Supplying Demand
Somewhere between Mars and Evans City, on the aptly named Mars-Evans City Road, is a plain-looking building with a gasp-producing interior.
You won't see it when you first enter. That's dedicated to wood; lots of wood.
Slots filled with lumber line the walls, while the middle are more slots with lumber.
Step in the next room and it's the same thing, everything from pine to exotic African and South American woods. The place is a veritable buffet of wood. You will find more than 100 species represented. You almost cannot keep your hands off it.
“(Wood) is warm and touchable,” said Robert “Buck” Sarver, owner of Mars Lumber.
As with everything, however, the price is going up.
“Demand is up for certain species particularly, but (also) across the board,” Sarver said. “Supply is down. COVID-19 and, I think, greed, partly, on the part of the production end, maybe, has a little bit to do with it.
“The price has gone up on pine because during COVID-19, like we should have, we locked down the borders under our last president, and a lot of our pine comes out of Canada.”
The most popular wood species in this area? White oak, maple and walnut, according to Sarver. Those species have seen the biggest jump in price.
Custom moldings
Besides selling board lumber, Sarver has a rip-roaring business making custom moldings, especially given the amount of historic homes in Western Pennsylvania, although he has many customers in Pittsburgh, Ohio, New Jersey and Long Island, N.Y.
That's why in one of the back rooms you may see drawers full of pattern cutters: more than 1,200 of them.
Sarver has more than 23,000 square feet of space, and most of it is filled with lumber of some type. The rest of the space is used for production work. They make butcher block countertops, cabinet doors, drawer boxes and similar items. However, they do not make custom cabinets.
“We don't make cabinets here because so many of my customers do,” he said. “We try not to step on our customers' toes.”
Family business
Mars Lumber is a family business. Sarver's two sons, both college graduates, work there and his wife is the bookkeeper. He also has a few other long-term employees. It amounts to a really good team.
However, owning a business is stressful.“It's not for the faint of heart, owning a business,” Sarver said. “Small business is what drives this country, and when people forget that, they're doing a disservice to everybody who lives in this country.”Tyler Magill is the second generation to work at Dambach Lumber and Supply Company in Harmony; his father took over in 1959, and there's even a third generation working there.The place comes with history, since there's been a lumberyard on their particular corner since the late 1800s. Step in and, on any given morning, the place is buzzing with activity.This is not just a lumberyard. There are tools, window and wood flooring samples, even some plumbing supplies, and that's just the main first room. They know their stuff. Have they seen prices go up? Yes, and it's only taken a year to get there.“A sheet of standard 7/16ths OSB, very common, usually sells for between $7 to $10 a sheet,” Magill said. “Right now, I think we're selling it for $44.99.”OSB, oriented strand board, is a type of wood sheeting that goes under siding on your house.“That's probably the one item that took the biggest hit because it's a commodity, so it's widely used,” he said. “It's used in almost every construction project.”Oddly, the price of nails has not been affected, Magill said.Lead timeThe other issue with wood is lead time. At Dambach, they are not getting all they ordered.“Price is one thing, but even being able to get it, like treated lumber last year,” Magill said. “Everybody was doing their decks. It got to the point where you started running out of things. It was like a drip feed, and they didn't let a bigger place than us go out and buy everything up because they could. They let everybody have their share, at least the place that we deal with.”Good news, though: Dambach's business is on the upswing, according to Magill.Traven Hollefreund is a manager trainee at 84 Lumber on Route 422 near the Butler Fairgrounds. Because it is considered an essential business, it did not shut down last year, but there were some lean times. It's a different story this year.“We've been going crazy this year,” Hollefreund said. “We were OK, below normal but OK, after April through September. But pretty much since September, we've been doing pretty well.”Seeing shortagesThey're seeing shortages at 84 Lumber as well.“A perfect example would be (that) we are a shingle hub for 84 Lumber in the area,” Hollefreund said. “Sometimes we would get up to 10 shingle trucks a day. Now we get one or two a week. Owens-Corning (manufacturers of the shingles 84 Lumber carries) are on allocation, so that's all they send out.”The price of shingles has not gone up terribly, but it is going up. As with other lumberyards, the price of plywood is way up.Hollefreund recalls a price of $12 per sheet of 7/16ths when he started working at 84 Lumber in December 2019. Now it's more than $40, Hollefreund said.There's nothing to be done about it either, Hollefreund said.“You've just got to be OK with extended lead times, and the customer's got to be OK with it,” he said.
