At least two months of hard work remain before you can finally ease up and enjoy the Holiday season. Between now and then lie numerous tasks, some ordinary (next year’s budget) and some unusual (COVID vaccination rules). Here are four vital challenges you’ll confront in coming weeks,...

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article written by Josh Mitchell, the economy is holding up quite well. “Resilient” is the word he used to describe the situation. “Households have plenty of money,” he quotes a chief economist as saying. While travel has...

My rhetoric has been leaning towards the bearish side because buyers should not even be looking for lumber in October. The strategy of buying in late August to cover through early November was to avoid having to buy right now, the end of September. The lumber market should have been going up...

What are companies doing these days with the uncertain rise of COVID variants? They’re hoarding cash! According to an updated Wall Street Journal article published on August 16, 2021 by Anna Hirtenstein, companies are sitting on record levels of cash, and ramping up their requests for...

Suppose you want an effective incentive program that improves productivity, saves your company labor cost, and rewards your most valued production crews with additional wages. Perhaps you also want to improve the accuracy of your production scheduling that allows for a proper understanding of...

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...

As the lumber commodity remains exponentially higher than the previous 5 years, we all question the sanity behind the market. We also ask ourselves: how can we remain competitive within our own markets? Lumber optimization begins at the forestry level, managing the plantations for 40 years or...

As prefab manufacturing continues to have a spotlight thrust upon it, new factories are popping up nationwide. If you have ever been a part of a new factory startup, you probably have the scars to prove it – mentally, emotionally, and physically. Every new factory startup is a lot of work...

Through the Rear View Of all the lumber folk I know, I am the self-proclaimed King of checkers of rear view mirrors. I use the accuracy of frequency of past repeating patterns to give me confidence in making forecasts for the future. The FDP’s have been fine tuned year over year for 30...

Minor & Major FDPs Forecasted Decision Points, FDPs, will be my legacy. These markers of when the price of lumber will rise and fall are misunderstood by at least 90% of our lumber industry. The reason is the same as why I do not understand what holds the universe together. I am...