DETROIT — The reward for surviving last winter’s record snowfall, several states are learning, is drastic price increases for road salt — and that’s if they can even get it.

Replenishing stockpiles is proving challenging, especially for some Midwestern states, after salt supplies were depleted to tame icy roads last winter. And price increases of at least 20 percent have been common in places including Boston and Raleigh, N.C.

“Everybody is kind of scrambling around right now, contacting anybody they know who may have some salt available,” said Fred Pausch, chief of the County Engineers Association of Ohio.

Some local governments are avoiding the problem thanks to multiyear contracts or secured bids. Chicago, for example, used roughly three times more salt last winter — 436,000 tons — than it did in 2012-2013, but the city has locked-in rates based on an existing contract.

Other states aren’t so lucky.

In Ohio, where more than 1 million tons of salt was used on state roads last year — a nearly 60 percent increase over the average — last year’s average price was $35 per ton. This year, 15 counties received bids of more than $100 per ton, and 10 counties received no bids from suppliers.

Most of Ohio’s 88 counties have locked in prices between $50 and $80 per ton. To ease the pain for other counties, the state recently secured about 170,000 additional tons.

“The demand for salt is simply outpacing the supply that is available,” said Steve Faulkner, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Transportation.

In Michigan, like Ohio, local governments are allowed to join a network for bidding purposes, and the state seeks competitive bids each year from four vendors. But even those efforts couldn’t prevent a spike: Michigan has seen prices jump by 46 percent, to $65 per ton.

On a recent weekday outside Detroit, a massive dump truck backed into a domed building and dropped about 50 tons of road salt onto a growing mound at a facility operated by the Washtenaw County Road Commission. The agency is paying $76 a ton for its preseason fill-up compared to about $34 last year, a 120 percent jump.

Part of the problem is that salt mines are being challenged by numerous local governments “trying to replenish their supply at the same time,” said Lori Roman, president of the Salt Institute, a trade group based in suburban Washington, D.C.

“It’s just a situation where you can’t necessarily get all the salt mined and get it where it needs to go as fast as it’s demanded,” she said.