Hot take: 400 yards of kicker is not normal, and I think most guys are burning through staple guns for nothing
Everyone on the crew brags about how much kicker they go through, but I tracked my own numbers on a 1,200 square foot job in Toledo and only used 11 yards. That was 6 months ago, and my staple gun has not jammed once since I switched to a 3/8 inch crown and stopped riding the stretcher so hard. Most of the waste comes from guys who never check their tack strip height before they start. What is your actual kicker count per room, or am I the only one keeping a log?
So how are you actually logging the kicker count, by the yard off the roll or by the box you buy? I ask because 11 yards on 1,200 square feet works out to about 33 feet for the whole job, which is under an inch per square foot. What rooms were in that 1,200, one big open basement or a bunch of small bedrooms with closets? Closet work eats kicker like crazy because of all the short runs and the corners. And what tack strip height were you checking against, because if the strip was sitting high you would have been fighting it the whole time and using more, not less. Give me the room by room breakdown if you still have the log.