Had to scale back

[Bruno of NH]

It's been a bitter sweet month. I had to not renew my pallet and donage contract with the bridge steel company. For 2 reasons when I took it on they were going to pick up the stuff , that only lasted a month.
I never wanted to deliver but ended up doing it. The second reason was I was tired of hearing the hired help complain about building them. For a big company they paid quickly. The help just isn't around here to find.
The other set back was me selling kd pine patterns and Japanese cedar for a local wholesaler . It was a great thing to add to my operation. 
The wholesaler hired a person in house to do the retail in my area. His yard was just 3 minutes away.
I would like to find another wholesaler to work with but don't know how to find one.
This just happened because he was so close and I knew others who worked with him.
It went well with selling rough sawn lumber. 
The revenue from both things was nice . It helped alot.
I will be on the lookout to find a wholesale distributor for wood products. 
The Japanese cedar wp4 was a big seller. 

[Bruno of NH]

I took a year off of building garden beds this last spring. 
I had sold so many in 3 years that I thought it would be slow last spring for sales of them.
I think my hired help will complain about building them.
I will just do it nights and weekends I guess. 
That's what I did with my firewood sales , they complained about doing that too  ;D
I just did it . Hard to chainsaw logs from a bench but I did it .
Big rounds to , tree service stuff. Sheila helped me load the racks we sell from .

[Magicman]

It is sad to have to depend upon worthless help.  When you are paying them it should not matter what the job entailed, even washing garbage cans. 

I can understand your frustration. 

[Southside]

I hear ya Bruno - it's everywhere, I deal with it daily and have several times contemplated selling about everything I don't need to simply homestead and just riding it out.  The reality of it is at this rate there won't be anyone around who wants to take over any of our operations.  

[moodnacreek]

Everything needs to be done by machine. You have to buy the machine and get it paid for before you loose the business that is paying for it. This is an old problem with sawmilling.

[cutterboy]

Of all the changes I have seen over my life, one of the worst is the poor attitude of the American worker. It does not bode well for this country.

[Stephen1]

I was on a portable job last week, last one of the season. The owner had a 20 YO old from Nepal. He has been here 3 months living with a cousin. He cleans at the Honda plant at night from 10-4. Then during the day he is going to college for Electrical Engineering technician and when the arborists needs help either his cousin or him come and help.
He was probably the best helper I have ever had, told him once, it was done like that all day, and he spent all day looking to clean up, shovel sawdust, picked up the ankle breakers, kept the site real clean.
I now see why we bring in immigrants.

The local teenagers I hire for Saturday mornings, are okay, and I appreciate the help but I always have to be checking on them. Any other help I have brought in tend to not come back after a week or 2 of tailing on the sawmill.

[YellowHammer]

Everything needs to be done by machine. You have to buy the machine and get it paid for before you loose the business that is paying for it. This is an old problem with sawmilling.

100% Yes, we are now employee free, just me and Martha, with no more unemployment paperwork, no more crazy payroll stuff, no more audits from Dept of Labor (so far), no more OSHA, no more insurance issues, no more "How do I use this?" no more "This is the hardest job I've ever done" and just no more/no more anymore.
 
Now we buy a machine, and if we can't do it, then we don't do it.  Had a customer call up yesterday asking for a glued up slab table top and I said no, we don't do that.  He got ornery, saying it shouldn't be a problem with all the equipment we own.  So I said "I said we don't do it, not that we can't do it.  Sorry, is there anything else I can help you with?"

Seems the only people who ask for job anymore are old men who can barely walk and think they want to feel young again.  

[chickenchaser]

THANKS YH!
smiley_old_guy

[Magicman]

Ouch !!

[moodnacreek]

I have a small tight yard with hardly a place to turnaround. When a delivery or pick up is made with a big truck you want the driver to be 70 +. Best is when the driver walks it first, then you know there will not be problems. When a log truck comes in I can tell by the sound of the truck how it will go. The old guys make everything go EASY.

[Dave Shepard]

I had one of the new guys out stump grinding with me this summer. Typically a second guy isn't really that helpful, but it's somewhere to send them if there isn't another crew for them to go on. That day the job was to rake out the grindings somewhat level after I finished grinding. It was maybe ten minutes of easy work every hour. This guy said "I don't care what anybody says, raking is hard work!". I told him he had the easiest job at the company, and he was making prevailing wage on top of that, which was $47.50/hour.

[chickenchaser]

I think the decimal point is in the wrong place for my prevailing wage. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Holy smokes me to. :D where do I sign up to get my wage changed to that " prevailing" one?

[47sawdust]

Guess I won't be stopping at YellowHammer's looking for work. :D
I'm slow but I'm still moving.

[Bruno of NH]

There's a kicker to the pallet building story. The 2 guys whining didn't even build the pallets. I had a Lady do it for 8 months till she got allergic to the sawdust. Since she left a friend of mine that retired from maintenance at a local school district took over building them. He never said a bad word about doing them.The others didn't like sawing lumber for them or moving the built pallets for him . The 2 guys complained every day he built them .
I could never understand it.

[Southside]

Dave I would like to submit my application for stump grinder raking technician.  I would be willing to operate the grinder at the same time too if that helps to better qualify me for the job. Geesh....

[Dave Shepard]

We don't do a lot of PW stump grinding. Grinding is generally pretty laid back work. Most of the guys think it's punishment.  : 

[GAB]

Guess I won't be stopping at YellowHammer's looking for work. :D
I'm slow but I'm still moving.

I fall in that catagory too.
GAB

[SawyerTed]

At that wage, I believe a rake would fit my hands quite well!  And at that wage, I believe I could find and extra button for my lip!  

[longtime lurker]

Staffing is a problem.
Trying to do it all by yourself is a problem.
Large customers are a problem.
Battling on from one little job to the next is a problem.
We all get to choose our own poison, right?

I have a good crew and a bulging order book and everything is bright and shiny ahead today. However I'm ever mindful that tomorrow might be different - but I've survived every calamity on that list and a heap of others besides to get where I am now, and I'll survive whatever else comes along too. 

As will you Bruno, for all the same reasons.

[Peter Drouin]

Tell them [I hired your hands, not your mouth] Get back using your hands. :D ;D ;)

[crowhill]

I worked as a Human Resource Mgr and thought that was a difficult job at the time. My daughter in law is in the same field today and it's got to be crazy. Unskilled starts at $20/hr and missing time the first week. That's just the start of it, girlfriends call their "man" and want him home, he leaves never to return. If you can think of the situation it's been done or it's about to happen. Two guys standing outside minutes prior to shift smoking pot, and state it's their time and legal! They just don't care, not even when to take a hike..

[Bruno of NH]

If I could buy a machine to do the extra work I would.
The problem is someone still has to run it. I can only do so many things at once. 

[Stephen1]

My brother inlaw was a supervisor at a very large in Canada, Brewers Warehouse. He always told me if the boys aren't bitching they are not happy, so he would change things up a bit to get them going.  

[Southside]

Sent one packing about an hour ago.  He got his shorts in a bunch and drove off in a huff and left me with everything, set me a text, third time he has done that, strike three. Told him to keep on trucking. 

[YellowHammer]

He called me up wanting a job after you fired him, I assume due to my reputation for being such a sensitive and caring boss.

[Southside]

He already called one of the other guys and said he would be back tomorrow --- so that guy called me to ask why he got such a strange call.... ummm, nope. 

[WV Sawmiller]

   So let me get this straight - SS fired him and YH hired him and it improved both operations? : :D :D

[SawyerTed]

Hired a fellow to be a machine operator at the wood products company.  The morning of his first day of work, I called him at 8:00 to see where he was.  He said he'd be there by 10:00, we started at 7:00.  

I told him don't bother.  I called another fellow who actually wanted the job.  He was there by 8:45 with 30 minutes notice.

The first guy called later in the week and asked could he come to work.  He said he made a mistake and needed to work.  The guy had temmerity if nothing else.

My response, "No we filled your position, sorry but you had your chance."

[Ianab]

Machinery and robots were going to take all our jobs....  :D

Haven't seen it, because you need people to operate that machinery and fix those robots.  When you get to ~3% unemployment, pretty much every useful worker has a job already. They aren't applying to your position unless the money is something crazy, 

So if 1/2 the workforce is below average, what's it like when you get down to the last 3%? 

All I will say, if you have some good workers that are making you a profit, look after them. They will be hard to replace if they find a better gig one day. 

[WV Sawmiller]

So if 1/2 the workforce is below average, what's it like when you get down to the last 3%?

That is classic! :D :D :D

[Bruno of NH]

Losing the 2 extra operation has put a sting on the business.
I'm going to have to make some tough decisions in the next 2 weeks.  I don't think any of them are going to be good. Both my hired help are now on a part-time basis.  I'm finishing the orders I have and will have to decide what's next for me.
I won't sell the mill but might have to reinvent myself for some other type of work. The next few weeks hold a lot of thinking and reality checking on myself.

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Tough times Bruno.  Change that's forced on you is never welcome or easy.  But sometimes, not to often but sometimes, it leads to other opportunity.  Good luck, keep us posted. 

[thecfarm]

Hope it works out for you.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Hang in there, you got so much going for a good operation, equipment,  property and built up customer base.

Not to mention your drive,  experience, and family support.

Happy holidays!!!

[longtime lurker]

Few years back - maybe 5 or 6 it's been a blur - I was mostly cutting wholesale. At the time it was a good idea: I still had cyclone damaged buildings and didn't want customers on site, and it was just Dad and I and I didn't have time to deal with customer enquiries... that entire quote requote hold their hand through the order process takes time and I didn't have the time. Wholesale was easy.... order comes in by email on a set price list, saw it, send it, do an invoice, get paid. Margins weren't good but if I did the work I couldn't go broke etc etc

Anyway I wind up with a really good lumber merchant customer who can keep me hopping. They're like 80% of my business, they'll take everything I can cut and then some. I'm working hard and the bills are getting paid and it's a good relationship. Then he goes into bankruptcy from some other unrelated business dealings.
I'll give credit where it's due: he made sure I was pretty much paid up at the last minute before the doors closed. There was a little bit owing but not much - $2500 or so - it wasn't going to break me and I hold a hell of a lot of respect for the man because of how it went down and the fact that it was only that much because it could have been enough to take me with him.

And then came the tough time because 80% of my business wasn't there anymore and it takes a while to replace that. I had a small greenmill operation, a basic drymill setup, no regular customer base to speak of, and two kids and a mortgage. It hurt, but lessons were learnt. That particular kick in the teeth taught me a whole lot about the need to have a degree of control over not just my supply chain but my market access as well. It forced me to stand on my own feet and take on the part of the business I hate which is dealing with customers. I wasn't ready for that but anyway - somehow or another I made it through by working a day job and running the mill every other moment. There was a physical toll and also an emotional one as it put a few more cracks in my marriage because from the lady's point of view I put the mill before my relationship.

Sometimes now people wonder why I take on some of the jobs I do, but the need for a diversified product line and a diversified customer base are lessons I learnt ripping 1x1 stakes out of waste at 10pm for months on end. Seems every important lesson in life I've had to learn the hard way. I learnt to not just think about how many eggs I had in a basket but how many baskets I needed as well. It showed me the holes in being a niche market business, it showed me the holes in being that small that I couldn't manage more than 1 customers needs at a time, it taught how to be lean and mean and so many other lessons that shaped how I approach business today. I survived it, I learnt some, I moved on. Now I'm sure I have another set of lessons to get kicked into my mule stubborn head, what they are I'll find out at some point down the road.

Tough times never last, tough people do... so much truth there. This will hurt but you'll get through it and come out the other side.

[moodnacreek]

A small sawmill business is a hard thing to make a profit on a steady basis.  The dry spells will kill you. The commercial accounts never last. The profitable specially lumber thing changes style like womans clothing. Contractors will kill you. You can only get good business when you can do without it. During the pandemic I could do nothing wrong and even raise prices and did some buy-sell rather than saw everything here. That dropped dead first of August. All my commercial customers are gone, been sold and I have no patience to start over with new people. I survived because my wife had a government job and we live cheap.

[Old Greenhorn]

Jeepers Christmas, Longtime Lurker and I seem to have walked a nearly identical path for a period of time, and I can agree it  isn't fun and can tear your heart out if you let it. It nearly broke me mentally.
I had a machine shop back in the 80's, a solo operation, but I had a few friends that would come work part time hours to help me when I had high production jobs. I was barely holding my own, but I was holding on and working really hard and long 6 day weeks, often many more, and long days indeed.  Then I picked up a new client by chance, but also the way I picked up most new clients back then. They had a problem that needed solving and couldn't find anybody that could solve it. They were referred to me by a good friend who talked me up really well.
Well I solved their problem without much trouble, and they paid me more than I asked, then they gave me another and I solved that too, again, they paid more than I asked. Pretty soon they were giving me as much work as I could handle, always paid me well and on time, no nonsense. I was running regular production for them ALL the time. Yeah they were 80% of my business and I loved it even though I had heard all the warnings from old timers about putting your eggs in one basket.  They got a new product buyer who kept trying to get my prices lower and I offered all sorts of compromises and ways to get there, blanket orders, planned monthly deliveries, but no, for this guy it was just 'the unit price'. One day I got the call they were no longer buying this whole line of parts I was making for them. I was charging like $12.00/pair and they ordered them from India for $1.00/pair (but they ordered 3,000 pairs to get that price, I only made 1,000 pair/year). Just like that, overnight, I was dead in the water. I started cultivating other sources of work but it was never the same and I worked a lot harder to earn a buck. Well about a year later they finally got their delivery of the stuff they ordered from India, along with thousands of other parts they bundled in to get the prices they got. I had been making high end ($$$) solid brass hardware for them that was either polished and lacquered or plated with everything from gold to silver to platinum and used in very high end apartments, town houses, and estates around the world ( I did all the door hardware hinges and door plates for the King of Saudi Arabia, the Seagram's family penthouse, Billy Joel's South Hampton house and many more). Fancy stuff. What came in from India was all cheap hollow spun brass parts. They couldn't sell any of it or use it for anything. They sold it off for scrap weight. It was the first nail in their coffin and it was a big one. They had designed this stuff, I produced it at a level that they could really sell it and make great money (A towel bar for the bathroom would sell for about $350.00.)
So they screwed me, then did the same to themselves out of greed.
But no matter, I was still holding the bag for my business and my family. During the heydays I was able to make enough to find and buy a house with my wife and then we had a baby on the way when the bottom fell out. That meant my wife was going to have to stop working her job which carried our medical insurance and I would have to pick up the slack somehow. For me, with the very scary and overwhelming pressure of bringing a new life into the world and raising that person in a proper way, I buckled for a bit. OK, I was scared shirtless.  I pretty much shut the shop down and took a union day job with good pay and good insurance and did side jobs at night in the shop. Good thing I went that way, because when my daughter was born she nearly didn't make it and spent 2 weeks in NICU as we waited to see what God would decide. (It turned out just fine.) The medical bills would have killed us.
The point is, I didn't want to take that job, but I had to. It led to other decisions, which led to us moving to where we live now and another job that got us started up here with no thought of looking back. Now, many years later after doing what I had to do, I am finally doing what I want to do for the most part. No, it's still not easy, but life isn't easy and I don't think it's supposed to be.
Sometimes you do what you have to do, even if you don't like it, so that later you can do more of what you want to do.
Bruno I don't know exactly what you mean by losing '2 extra operation' or what that impact might be, but hang in there. You are a dang savvy fella and I know you will figure out a solution to this. Don't be hasty and think it through. Everybody here is on your side and then some. Bounce ideas off of us if you feel the need. Talking it through might help. Best of luck to you young fella.

[711ac]

Bruno I hope you dodged this past Mondays storm without adding to your situation.
I thought about you and the other guys in NH today as I became aware of some of your damage to the west of me.
Merry Christmas to you all.

[Jim_Rogers]

Bruno I hope you dodged this past Mondays storm without adding to your situation.
I thought about you and the other guys in NH today as I became aware of some of your damage to the west of me.
Merry Christmas to you all.

He posted somewhere, maybe Facebook that he lost his driveway culvert again.

Jim Rogers

[Bruno of NH]

I got hammered bad
Lost my road into the sawmill and house.
It took me 2 days with 2 machines just to get over one spot filling and compacting.
The extra work and stress is starting to wear me down.
I called off all my family for the holidays I'm just not in a good place for celebration right now.

[711ac]

Bruno "all that" would wear superman down!
Hang on brother, you will get past this.

[Magicman]

Yup, I shuddered when I saw the picture of the road.  Since I have been to and visited you and your place, I understand what you mean by being shutoff.  You are in a dreadful situation.

I realize that urging you to "keep your chin up" are just words of encouragement but you know that our hearts are with you my friend.

[richhiway]

Sorry about the wash outs, at least you are self sufficient and don't have to hire it repaired.
Winter just makes work that much harder. During the Winter, I always say today is one day closer to Spring.

Have the best Christmas you can manage and Enjoy a Happy and Healthy New Year.

[caveman]

Hang in there, Bruno.  Sometimes circumstances seem to be overwhelming.  The progress you have made with your sawmill business is substantial.  This too shall pass. 

[Bruno of NH]

Last week the bridge company called and wanted 8 units of 4x4x8 hardwood. The best part is they will pick them up. The last time we spoke they wouldn't do a pick up. I guess I make a good product. 

[Jim_Rogers]

Yes, you are and most likely you're the only one that will do it for them at your price.

Jim Rogers

[Nebraska]

Good to read that Bruno. 

[caveman]

Good for you, Bruno.  I like to see you having success.  I also look forward to seeing your pictures.

[Magicman]

Last week the bridge company called and wanted 8 units of 4x4x8 hardwood. The best part is they will pick them up. The last time we spoke they wouldn't do a pick up. I guess I make a good product. 

I love reading about successes, especially yours Jim.  Keep on keeping on my Friend.  ;)

[richhiway]

How is 2024 going so far? Hope you are busy up there. 

Rich