January/February 2023

With a logging background, the Brochu family (four brothers including Chris and Jason’s dad, Adrian) first entered the sawmill business as Stratton Lumber in the early 1980s, building a sawmill in partnership with a Quebec family. In 2004, with Chris and Jason now in the fold, they purchased an antiquated sawmill operation in Dover-Foxcroft, Pleasant River Lumber, and began investing in machinery and production capacity, while selling out of the Stratton Lumber business.

The opportunistic growth strategy hasn’t stopped since in spruce-fir and pine lumber markets. In 2008, Pleasant River acquired an idled sawmill in West Enfield, Maine and in 2011 and 2012 purchased struggling mills at Ellsworth and Sanford, Maine. The two brothers became co-presidents after those purchases, and in 2015 when their biggest competitor for spruce raw material came up for sale, Moose River Lumber in Jackman, Maine, the purchase was a no-brainer.

The first in a series of diversification moves came in 2016, with the acquisition of Chaffee Transport, helping to control a seemingly uncontrollable part of the industry—trucking and logistics. The “COVID years” have seen more diversification, including the purchase of their aunt and uncle’s log home fabrication business, and acquisition moves into retail store and lumber distribution, meanwhile formally re-establishing A&A Brochu Logging, the original name of the family logging business started in 1968 which at the end of 2022 received the Maine Forest Products Council Outstanding Logger honor).

So, how does all of this work with two brothers? Both point to their age difference as a huge benefit. Jason has eight years on Chris, so while the two grew up together as brothers, Chris was just nine when Jason went off to college. Jason explains, after finishing his degree at Bentley University in Massachusetts, he “stayed away” working for other companies, doing other things. “When I am 30, he’s 22 and we come together to start working at Pleasant River. Before that we had never worked together. I think there’s an advantage there for us not having spent our entire lives growing up together. There’s no competition; we think alike. We both have our own things outside of the mill. We live in separate towns, but we work together every day.”