The way it was – In 1986, as Dick Rotto embarked on a nationwide expansion, he admonished his salesforce, “Trussway will never have another plant as big as our Houston location.” Rotto’s warning came at a time when there wasn’t enough business in the entire state of...

The creation of wall panel software is like the creation of all software – experienced insiders do it best. That was true with Gang-Nail’s AutoPan in the 1970s, which Joe Cotton developed while building wall panels for his homebuilding business. It was also the case with Ted...

By 1980, many component manufacturers were anxious to computerize their wall panel work, but they weren’t getting much help. Gang-Nail’s AutoPan was the only available solution, but it had such a steep learning curve that Gang-Nail no longer promoted it. Plus, they were singularly...

We take pride in actively working with industry and our customers to ensure the machinery and equipment we manufacture is fit for purpose, effective, and continuously improving. One such example of this is in wall sheathing. While machinery for sheathing wall panels has been around for a number...

As North America’s largest lumber manufacturer, West Fraser supplies the truss market with mechanically graded lumber, dimension lumber, and premium products such as Prime, Select Structural, and HiLine. Founded nearly seven decades ago West Fraser began operations in 1955 when...

Imagine a looming deadline, a complicated 2D, multi-family floor plan. It will take days to get accurate measurements, manually. STITCHER® streamlines the process by capturing walls, openings, and intricate details with precision, transforming a 2D architectural drawing into a 3D model in a...

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,...

As all prefabricated wall panel manufacturers know, you are always trying to predict the amount of wall panels required for your business daily. You need to know what their true cost is and when they will be delivered to your customer, and all of this needs to happen efficiently and on time....

At Simpson Strong-Tie, Risk-Taking Innovation is central to our mission of helping people design and build safer, stronger structures. We’ve devoted a tremendous amount of effort and resources to thoughtfully cultivating a culture of innovation. And as Engineers, we’ve been armed...

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...