/ Lumber-Dry and Green

By W.K. Kendrick Sales Manager, Valley Lumber Co., Fresno, Cdif.

This green lumber thing has become a fetish with me. I consider it a business crime to put green lumber of any kind into the permanent construction of a building. It has been done for many years, but that is no excuse for its continuance.

Candidly, it is a marvel to me that lumber, as a building material, has held its position as well as it has. No other commodity has been manufactured and sold with the application of less merchandising intelligence.

Day after day we are bucking up against college bred substitutes manufactured by the best of brains and machinery, and advertised and sold by some of the best merchants in the country.

Against that we have been pushing the product of mills that are turning out their lumber under the same conditions, and in the same sizes and grades as did their predecessors of many years ago.

, My own connection with this company has been a matter of approximately seventeen years. During that relatively b.rief period I have seen the transition from the rag end of the days when we received an appreciable amount of our lumber in the rough by horse drawn wagons from the mountains 60 miles or more east of Fresno, down to the present time of the modern building material business furnishing almost everything entering into the construction of a home.

It is only in the last two or three years that this matter of the desirability of dry lumber has been seriously considered. It seems to me that the lumber manufacturer'of the past has operated with the idea in mind of shipping his common lumber green from the saw just as rapidly as he made it, so that he might get it off of his hands and, usually, take the bill of lading down to the bank and get as large an advance on the car as he possibly could. If he was obliged to pile up some of this lumber in the yard and dry it even slightly, the only reason in his own mind for doing so was because he could not sell it promptly or he thought tha! perhaps he could save some underwiight on a long freight haul.

Seldom, if ever, did the manufacturer take into consideration the fact that the dealer and the ultimate consumer would desire dry lumber and that the shipment of such material would be of benefit to the lumber industrv. This is evidenced by the fact that this common lumber which the manufacturer piled up to dry was almost invariably surfbced before piling. As a result, when it came out of the pile and was finally shipped, there was a great deal of variance in the size of the finished product and also many of the knots had a tendency to project anywhere from a sixteenth of an inch to possibly au eighth of an inch above the surface of the piece.

Just now I cannot call to mind any other material of wide use or distribution being turned over to the retailer in a condition as unfit for sale or consumption as green lumber. Candidly, the manufacturer i4 many cases seems to have taken the stand that his only obligation is to reduce the log to approximate sizes and ship it along to the retailer and let the latter worry about getting the material whipped into such a shape that it could be used by the ultimate consumer.

I repeat to you my sincere belief that it is the job of every manufacturer of lumber to so produce and finish his material that when he ships it to the retail lumbermen that it will be immediately in a condition permitting it to be sent on to the job and uied in the constiuction of"a permanent building.

It may be that such an apparently revolutionary change in tactics on the part of the manufacturer will require him to slightly increase the price of his commodity. If so, the manufacturer, through his various associations, will have to get into that frame of mind where he can oVerlook a slight increase in cost in dollars and cents and visualize the greatly increased value of his product and the much better name that he will help build up for lumber. If lumber is in disrepute with any portion of the building industry it is not so much because it is lumber as it is because of conditions under which lumber is manufactured and sold.

Now here is what I have found out about the cost and nuisance of handling green lumber in our own business here in Fresno. As you know, we have a rather hot climate, particularly in the summer time. It is absolutely impossible for us to bring in a carload of surfaced or sized Douglas Fir Common lumber green and pile it solidly into our storage bins. If we did so, the least it would do,.would be for all of the sappy pieces to develop mould and turn black. If left very long, it would eventually rot right in the bins. From a purely lumber handling viewpoint, this condition could be obviated if business were brisk and the stock was turning over rapidly. But remember that would not change the fact, that the customer was receiving something which was not properly usable in a permanent structure.

As a consequence of the above tendency we have two alternatives, namely, either buy air-dried or kiln-dried common Douglas Fir, or buy green lumber and stick it up on arrival and dry it before piling solid in the bins and sending out to the jobs. Here is our experience with these two alternatives-

During the past year or two we have endeavored to buy air-dried or kiln-dried Douglas Fir Common whenever possible. We have not been successful in carrying a complete line of it on account of the present price structure covering wholesale shipments of kiln-dried and air-dried comrnon. In other words, the only mills now shipping such material do not operate on the basis of-the West Coast Price List, but issue their own price list, generally from a sales office in the middle west.

These price lists are rhade up, apparently, on the basis of surplus or shortage of stock. If the mill happens to have on hand quite a surplus of any given size or length, then, a relatively low price is made on that particular item. If there is a brisk demand for any given item with only a moderate supply on handt..then the price of that particular item is inflated until it is out of proportion to other lengths. Therefore, it has been possible for us to buy odd lots of only such items as were in excess of normal stocks at the mill and therefore carried a moderate quotation. Under these conditions we would be able to furnish a man say, ten; twelve and fourteen foot dimension but perhaps not sixteen

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