Ed Ryan said it in the 1960s, Dick Rotto in the 1980s, and Pulte in the1990s and 2020s, but it took a PhD, Ricardo Brites, Director of Engineering of Mercer Mass Timber, to layout some good evidence that a successful manufacturing plant needs to operate at a level of at least 75% of capacity. In How Concrete and Steel Solved What’s Killing Mass Timber, Dr. Brites recounts how steel mills and ready-mix concrete plants operate well when they have a steady 75% capacity utilization, while mass timber plants are operating at a declining capacity utilization with 2024’s rate dipping below 40%.
Every truss manufacturer who reads this article will be stunned by the consistency of steel and concrete production. But there was one manufacturer, Ed Ryan of Ryan Homes, who knew from the start that he would be most successful if he built only as many homes as his component plants could supply. In the 1980s, when Ryan’s home sales failed to generate enough components to fill their large component plants, they closed them. UFP bought the former Ryan Jefferson, GA facility, and later BFS bought the former Ryan Plant City, FL facility. Recently, as Ryan’s home sales volumes in both markets rose to levels that could sustain a plant, Ryan built two new facilities, located about 40 miles north of Jefferson in Lavonia, GA and 55 miles east of Plant City in Haines City, FL.
Another truss manufacturer, Dick Rotto, then owner of Trussway, reached a similar conclusion regarding filling the capacity of his large Houston, TX plant during the great Texas recession of the 1980s. Rotto realized that even markets that had great long-term prospects could suffer periods of drastically reduced sales. When he dispatched his salesforce across the U.S. to gain sales to fill his Houston plant, he told them that he would build a plant when they sold enough product in their new markets, but that those plants would never equal the size of the Houston facility. Indeed, his original plants in Fredericksburg, VA and Orlando, FL were much smaller facilities.
A third manufacturer, Pulte, learned “the hard way” on at least two occasions that they could not sustain operating a component plant with highly fluctuating volume. In the early 1990s, Pulte owned the predecessor of Builders FirstSource (BFS), Builders Supply and Lumber (BSL). When the BSL facility in Harrisburg, NC couldn’t maintain a consistent volume of Pulte work, Pulte sold BSL (and it ultimately became BFS). When Pulte had the same problem keeping the huge Innovative Construction Group (ICG) facility in Green Cove Springs, FL running at a consistent capacity, they put it up for sale in February 2026.
In analyzing Pulte’s divestment, writer John McManus states in PulteGroup to divest ICG as factory costs challenge builders, “Factories love steady pull-through. Homebuilding demand is volatile.” This accords with Brites, and with what I’ve heard commonly expressed over the 55 years I’ve been around this business, “If homebuilding activity was steady, General Motors would be in the truss business.”