Editor’s Note
The Mouth That Roared by Rich Donnell
If you remember the late announcer, Howard Cosell, you might also recall that he was frequently described as “the mouth that roared.” Cosell’s verbal delivery would begin slow and refined before crescendoing into the conclusion of his story.
The difference between Cosell and this month’s Q&A guest, Chris Raybon of Baxley Equipment, is that Raybon begins his stories at a fever pace, not necessarily all that refined, and maintains the verbal intensity to the end.
Feature
Adjusting To Change by David Abbott
One doesn’t hear too many stories of new companies starting up in today’s economy. Double Branch Lumber Co., a remanufacturing and wholesale operation specializing in hardwood molder blanks, just finished its first full year of business in 2008.
Double Branch started production in June 2007 with no customers and a brand new crew. “We wanted to take that first six to eight months to take little steps, train and refine the process,” says CEO and majority owner Mike Williams. “We planned on it taking about 12 months to ramp up to a steady one shift operation.” Williams planned the business and broke ground on the property in 2006 when the economy was a totally different animal than it is today. “Our projections of what we thought we could do were pretty well thrown out the window the middle of last year because the market was just contracting as fast as we could add new accounts,” he says. Double Branch products are geared toward mid to high-end home and commercial projects, a
Q&A with Chris Raybon
EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the more colorful, and successful, sawmill machinery owners and salesmen is Chris Raybon, currently one of the principals in Baxley Equipment, based in Hot Springs, Ark. and Baxley, Ga. Since joining HEMCO following college graduation in 1974, Raybon has witnessed and contributed to several major sawmill machinery innovations, while helping to build several successful machinery companies, usually teaming with long-time cohorts Russell Kennedy and Pat Conry, themselves part of the “old HEMCO crowd.” The threesome’s path from HEMCO to Hi-Tech Engineering to Comact to Baxley Equipment is one of the remarkable stories in the lumber machinery business in the past three decades. Recently, Raybon, who is 57, visited Southern Lumberman headquarters in Montgomery, Ala. and answered questions posed by editor Rich Donnell.
SFPA Expo Is Right Around Corner, Conference To Provide Useful Info
Sawmill Efficiencies, Cutting Tools and Wood Bioenergy are the three primary subjects that will be discussed during Expo University, the conference portion of the SFPA Forest Products Machinery & Equipment Exposition to be held June 11-13 at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.
Expo University will be held the first two mornings, June 11-12, and feature 21 speakers, with the three topic sessions running simultaneously in adjacent meeting rooms. The conference is coordinated by SFPA in collaboration with Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc., publisher of Timber Processing, Southern Lumberman and Wood Bioenergy.
The Bogalusa Story
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article continues the serialization of the book, The Goodyear Story. Written by Charles W. Goodyear and privately printed in 1950, the book’s focus is the founding of Bogalusa in Washington Parish, Louisiana by brothers Frank Henry Goodyear and Charles Waterhouse Goodyear, William Henry Sullivan and others who erected a sprawling sawmill and company town along the Bogue Lusa Creek in the early 1900s. Based in Buffalo, NY and operating a hemlock sawmill in Pennsylvania, the Goodyears formed Great Southern Lumber Co. and began buying up virgin stands of longleaf pine in Louisiana and Mississippi in 1902. They started up the “world’s largest sawmill” at Bogalusa in 1906. Other companies and facilities established and operated by the family at Bogalusa included Bogalusa Turpentine Co., Bogalusa Tung Oil, Inc., Bogalusa Stores, Colonial Creosoting Co., Bogue Chitto Farm, New Orleans Great Northern Railroad and Bogalusa Paper Co. The book is not available for purchase.
Sawdust & Shavings
Industry Developments
Benson Monroe Jones, who owned and operated Longleaf Lumber Co. with sawmills in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, and later established Ben Jones Machinery to buy and sell sawmill machinery, died March 20 in Columbus, Ga. He was 90.
As a Marine pilot in World War II with the VMB-423 bombing squadron, Jones earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal for his duty in the South Pacific Theater.
Jones was known as the “man who bought the town” of Vredenburgh, Alabama. In 1964, after a fire destroyed the mill in the small sawmill town, Jones purchased the burned out mill and the town. Most of the residents were mill employees and were jobless due to the mill loss. Jones rebuilt the mill, put the employees back to work, and sold them their homes for one dollar each.