Second-Quarter Sticker Shock: Shingles, Metal, and Fasteners All Move Higher at Once

July 20, 2026 · 4 min read · By the RoofTree Digest desk

April's manufacturer hikes, expanded steel tariffs, and rising lumber costs are compounding — here's what it means for your bids.

The Short Version

If your suppliers' invoices felt heavier this quarter, you weren't imagining it. Four separate cost pressures — shingles, metal, fasteners, and lumber — all moved up at the same time, and they're not moving back down. The national average roof replacement project now sits at $20,500-$21,500, and the math behind that number is getting uglier by the month.

Shingles: Coordinated Hikes, Chemical Tariff Squeeze

All four major manufacturers rolled out April increases stacked on top of January hikes:

GAF: 5-8%, effective April 15
Owens Corning: 4-8%, effective April 1
CertainTeed: 4-8%, effective April 15
Atlas: 4-8%, effective April 1 (also covers underlayment and ventilation)

Add it up and asphalt shingle costs are running 6-10% higher for the year, plus another 4-8% from the April round alone. That's not manufacturers padding margins for fun — it's raw material pain flowing straight through. MDI, a key adhesive and sealant input, now carries a 60% anti-dumping duty on Chinese imports. TCPP flame retardant is hit with a jaw-dropping 272.7% tariff. Fiberglass mat and petroleum-based asphalt inputs are newly tariffed too. When your core chemistry costs triple overnight, there's no absorbing that at the plant level — it lands on your material invoice.

Metal: The Biggest Shock in the Building

If shingles are a headache, metal roofing is a full-blown migraine. Section 232 tariffs on imported steel and aluminum doubled from 25% to 50% in June 2025, and copper tariffs hit 50% with prices spiking to a record $5.69/lb. The direct result: metal roofing prices are up roughly 60%.

It gets worse. Commerce expanded Section 232 coverage to more than 400 derivative product categories — meaning it's no longer just raw coil and billet getting taxed. Flashing, drip edge, fasteners, and prefabricated panels all fall under the 50% tariff now, even when they arrive as finished components.

The pricing data backs it up: AGC reported the aluminum mill shapes PPI jumped 33% year-over-year in January, steel mill products rose 20.7% — the steepest climb since early 2022. Standing seam steel that quoted $10-12/SF two years ago now starts closer to $12-15/SF in most markets. If you're bidding metal work off last year's numbers, stop. You will lose money.

Fasteners: The Line Item Nobody Budgets For

Here's the one that quietly wrecks a job cost report. Steel and aluminum fasteners — screws, nails, bolts, structural connectors — are all caught in that same 400-category expansion. Costs are up 30-50% year-over-year. Hardware that ran $400-600 on a mid-size project is now pushing $700-900.

That's real money on jobs where fasteners used to be a rounding error in the estimate. If your takeoff software or spec sheet hasn't been updated on hardware pricing since last summer, you're bidding a fantasy number.

Lumber and OSB: Not Immune Either

Framing and decking costs are climbing too:

SPF 2x4: $465-490/MBF, with Canadian softwood carrying a 14.54% tariff adding $60-70/MBF to landed cost
7/16" OSB sheathing: $14-17/sheet, up from $11-14 a year ago
Lumber futures: peaked above $630/MBF in late June — highest since October — before easing to ~$615/MBF by July 3

The mechanics behind that: Canadian softwood anti-dumping/countervailing duties jumped from 14.38% to 35.19%, and a Section 232 layer stacked on top pushes the combined tariff burden to roughly 35.9%. Even with the recent pullback, that's a structurally higher cost floor than contractors were pricing off a year ago.

The Bigger Picture

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Building material costs overall are up 34% since December 2020, and per NRCA data, construction material prices were 43.4% higher in November 2025 than pre-pandemic February 2020. Tariffs on chemicals, metals, and lumber are layering on top of an already-inflated cost base — not starting from zero.

What This Means For Your Estimates

Re-quote anything over 30 days old. Metal and fastener pricing is moving fast enough that a bid from last month is already stale.
Lock material pricing with suppliers before you lock customer contracts, especially on metal panel jobs where the coil-to-panel lead time can span a full price cycle.
Rebuild your hardware line item. If fasteners are still a flat allowance in your estimate template, you're eating the difference.
Watch OSB and lumber on tear-off/re-decking jobs — a project that needed unexpected sheathing replacement just got noticeably more expensive than it was in spring.
Communicate proactively with customers. "Prices went up since we talked" lands a lot better in April than it does after you've signed a fixed contract and started losing money on day one.

Bottom Line

This isn't one bad month — it's four separate tariff and input-cost shocks landing in the same construction season. Shingles, metal, fasteners, and lumber are all up simultaneously, and the tariff structure behind most of it (Section 232's expanded derivative coverage, softwood AD/CVD rates, chemical anti-dumping duties) isn't showing signs of rolling back. Price your jobs off this week's numbers, not last quarter's, and build re-escalation language into contracts on anything with a long lead time. The contractors who get hurt this cycle won't be the ones facing higher costs — they'll be the ones who bid before checking.