is gonna to be able to afford them? How about the dentist? The standard of living is dropping dramatically right now. Guess what? Every business in my community is off 40%. That includes doctors and dentists. A service economy is code for third world. The work force will keep shrinking year after year. The news and economic statistics will keep lying year after year. The only thing keeping us from total collapse right now is government transfers. Take military spending, medicare spending, social security spending, and food stamps out of the equation and what do you have. Hell! That's what you have. Capitalism is toast in Peak Oil world. What follows will either be heaven, if you believe in miracles, or hell. Enough rambling.

[Cog]

Peak Carpet.

Something that never crossed my mind until now.

[ceasley7]

50% of the carpet market is nylon fiber which keeps going up because the main ingredient in nylon is caprolactam which comes from the refining process of oil. Polyester is being substituted for the lower price points so the customer feels like they are getting something for their money. Polyester has some strong points such as being easy to clean and hard to stain but has poor resilience(memory) in the yarn and has to be constructed low pile height and good twist to get good performance. Nylon is still the gold standard especially when it comes to commercial carpet.The high price of nylon has spurred some innovation. Dupont has created a new polyester type yarn that has a better memory than regular PET polyester and similar stain characteristics called sorona. As a manufacture rep I could sell a good F.H.A. 25 ounce continuous filament nylon to a dealer for $3.69-$3.99 a square yard when I was selling in the 90's. The last I heard the same carpet would cost a good dealer $5.00 or more a square yard. Doesn't sound like much but that is a minimum 25% price increase to the total bill of Mrs. and Mr. Jones. Everybody is fighting over the same disposable dollars out there and the price increases make nylon carpet that more expensive and out of the price range for some customers even though carpet is priced in yards and much less expensive than hardwood or ceramic tile and still a good value. A good value doesn't help in a housing crash, employment crisis tied to globalization and peak oil. The biggest company in the industry Shaw Industries have laid off 8,000 workers out of a total of 31,000 workers from their peak in 2006. I have no idea how some of these people are surviving since I don't see these jobs coming back. Housing, jobs and confidence would need to come back and I don't see it.

[AgentR11]

gurgle nurk

Ok, maybe that was unfair and this is a real person posting who happens to be in the industry that sells and installs carpet, and is starting to freak a bit since the economy went splat, and the price of the raw material in question did not follow down.

Well, the carpet industry played with the same RE bubble as the rest of construction; they had a good run, now its time to pay up. Problem with carpet is that once a homeowner goes mentally defensive, replacing carpet for any reason other than something like a flood, just isn't going to happen. And a lot of people are thinking defensive, even if financially, they don't really need to be.

I see no reason to expect this situation to improve in our lifetimes.

[Fishman]

Ceas, let looks at your comments. Wall to wall nylon carpet, yep, probably peaked. But there will still be a demand for smaller products.
Dramatic overall decrease in our net worth, undoubtably.
So where do we go from here?
In a world shrinking, anticipate the change, prepare as best one can for the future , and you just might come out ahead

[seahorse3]

Ceas I hear you and agree. Thanks for the view fromnuour position on the front. I value those insights far more than anything I hear or read in the MSM.

[Unconventional Ideas]

I was a professional carpet cleaner for 18 years. I closed my business this year, and am now working in the maintenance department at a transit agency.

This information about the carpet industry is very interesting particularly in light of my background.

Thanks for posting.

[PrestonSturges]

We picked up a large area rug that covers most of the living room and laid it on top of the beige wall to wall. You'll probably see a lot more of that.

[dinopello]

Who the freak needs carpet ? My house has no carpet. It works just fine. I have large tiles in the Kitchen and Den, Maple hardwood on the rest of the downstairs and longleaf pine in the upstairs. The wood flooring is over 100 years old, the tile is probably about 40. I have a few rugs some made of cotton and some wool. They last forever.

[Serial_Worrier]

New flooring to be made from recycled Peak Oilers.

[Quinny]

My previous house had wood floors which were beautiful, but my current one is carpeted and a hell of a lot less draughty and warmer.

[Pops]

Who the freak needs carpet ?

People who earn a living making, hauling, selling, installing, cleaning it?


@ Ceasly,
We don't care for profanity and we like lots of paragraph returns.

[eXpat]

So where do we go from here?
In a world shrinking, anticipate the change, prepare as best one can for the future , and you just might come out ahead

We go to the past

[SeaGypsy]

One thing I don't get about Ceas' rant is: you say you knew the housing bubble was a fantasy, even whilst it was keeping you nicely employed. Why did you not either diversify or specialise in something that doesn't have so much competition?

[dinopello]

Who the freak needs carpet ?

People who earn a living making, hauling, selling, installing, cleaning it?

Those guys can do much of the same with hardwood floors, tile, natural fibre rugs. I mean, we still need floors, but I thought the point here is that this carpet stuff is made from petroleum and therefore is subject to price/supply problems. Not to mention outgassing.

Check out my stucco guy's site

Half his work is tearing off synthetic "stucco" made from petroleum in China and installed by a minimum wage minimally trained small crew. He mixes sand, rock and portland cement and he and his guys skillfully slap it on your house and it lasts for 100 years.

[kublikhan]

Ceasley, thanks for your input from the frontlines of this industry. I especially liked to hear about how the high cost of oil derived products is pushing alternatives in your industry.

However I have to agree with Agent911 and SeaGypsy about the economics of the business. Back in 2006 when the industry peaked, we were in bubble territory. Shaw industries and everyone else connected to the housing boom were living high off the hog and business activity was far above normal. Times were abnormally good and could not continue at that pace for long, peak oil and globalization or not.

But I wish you luck and hope the future turns out well for you!

[dolanbaker]

Not a single carpet do I have in the house, all tiles, great for Underfloor heating and easy to clean, plus they'll last the life of the house.

[lper100km]

The carpet industry is more likely a current victim of the housing bubble and economics rather than the effects of peak oil. That said, it is inevitable that the future of man made fabrics of all kinds will have a dubious future. The majority of clothing materials are based on blends of man made fibres, or blends of manmade fibres plus natural materials, or natural materials. Cotton is the most available of natural fibres, with wool a distant second. The majority of man made fibres are reliant on oil as a feed stock.

Lack of carpeting is an economic problem, but hardly a survivalist problem. Lack of clothing is considerably more of a survivalist problem. As oil diminishes, will natural fibers be able to fill the need? Unlikely. Will cottage industry relocalization provide the answer? Unlikely, unless they are close to resources.

So, don’t throw out those old clothes in the closet. They may not fit now, but they will when you slim down in the long emergency. Does your doomer planning include stocking appropriate clothing (and footwear)? Peak clothing, anyone?

[Unconventional Ideas]

This is a very wise point we would all do well to heed.

Along with this, it wouldn't hurt to learn to sew.

[PrestonSturges]

Well the traditional oriental rug would be rotated to distribute the wear, and weren't the real ones double sided? They'd start out over an inch thick and 60 years later they'd be worn down to the thickness of bath towel but still in use.