Yoder Lumber Co. Makes Transition to Grade Lumber from Pallet Industry

CHARM, Ohio—A veteran of many management courses and seminars, Mel Yoder, vice president of Yoder Lumber Co. Inc., chooses carefully from what experts advise. Mel, who serves as general manager, focuses first on the needs of the family-owned business led by him and two of his brothers.

            “We try to pick out what's best for our operation,” said Mel. “We're hands-on managers” who keep employees involved.

            Yoder Lumber Co. manufactures hardwood dimension lumber and furniture stock in varying proportions that are customer driven. The company has its own operations from the stump to finished lumber – logging, sawmill, kiln-drying and finishing.

            Yoder Lumber has transitioned in recent years from its primary focus, which previously was pallet manufacturing. “We actually did quite a few pallets at one time,” said Mel. In 2000, shortly after purchasing a yard in Buckhorn to complement its two other facilities, Yoder Lumber shut down its pallet manufacturing operations.

            The company still manufactures cut stock for pallet manufactures and supplies it to about five customers. The pallet lumber operations employ six of Yoder Lumber’s 165 employees.

            Yoder Lumber produces approximately 10.5 million board feet of lumber each year. The company makes lumber in thicknesses ranging from 4/4 to 16/4.  Responsiveness to customers is at the core of the sales philosophy. Small orders receive the same attention as large ones. Mixed loads are a specialty.

            Yoder Lumber has planer mills at two locations, Buckhorn and Berlin. The Buckhorn facility is equipped with a Northfield 24-inch planer. The Berlin yard has top and bottom planers from Northfield (Foundry and Machinery, Inc.) and Timesavers Inc.

            Many of the customers of Yoder Lumber are within a 100-mile radius of Holmes County, the home to all three of its Ohio facilities. However, the company also has customers in other states and Canada as well as overseas. The company makes 80% of its U.S. deliveries itself.

            Customers can review the inventory of Yoder Lumber on the company website (www.yoderlumber.com) and purchase a variety of species, dimensions, lengths and grades in a single order. The flexibility fits the ‘just-in-time’ delivery needs of many companies, explained Mel. Yoder Lumber will fill even the smallest orders – just a few boards of one species or size.

            Yoder Lumber Co. began in 1944 when the late John J. Yoder, Mel's father, started sawing low-grade construction lumber for fellow farmers. John soon left dairy and grain farming behind. Working with a portable mill, which Mel believes was a Frick, John's business grew quickly.

            By 1956, John had purchased a sawmill in Charm, Ohio. Since then, Yoder Lumber has added the air-drying and dimension plant in Berlin and a kiln-drying facility in Buckhorn. All three Ohio facilities are within 10 miles of one another. Recently, Yoder Lumber added a log yard in Parkersburg, W.V., which is about 75 miles southeast of the east-central Ohio area where the three other installations are situated.

            Mel's oldest brother, Eli, is president of Yoder Lumber. Eli is responsible for buying timber and logs. Another brother, Roy, is also a vice president. Roy oversees maintenance in all the plants as well as the company’s fleet of trucks. Syl , the youngest of the four brothers, also works at Yoder Lumber.

            The company’s fleet of tractor-trailers includes eight Peterbilts, two Macks and two Internationals. Yoder Lumber does all its own maintenance, even engine overhauls.

            At the sawmill in Charm, all incoming logs are debarked with equipment from Mellot Mfg. Co. (The bark is processed by a Montgomery Industries Int'l. Inc. grinder, and the output is sold wholesale to landscapers.) The head rig at the Charm sawmill consists of a Salem 6-foot bandmill and Cleereman Industries carriage. The company has added Silvatech Corp. linear positioning controls for the carriage and a Silvatech log scanner to ensure uniformity in lumber quality. The mill is also equipped with a Brewco horizontal band resaw that is used to process all cherry and walnut logs, giving a better yield from small logs due to the reduction in kerf, and a Crosby edger and trimmer.

            The Berlin yard began as a facility to air-dry lumber, but it is now equipped with American Wood Dryers Inc. kilns for drying lumber. A rough mill cut-up line also has been added. The cut-up and lumber remanufacturing equipment includes a Progressive 36-inch arbor gang saw with the infeed optimized by Keim Hydraulics & Machinery, a BMI Brute scanning chop saw, and an AEM two-sided planer.

            Keim is a neighbor, explained Mel, located just a few miles away from Yoder Lumber. In fact, Keim equipment has been tested at the Yoder Lumber mill.

            The Berlin mill processes red oak and poplar, mostly 4/4 and 5/4. A small amount of lumber is sold retail to local furniture makers, perhaps 2 million board feet annually. The plant also makes laminated squares and panels, but Yoder Lumber does no assembly of furniture parts.

            The newest Yoder Lumber facility, the Buckhorn yard, was purchased in 1999. It has six Irvington-Moore dry kilns that have been retrofitted with computerized controls from Lignomat USA Ltd. The kilns have a combined capacity of 200,000 board feet.

            The Lignomat controls were added “to give us more control over drying,” said Mel. With the computerized system making the necessary adjustments to the drying process automatically, there is no need for a kiln operator to perform the same functions manually late at night, early in the morning or other odd hours.

            Wood waste from the sawmills fuels boilers that are the primary heat sources for the Irvington-Moore and American Wood Dryers kilns.

            The Buckhorn yard has seen an important addition since Yoder Lumber purchased the facility. “We were looking at a bottle neck,” said Mel. “We couldn't get the lumber handled quickly enough. There was some staining.” The solution was to put in a 45-bin sorting system from Morris Industrial Corp.

            Finished lumber is bundled, and the packages are bar-coded. Inventory is updated regularly at the company website, giving customers the opportunity to choose from among 18 species of Appalachian hardwood by amount, species, thickness and grade; as well as check notes on color.

            Most of the company’s lumber production – 8 million board feet – is sold dry. The remainder is sold green. Ash, basswood, beech, cherry, elm, hickory, maples (hard and soft), oaks (red and white) and more are among the species Yoder Lumber works with.

            Yoder Lumber does most of its own timber harvesting, usually within an 80-mile radius of its cluster of facilities. It buys standing timber and does mainly select cut logging. “We primarily cut down with chain saws,” said Mel. “Diameter depends a little on the species,” he explained. “Walnut and cherry, 12-inches and up…oak and popular, 16-inches and up.” Logs generally are bucked to lengths ranging from 8 feet to 16 feet. Crews use Stihl saws exclusively. The logging crews are equipped with Caterpillar grapple skidders and Prentice, Hook or Barko loaders.

            The company also operates one crew for clear-cuts on land earmarked for coal mining. “We have a Timbco track hydraulic harvester” with that crew, said Mel. Trees smaller than 2 inches in diameter are fed to a Morbark 22-inch chipper, with the paper chips sold to Smurfit Stone Container Corp.

            “Once in a while, we'll get into plantation white pine,” said Mel. Pine accounts for about 1% percent of the wood harvested annually by Yoder Lumber crews. Crafts makers and other specialty users in the region create a market for it.

            The largest municipality in Holmes County is the village of Millersburg, the county seat. Millersburg was established in 1815 and has a population of 3,300.

            Mel has fond memories of his earliest ventures in the wood products industry. “We kind of grew up in it,” he said of himself and his brothers. The siblings liked to follow their father as he cut trees and sawed wood. “We would go along” from when they were about age 12, he said. “There was little we could do” at that age, he noted.

            As Mel and his brothers got older, however, they began to take on more responsibility. “It was always fun,” he said. One of the first jobs Mel recalled taking on was moving lumber to the rail yard. “A lot of times, we'd haul it to the rail yard and load it by hand. That was in the late '50s and '60s,” he said.

            Today, several grandchildren of the founder of Yoder Lumber are involved in the business. Mel's son, Nathan, is plant manager at Buckhorn. His son, Trent, works in inventory and office management.

            Eli's son, Ryan, works with him in buying timber, and another son, Tony, works part-time while he is going to college. And Roy’s son, Craig, works with him in vehicle maintenance.

            Wood waste from the mill operations is used in various ways or sold to different markets, depending partly on the season. Scrap material is processed by a Morbark grinder. Smurfit Stone buys some wood grindings for boiler fuel. Yoder Lumber uses much of its own waste to heat its dry kilns, as noted above.

            In summer, some grinder output is sold to Zeager Bros. Inc., a Middletown, Pa. company that makes Woodcarpet™, a material used to surface playgrounds at schools. Some sawdust and shavings are sold to chicken farmers.

            Yoder Lumber belongs to a long list of forest products industry trade groups. Among them are the Ohio Forestry Association, the National Hardwood Lumber Association, the Appalachian Hardwood Products Association, and the Hardwood Manufacturers Association.

            The many facets of the wood products industry keep it as interesting today as it ever was, said Mel. There are “a lot of good people in this industry,” he said, which makes it enjoyable. “It's just a lot of the people I'm in contact with every day [that I enjoy]. It's different every day.”

 When he takes time away from the business, Mel likes to travel, hunt and fish.