town service

LTO ORDER IS TOO SMALL-or

I\too difficult-for the guys at Pick's Building Materials, West Covina, Ca., which supplies wood products to homeowners, contractors, home improvement stores, and companies that need custom-cut wood to make their own products.

"If you want l0 pieces, nobody wants to help you," said co-owner Steve Thurgood. "Everyone will do 100 pieces."

"We're known as the go-to guys who can get things done on short notice," he said. "If a truck from Portland is short, we fill the order. When a company in Chicago is working on a project in San Diego, they call us."

The company is also proud of their quick-turnaround on custom orders.

"If you make a promise, you keep it," said Thurgood, "even if you have to gather your family and work until 3 a.m. to get an order out."

Customers such as Idaho Pacific Lumber, headquartered in Boise, Id., use Pick's all the time. "We're kind of a hybrid between a lumberyard and bulk shipper," said IdaPac salesman Issac Hasselblad. "Pick's does all the miscellaneous additions to our jobs that are difficult for us to do. That gives us an edge to get things to the job site much quicker."

Thurgood and his partner, Chuck Daugherty, finalized purchase of the business on April Fool's Day 2000. "Everyone said we didn't have a chance to survive," said Thurgood.

"Business was bad and retail lumberyards were closing."

Age and health problems forced

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