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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Not since 1993 have Utah retailers seen the kind of demand for snow blowers and snowplows as they have in the last week.
Most of those surveyed in the Salt Lake Valley are sold out of stock and are looking to other states for inventory -- but with not much hope.
"I did as much in sales on Friday as I did the whole month of December," Blair Newman, owner of Sugarhouse Mower, told the Deseret Morning News.
Dave Johnson, owner of Honda-Suzuki of Salt Lake, said he has not seen this kind of interest in snow-removal equipment since 1993.
"The winters have been so mild that people have forgotten it snows here," he said. "We're down to two snow blowers. We don't have any plows. I'd say there's no snow blowers left in the valley. I'm out of big generators. I only have a few little ones left."
Johnson sold 80 snow blowers and about 70 snowplows over the weekend.
"What we ran into is really limited quantities of snow blowers," Newman said. "Most manufacturers shipped their blowers to the East Coast when they had their big snowstorms. That has left us with a shortage.
"There's high demand and nothing to sell," he said. "Manufacturers build them in the summer months, so they're not even making any more."
Retailers around the valley are checking with vendors in other states, Newman said. But distributors have run out.
The power outages have made generators another hot-button item.
"People were pushing and shoving to get at the snowplows and snow blowers at first," Johnson said Monday. "Generators were third in line. But we're selling more today than we did Friday and Saturday. I think the power outage is starting to catch up with some people."
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
