What it costs to make things, every week.
A free weekly email for owners, GMs and estimators at small US manufacturers. Public cost data, plain math, and no predictions.
What a price change does to one unit
Guess first, with example numbers: say steel is a quarter of a part's cost and its price rises 10%. How much does the part's cost rise? Check it with your own numbers. Cost change
Cost lines that moved
The producer price index for steel mill products was 388.580 in September 2026, up 27.6% from 304.579 in September 2025 (preliminary).
The producer price index for aluminum mill shapes was 370.480 in September 2026, up 25.2% from 295.898 in September 2025 (preliminary).
81,049 US manufacturing firms had 10 to 99 employees in 2022, about a third of all 239,265 manufacturing firms.
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- See which cost lines moved this week: materials, freight, energy, labor and equipment, each with its source linked.
- Learn one pricing idea per issue, like markup vs. margin or quantity breaks, with the math shown step by step and never a price to charge.