You have plenty of red blood cells, they are the right size, and each red blood cell has plenty of hemoglobin. That's what the iron makes possible. Your doctor is correct. If you look hard enough for trouble you're likely to come up with something. 

Healthy men who aren't bleeding from somewhere only need to consume a little bit of iron.

Scott is that your way of saying it's OK for my iron count to be below average?  That still sounds kind of strange to me. 

Well, if you had anemia it might be useful to use one or more of the several iron tests (serum iron, total iron-binding capacity, and serum ferritin) to try to work out the cause. Since you don't have anemia it's less clear what such a test would be in service of.

The way normal ranges are developed for blood tests tends to make them terrible screening tests (tests performed without any prior suspicion of a problem). You get all kinds of meaningless "abnormal" results.

Scott did you notice this though,  RED CELL COUNT 4.81 mil/mcL Range: 4.50-5.90 ?  What that means is I'm flirting with anemia and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm anemic again when I have my next blood test.  In fact my red cell count did go down on this test.  Back in January my red cell count was 4.84 mil/mcl 

Yes, I noticed it. A normal red celll count doesn't seem very worrisome to me. Do you have a source of bleeding, or some more unusual cause of low iron?

my 2 cents:

My red blood cell count is 4.84 (Normal range is 4.30 - 5.90)

My Ferritin level is 15 (Normal range is 24 - 336)

My doctor advised me to take OTC iron supplement. Does that make me anemic?

Maxx

You're not anemic if your hemoglobin, hematocrit, and red blood cell levels (and sizes) are normal. Other conditions can reduce your iron stores, though. You might consider a consultation with a hematologist. 

It baffles me Scott, when my doctor first diagnosed me as anemic a couple of years ago I began wondering then if I was losing blood.   I haven't noticed any signs of bleeding though after all this time.  I do feel like I have less energy though.  I was still able to pull off a long jog this morning.  I believe that might just be a case though of mind over matter. 

Some of the causes of reduced iron stores could potentially make you experience reduced energy, even without anemia. It's hard to know how aggressively to pursue it, though. The best case is the easy discovery of a readily treatable problem. The worst case is a protracted, expensive, and potentially invasive diagnostic search that may reveal nothing useful. You often can't tell which path you're on until you are far along it.

i assume that you are (and have been) taking some readily absorbed supplemental iron, such as one combined with Vitamin C (e.g. Vitron C). If not, that would be a simple first step that may be all you need.

I never heard of Vitron C but I do drink my share of orange juice and have used vitamin c supplements.   My doctor did ease me down on iron supplements since too much can lead to cancer.   I try to drink protein drinks now.  I don't know if it's any good for me but I really like the taste of Bolthouse Vanilla Protein Plus.  I think it has too much sugar but otherwise it's great http://www.fooducate.com/app#!...DF-A102-FEFD45A4D471

The purpose of the Vitamin C is to improve the absorption of the iron in the combined supplement. I wouldn't suggest megadoses, but a bit would do you no harm. Or you can skip it and likely be just fine.

I wonder since I drink  a good amount of orange juice if I really need to take supplements of Vitamin C?