cenTennIal FlashBacK

The 1950s

In honor of this year’s 100th anniversay of BPD’s sister publication, The Merchant Magazine, as well as the 40th anniversary of BPD, we look back each month, decade by decade, at the advertisers that have long supported us and are still growing strong to this day.

The 1950s was a period of prosperity and innovation, as illustrated by the widening range of products our advertisers highlighted.

• Perma Products began advertising its stained shingle panels in February of 1950 in The Merchant Magazine, seven years before it would change the company name to that of its sidewall brand: Shakertown.

• Universal Forest Products predecessor company Far West Fir Sales announced its arrival in The Merchant in October 1955. Far West would grow to six distribution centers by the time it was acquired by UFP in 1987 to serve as the basis for its first western division.

• Neiman Reed Lumber Co. was launched a few years after the war by Marine buddies Bob Neiman and Bob Reed. During their first 15 years, they primarily concentrated on wholesaling lumber and plywood (as seen in The Merchant in December 1955), but soon expanded into industrials and eventually added a retail chain that in time would expand to more than two dozen locations, including Lumber City stores (now DIY Home Centers) and Patioworld showrooms.

The wholesale division also continues strong to this day, catering primarily to industrial lumber users.

• MacBeath Hardwood Co., Berkeley, Ca., advertised in December 1955, one year after founder K.E. MacBeath broke from Alex Gordon, his partner in the Gordon MacBeath Lumber Co. The company eventually expanded from wholesale to retail, milling, drying and transloading, and is now based in Edinburgh, In.

• Homasote considers itself the nation’s oldest manufacturer of building products made from recycled materials, dating back to its inception in 1909 as part of the Bermuda Trading Co. It introduced its first-generation Homasote Board for exterior sheathing in 1916. It showed off its then-latest in The Merchant in June 1956.

• Stimson Lumber, though it had been a prominent lumber firm in Oregon since the 1800s, did not make its first foray into marketing in The Merchant until April 1950, to introduce a revolutionary new composite hardboard product.

Called Forest Board, the product consisted of “compressed fiberboard consolidated under heat and pressure,” then infused with and coated with a layer of plastic. The double coating reportedly made boards stronger and more water resistant, for uses such as shower walls.

• Galleher, founded in Southern California in 1937, started as a regional distributor of hardwood and premiered in The Merchant in July of 1950 to tout Roc-Wood hardwood composite flooring.

Galleher LLC has grown to become one of the nation’s largest flooring distributors and manufacturers, with such brands as Monarch Plank, Reward Flooring, and GemCore.

• Huff Lumber Co., Santa Fe Springs, Ca., got its start the same year we did in 1922 and ever since has been building on providing “the finest timbers available, delivered to customers accurately, honestly and on time.” And for the past 70 years, ever since its first ad in December 1956, the premier wholesaler has continuously partnered with The Merchant. We toast and sincerely thank five generations of the Huff family for this wonderful accomplishment.

• W.R. Grace & Co. got its start in the 1850s, exporting bird droppings from South America to be used as fertilizer. The company steadily grew into an importer and manufacturer of a huge range of specialty chemicals and materials, such as the plywood doors it was promoting in July of 1957.

• C&D Lumber Co., Riddle, Or., was born in 1943, deriving its name from its location near southern Oregon’s Coos and Douglas County lines. First teaming with The Merchant in May of 1959, C&D is now guided by the sixth generation of the Johnson family.

• Berkot Manufacturing Co. started manufacturing material handling equipment, dollies and carts in 1954 and quickly identified industries (such as film studios) that it could construct specialized carriers for. It first showed off its Lumber Carrier in The Merchant in December of 1959.

• Georgia-Pacific, Atlanta, Ga., started in 1927 wholesaling lumber from its five southern sawmills. Within a decade, it expanded into plywood. Its promotional efforts to reach western lumber dealers began in The Merchant in February 1959.

Four years later, G-P entered the tissue business and today is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of tissue, pulp, paper, packaging, building products, and related chemicals, with over 30,000 employees at 300+ locations in North and South America.