BANGOR – Given the near-record snowfall that’s fallen so far this month, the rush is on for snow-removal gear.

Since Dec. 1, roughly 42 inches of snow had fallen in the Bangor area as of Tuesday afternoon. That is well over the normal level of about a foot, though recent years have seen as little as last year’s 2 1/2 inches.

To that end, roof rakes, rock salt, snow shovels and scoops have become among this winter’s hottest commodities.

With those items flying off the shelves, area hardware stores have been hard-pressed in recent weeks to keep ahead of demand.

Some stores have completely sold out of snow-removal equipment, forcing many homeowners to visit multiple stores before finding what they need.

“If you’ve got the product when the people need it, you’re the hero,” Sheldon Hartstone, owner of Fairmount Hardware on Hammond Street in Bangor, said Monday.

Hartstone, who has worked in the family hardware business for more than 50 years, said he has managed to keep a healthy supply of snow-removal equipment on hand through sheer hustle.

Over the years, Hartstone has learned that most U.S. manufacturers of yard equipment operate on a seasonal basis.

Winter-weather gear is made in warm months so it can be shipped to stores by fall, and spring and summer lawn and garden tools are being made now for shipment to stores in time for the start of the gardening season, he noted.

In other words, storeowners looking for scoops and snow shovels now might find themselves out of luck as this winter progresses.

Though it took some digging, Hartstone was able to locate a supply of snow shovels and scoops from a Quebec manufacturer. He received a shipment of those about a week ago and still had plenty on hand Monday.

Roof rakes, however, proved more of a challenge for area retailers.

“If I would have had 300, I would have sold them all,” Broadway Hardware manager Brent Hopkins said Monday.

The long-handled rakes, which enable homeowners to remove snow from their roofs without having to climb up there, are in even higher demand than snow scoops and shovels.

Hopkins speculated that this might be due to the relative heaviness of the snow that has fallen so far this winter.

Larry Crooker, an assistant manager at The Home Depot in Bangor, said his store ran out of roof rakes shortly after the snow began to fall last month, but that a shipment of 200 rakes had arrived on Sunday night.

“We’ve sold close to 100 today,” Crooker said at midafternoon on Monday.

“It has been crazy,” he said, adding that last year, the store sold so few rakes that they were offered at an end-of-season discount in the spring.

With his supply of roof rakes beginning to dwindle last month, Hartstone had to make numerous calls, eventually finding an allotment in Reno, Nev.

Monday found Hartstone arranging to get them shipped to his Bangor store.

Rock salt, however, has been harder to obtain, noted Crooker of The Home Depot.

“We’ve been out for about three weeks,” he said.

The store has not sold out of shovels, scoops or snow blowers, Crooker said.

That, however, could change if the current snowfall trend continues.