CENTENNIAL Flashback
The 1940s
In honor of this year’s 100th anniversay of The Merchant
Magazine, we are looking back each month, decade by decade, at the advertisers that have long supported us and are still growing strong to this day. The 1940s were marked by a challenging world war that placed tremendous pressures on the industry and was followed by a gradual build-up to the boom that would detonate in the next decade.
• Rosboro started up its new state-ofthe-art lumber mill in Springfield, Or., in 1940 and began promoting its wares in the pages of The Merchant Magazine a year later—in December of 1941, billing it as the “Northwest’s most modern timber manufacturing plant.” Rosboro would expand to plywood in 1959, to glulam in 1963, and later to such industry-application-specific solutions as X-Beam and Treated X-Beam.
• Patrick Lumber Co., Portland, Or., was founded in 1915, initially serving retails yards and railroads, as shown in its first Merchant ad in May 1944. Now a large portion of its business is worldwide. • Building Material Distributors—soon to be known as BMD—began in Stockton, Ca., in 1943, representing such lines as Yates & Smart Paint (as advertised in September 1946). Intent on becoming a national company, BMD moved to a larger headquarters in Galt, Ca., in 1974 and now has distribution, millwork showroom, and manufacturing operations across the country.
• TECO (Timber Engineering Co.) began producing “split-ring connectors” in 1934 for assembling heavy timber construction, including bridges, industrial facilities, and water towers. The connectors were invaluable during World War II, drafted into service in countless applications from building blimp hangars for the Navy to munitions factories for the Army (as spotlighted in it first marketing in The Merchant, a September 1942 co-op ad with distributor Weyerhaeuser. In the late 1980s, TECO discontinued manufacturing and selling wood-related fasteners and connectors, instead concentrating on its research and testing services. In 2015, TECO merged with PFS Corp. and now does business as PFS TECO.
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n The Merchant Magazine n March 2022
Building-Products.com
