Storm fuels commerce at some businesses

An employee at Ellis Furniture works at clearing ice and snow from around the west side of the building Thursday. Warm temperatures helped soften the thick coating, allowing some clearing of the ice that has plagued the area since Friday.

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

Salt, ice melt, shovels, ice scrapers, these are a few of our favorite things -- at least since the area was plastered with an ice storm last Friday. While the nasty weather caused cancellations of events and meant some businesses had little or no customer traffic, there have been some businesses that have seen the numbers go up.

Sutherland's still has a supply of snow shovels but that is about the only snow removal equipment in the store. Sand is available to provide weight and traction but salt and ice melt are nowhere to be found.

At Ramey's Price Cutter, business is booming, but some things are sold out.

"We don't have any rock salt. All of the stores have been unable to get any," Tom Burrow, store manager said. "We do have some coming in, but it's bulk salt, for our own use."

The storm benefitted the store in another way.

"We had a storage room full of snow shovels for three years that didn't sell," Burrow said. "We sold 100 in two hours."

Burrow speculated on why business was booming.

"People seem to buy more in bad weather in case they can't get out," Burrow said.

At Sutherlands it's six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. Sales are up for supplies to fight the weather but building materials aren't selling very fast.

"It's been very slow for building materials," Courtney Black said. "We've been selling ice melt, sand, cattle feed, horse feed and generators and propane heaters."

Wood pellet stoves are on the slow list but the wood pellets to fuel them are selling well.

"We're not selling any pellet stoves," Black said. "But we are selling lots of the pellets."

Another business that saw a boom was Family Video. Residents seemed to have stocked up on entertainment to get them through the weekend.

"We had over 3,000 videos out over the weekend," Meagan Duffee said. "That's the most we've done for two months."

Friday was the busiest day, people got their videos early.

"We had 1,500 go out on Friday," Duffee said. "Saturday it was 1,050."