Randy Parkes, Vice-President of Sales for Solid Wood Products for Coe Newnes McGehee, died May 26 in Kamloops, BC. He was 58. Parkes was a well known and highly respected member of the forest products industry for more than 30 years. Born in Vancouver, BC, Parkes began his career in this industry with Mainland Foundry & Engineering of Vancouver.

Management at 126-year-old, fifth generation Robbins Lumber Co. is now in its second year of operating without a sawmill lumber grader and couldn’t be happier about it. In December 2005, the mill replaced two manual grading lines with a fully automated green end incorporating ScanWare’s BoardMaster GS4NT automatic grader system, manufactured by FinScan Oy.

In an interview with this magazine in 1985, George Jacobsen stated, “What I’m most concerned about is making sure we continue to supply value and service to our customers, for it is customer loyalty to which we owe our success.”

The Forest Products Machinery and Equipment Exposition recently wrapped up the biennial show’s tenure in Atlanta in late June at the Georgia World Congress Center. Show organizers reported a total attendance of 3,600 and 244 exhibitor companies spread out over 78,000 sq. ft. of indoor and outdoor exhibit space.

For softwood lumber producers 2006 was an “interesting” year, but mostly in the Chinese proverbial sense of the word. This is illustrated by the top U.S. producer, the Hampton Affiliates sawmill in Willamina, Ore. It receives double kudos for remaining the top producer, but also for being the one among the top 30 that cut back the most, thus doing its share to keep a badly oversupplied market balanced. Its 2006 total of 426MMBF was down 12% from its previous year’s total.

For years, clearing cross-ups on the infeed deck has been a simple, and recurring, fact of life at the Swanson Group Lumber Mill, in Glendale, Ore. To Mike Lawless, it seemed that continual repaving of the asphalt operating surface that surrounds the mill was another of those jobs that, no matter how well you do it, you will soon be doing it over again.