The 37th Annual BCMC show took place in late October at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee. It was the second time in the past four years at this location, so most of us already knew the great restaurants and bars to visit. Every year the show just seems to get bigger and better, and this...

“Everything and everyone deserves a second chance.” That’s the philosophy of Second Chance Inc., a Baltimore-based non-profit that deconstructs homes and other buildings to salvage materials for reuse. It’s also a philosophy that the American Wood Council (AWC)...

Part IV: In-House Computers Ten years after we installed our first computer, our turnaround of truss designs remained unacceptable. But one evening in the late Seventies, I saw daylight when a red, white, and blue van pulled up to our St. Louis office. I recall my wonderment back then, while...

The trip home provided for some much-needed quiet time to reflect on the most successful B.C.M.C. of modern times. I believe the equipment displayed well represented the advancements made by our industry over the last decade or two. It also offered a glimpse into the future where automation in...

By the time you read this, the dust will have settled after an incredibly successful BCMC Show in Milwaukee, WI. What a privilege to talk with so many of you last week and see many of the exciting new automation products we can use in our operations to make us far more efficient, and, more...

BCMC 2018 topped even the 1973 Show. At the Louisville fairgrounds back then, we also sold a record amount of truss machinery, but under vastly different conditions in the U.S. Housing starts had just peaked at 2.4 Million units, nearly twice current levels and 20% higher than any level since...

Part III: In-House Computing (Almost) In 1971, for the first time, both On-Line Data and Gang-Nail, Inc. put computer software at the fingertips of truss designers. By 1973, our company responded, and so did most of our major competitors. This innovation was wrought out of near desperation on...

Part II: Leaps Forward in Computerization None of us would forget the strange sounds that signaled a new era in truss design: the pounding of the keypunch, the whirring of the card reader, and the ratcheting of the line printer that emanated from the 10x10 room in front of our drafting...

September is here, so it’s time to wrap up our comparisons of wall panel equipment. Again I would like to thank all of the manufacturers who have taken the time to review the draft charts I’ve compiled and supply additional information and clarification. Their input across these...

Struggling mightily to hand-design enough trusses, we suppliers aggressively pursued computer solutions. When mainframe hardware was introduced in the 1960s, our then-competitor, Gang Nail Systems, installed a Control Data “Cyber 70” in a customized, climate controlled computer room,...