“Chaotic”...the Perfect January Tag If there was ever any doubt as to what we should expect from January Chaos, 2022 is a textbook example. Traders (buyers and sellers) enter the month with new year expectations that either repeat or improve upon the previous year. These...

I’m hearing two conversations. Mills wonder where all the wood is going and buyers wonder if there is going to be pull back to buy, particularly in the south. Granted those are not abundant conversations because most folks are sitting fat and sassy; perfectly comfortable. Will we get a...

The last couple of years have served up ample opportunities to be reminded of the futility of following the herd. The industry is still reeling from its hypnotic inventory accumulation at the insistence of home builders’ demands to not leave them under supplied. Some of our members took...

In our January 2021 issue, Frank Woeste and Don Bender wrote, “Hybrid Lumber" Grade Stamps Require Special Attention. This article provided information on how to recognize hybrid grade marks and how to calculate hybrid lumber values for truss design. Included was this caution: A...

For more than 70 years, people have been using machines to assist in the grading of lumber. This article summarizes the machine grading methodologies for producing Machine Stress Rated Lumber (MSR) and Machine Evaluated Lumber (MEL) and highlights the similarities and differences between MSR and...

As a follow-up to our January 2021 All Things Wood article by Frank Woeste and Don Bender, “Hybrid Lumber” Grade Stamps Require Special Attention, we are pleased to report that additional information is now available for designers and code officials. The following article appears...

Many of the problems we hear about and actually see on jobsites, both offsite and site built, involve the poor quality of standard SPF #2. When I was the General Manager of a large lumber yard back in the 1980s, it wasn’t much better. I can still remember the yard men cutting the steel...

Lumber properties are influenced by species and growing region. Species with similar design properties are combined into species groups, as shown in Tables 4A, 4B, and 4F of the NDS Supplement[1]. For example, a common species group in the southeastern U.S. is Southern Pine (SP), which includes...

When flipping around in trading ranges in the $300s, planning for the coming year had some sort of definable “worst case scenario” contingency plan. I’m just curious. How do you plan for next year, staring down the barrel of all-time high lumber prices and short supply? That...

After 40 years in project management and product ownership for the financial service industry, dealing with everything from futures to equities to basis trading, I thought my brain couldn’t possibly manage another acronym. But, in a world that constantly changes, I too had to evolve...