The demand for wall panel equipment after World War II was unprecedented, even to this day. Industrialization was in the air, and factory-built wall panels became the gateway, even before roof trusses. Most of the action was in the affordable housing sector, driven by the mobile home, modular,...

When a ship hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, MD, its fate was never in doubt. But that was not the case when a barge hit the Eads Bridge near St. Louis, MO, another steel arched truss bridge. The Key Bridge lost one of its main supports, while the Eads Bridge lost one of its truss...

Driven by the dire shortage of housing entering the 1950s, Levittown sparked a fervor for homes to be built like cars on assembly lines. Fortunately, there was a crop of returning veterans ready to oblige, whether by building whole houses or just parts of houses. William Levett delved into...

Before SBCA “signed off” on 2022–2023 President Gene Frogale’s stellar leadership, he was already developing a new product to benefit component plants. Now, as he is working on an innovative insulated wall stud, the only evidence of his prior accomplishment, a large...

Prefabricated wall panels made their first big impact under a government program in World War II. In 1942, the federal government began contracting with 50 existing prefab housing plants to deliver dwellings for 42,000 wartime workers. Since this work was highly repetitive and required rapid...

Until recently, vertical members have been the bane of all jigging systems, whether they occur on the perimeter or the interior of trusses. And they are found more than ever on apartment and residential designs. Handling these members without human intervention has been the Achilles heel of...

To complete this floor series, it’s worth examining how we’re doing against I-joists. [For all graphs and images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.] Mixed Signals: Many CMs think trusses are slowly making gains, and this is backed up by the brisk sales of floor machines. However,...

Before leaving the subject of floor trusses, two machines deserve special attention, the Tiger Cat and the Structur-Span. Both included features that were way ahead of their 1970s provenance and both were markedly faster than even present-day machines. Both plated the truss with a single pass,...

Builders have been testing the viability of floor trusses, and they are now considering the results. Many of them switched from I-joists only because they were forced to do so. Either they couldn’t get them, or they didn’t want to pay double the price. Yet today, as they are seeing...

A special opportunity to help special people exists near most truss plants, as was discovered independently by both Richard Pedde and me. This “find” has turned out to be such a blessing to Richard that he constantly chides himself for passing by this resource twice a day for seven...