The Last Word: LBMs and the Component Business Joe Kannapell The contemporary consolidations within the Lumber and Building Materials (LBM) business were prompted by consolidations within the home improvement retail industry. Home Depot started the movement in 1979, and its dramatic growth forced Lowes to follow it, converting its stores into mostly... Read More April 2023 Issue #15285 Page 136
Why Asset-Based Financing? Carl Villella Why should you use asset-based financing? This is a question we get quite often. Prospective buyers of commercial equipment wonder what advantages there are to asset-based financing, if any. First and foremost is the advantage of not having to outlay a lot of cash upfront to have use of the... Read More March 2023 Issue #15284 Page 63
Deals Report 2022: Tracking the Openings, Closings, and Acquisitions Craig Webb Where you wanted to be and what you wanted to sell both figured mightily as factors in construction supply’s acquisition, openings, and closures activity in 2022. Deals were almost as numerous as in 2021, but big deals were rarer. Meanwhile, greenfield openings were far more... Read More March 2023 Issue #15284 Page 90
The Last Word: Is the Future Flat? Joe Kannapell Seeing so many flat roofs early this year made me wonder if the future of truss building will be flat. During the January SBCA Phoenix Open Quarterly Meetings, some of us saw Truss Fab Components’ yard loaded with flat trusses, and others saw the flat roof lines of Frank Lloyd... Read More March 2023 Issue #15284 Page 128
Forecasting Inflation and Interest Rates Carl Villella The economic focus these days continues to be on inflation and interest rates. As business owners, we all grapple with the difficulties of trying to plan when you don’t know where prices will be, or how expensive it will be to borrow money. The Fed has already raised interest rates a... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 69
Is 2022 Like 2006? It wasn’t very long ago, so many of us remember the Great Recession and fear we are going to see a repeat. Hopefully not. It seems regional right now, like it did early in 2007, after the job market had raged in 2006 and the good times rolled! Like in 2006, the 2022 hiring season... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 78
First Quarter Brings Hints of Later-Year Move Toward Recovery Lesko Financial Services Team The start of a new quarter and a new year bring with them a cautious glimmer of optimism that the economy is finally poised to begin a slow turn-around toward a gradual recovery. To be sure, many challenges remain for households that have been weathering inflation for more than 18 months. But... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 90
The Last Word: The Last Word on The Last Pioneers Joe Kannapell Joe Hardy of 84 Lumber was the last of the World War II veterans to whom we owe our industry. Ed Ryan of Ryan Homes (now NVR) and Cal Jureit of Gang-Nail (now MiTek) were also major contributors. All three returned from winning that war with a drive to transform home building, and they helped... Read More February 2023 Issue #15283 Page 136
The Development of the Truss Plate, Part VI: An Industry Established Joe Kannapell On July 5, 1960, in a marathon session, a dozen entrepreneurs set standards for a brand new industry, and, in the process, met a government deadline. These early truss plate adopters came well-prepared and didn’t hesitate to make far-reaching decisions. Fortunately, they left a detailed... Read More January 2023 Issue #15282 Page 10
The Development of the Truss Plate, Part V: Frenetic First Get-Together Joe Kannapell Twelve competitors faced one another for the first time—but only because they had to. Each of their fledgling plate businesses was threatened by a July 31 deadline from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and they had less than three weeks to put together a design criterion for... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 10