Carroll M. Edwards, who built a large and successful wood products business in North Carolina, and who was known as a philanthropist, died August 24 in Marshville, NC of acute leukemia. He was 71. Friends frequently referred to Edwards’ integrity, independence, compassion and humor. Edwards founded Edwards Wood Products in Marshville, NC in 1969, working in an abandoned chicken house with two part-time employees to produce pallets.

Small logs are now handled more efficiently and productively at Collins Companies’ Lakeview Sawmill here, following the recent addition of a new small log line to process an expected increase in thinning material coming off nearby public and private lands in southeast Oregon as landowners in the region seek to improve forest health and reduce fire hazards in overstocked forests.

Being an avid baseball fan, I had always wondered about Frick Lumber Co., based in this quaint northeast Indiana town. I knew that Frick Lumber was a longtime, highly respected producer of hardwood lumber. But what always caught my attention whenever their name crossed my desk was the name of the current president, Ford Frick.

Take a stroll through Frick Lumber Co.’s air drying yard and lumber inventory warehouses and you’ll find it filled to the brim. Now walk out to the log yard. Sparse as can be. What’s it all mean? It means that Frick Lumber is sometimes sawing logs that had leaves on them 10 days earlier, which is not necessarily a bad thing, given the escalating costs of hardwood stumpage in the area.

A lumber dry kiln manufacturer wanting to make its own fans is like owning an oil refinery to fill your car with gas, said Smithco founder Bill Smith years ago. The success of his company proves the adage correct, as the company provides kiln fan propellers for multiple major kiln manufacturers in North America and overseas. The Smithco story dates to the 1970s, when Smith, an independent HVAC system sales rep working out of the Portland area, began selling a few fans to some of the many lumber dry kiln manufacturers then located in or near Portland.

High performance edger systems from Newnes-Mcgehee (a division of USNR) offer fast, reliable and accurate sawing, while new technologies extend system capabilities to improve downstream processes. The collaboration of Newnes Machine and McGehee Equipment in 1996 led to a revolution in the processing of wood fiber into lumber. Experience and expertise, combined with input from customers has resulted in a line of edger systems that have evolved over the years.

Hauling wood chips, sawdust, shavings and hog fuel along unforgiving northern highways from sawmills in the Hearst, Ontario area, 600 miles north of Toronto, to Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Terrace, Iroquois Falls and other faraway destinations can take a costly toll on transport trailers. Having done it since 1985, Michel and Gyslin Alary, the owners of Nor-Jean Transport in Hearst, know the challenges only too well.