They apparently have a corporate data base of buying patterns, and only stock what they think people are buying locally. The problem is that some of this stuff, like the heavier plastic pipe, was once stored locally in dirt cheap warehousing that was part of the WWII explosion and built by the railroad. The warehousing got hosed in Opal and Ivan, so we are having to buy it again from outside as no one warehouses anymore.

I waste more time getting things shipped in to the local lumber yard, because the box stores don’t want to special order less than a pallet of anything.
A lot of the recent development has been by outside people who bring their own materials with them, just like Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, and Home Depot do when they build.

Their plumbing department sucked anyway. It is geared towards irrigation rather than household plumbing.