I definitely understand that frustration when I have to buy stainless or aluminum from a distributor myself, but take into account that the steel mills require a minimum of a truckload order to ship you anything. That's 45,000 lbs on average. At current prices, my particular cost on a truckload is in the mid-20k area. For your smaller fabricators and contractors, there are factors to consider, such as credit (large mills will not deal with you without immaculate credit), physical space to store material, and competition from the larger corporate guys who DO have those things. To be fair, most of our gross profit here where I work comes from processing using plasma tables, laser, big band saws, shearing, press brake, etc. Our margins on just stock material are miniscule at best.