“One thing I can say for Siskiyou Forest Products, is that we reinvest probably just as much as anybody. We put our money in ourselves more, take very little out and we try to support the company.” ~ Darren Duchi, general manager, Siskiyou Forest Products
The 50th anniversary of Siskiyou Forest Products, a producer of softwood lumber based in Anderson, CA, occurred in October of 2024.
CEO Fred Duchi explained how the company started in 1974 “with a lot less than what we have right now. I think we have thrived in a shrinking industry. When I entered the industry here in California, there were a ton of mills; both moulding and sawmills and today I could probably count them on my fingers.”
Fred was born in Weed, CA and said he spent “a lot of summers working for the lumber company” during his high school and college days. His grandfather, uncles, brother and father all worked for a lumber company. Fred was the first in his family to attend college and his brother, Bill Duchi, followed in Fred’s footsteps to attend the same school- Sac State, located in Sacramento, CA. “I graduated in 1970 and he graduated there about the same time. I went to work for Georgia-Pacific and spent a couple of years with them. I did quite well and they transferred me to Los Angeles, CA. I wasn’t going to stay there so within a week, I left the company and moved back to Sacramento, CA. I worked for another wholesale company for a while but then, I decided I could start Siskiyou Forest Products and with a phone, a desk and a line of credit at the bank, I started buying and selling lumber,” Fred remarked.
Fred continued to explain that “about six years later, my brother joined me. It was at that point that I moved into the management role and Bill maintained sales for the company. Then, we ended up buying a small reman plant. We also had a small sawmill for a while. In the early 1990’s, we ended up getting out of the sawmill business and focused on the wholesale business. We had Woodland up here and we bought it in the early 1980’s and kept it until 1998. We sold Woodland to two ex-employees. They ran it for about 10 or 12 years. That facility in Woodland is owned by Redwood Empire now.
“After we got into the reman business,” Fred noted, “we tried a whole bunch of different things like Redwood fencing and siding in different patterns and then, we bought this plant and started the finger joint operation.” They’ve been at their current location since 1998 and bought it from P & M Cedar Products, a company that “had a program where they were shipping Cedar overseas. We tried doing a little custom milling for them and it didn’t work out very well. They also had a finger jointer but it wasn’t anything like what we’ve got now. They also had a crayon marking cut line and we took that. Over the years, we have built it into what is out there today. We put in two edge gluers. At one point in time, we were making a lot of door and window stiles for different people but in 2008, that kind of went away so we had to rethink our process and since then, we have been doing pretty much what we are doing now,” Fred added.
There are around 45 employees across the whole company, including Fred’s son, who is a major stockholder in the company. Fred noted that he and his brother “have kind of stepped aside. I am here every day but just as a hood ornament.”
They primarily offer Western Red Cedar, Incense Cedar and Redwood. Most of what they offer consists of high-end, exterior wood products such as wood-based trims and sidings. Darren Duchi, general manager and second generation at Siskiyou Forest Products, mentioned a lot of “heavy wood cities like New Orleans, LA, Portland, OR, San Francisco, CA and the New England states, where there are a lot of bevels or sidings, are our target markets.”
When asked about their equipment, Darren listed the finger jointer as a “critical part of our product. Having a finger jointer that is not only faster and more efficient,” but also important because “finger joint blanks are basically our life blood as a cut plant.” They ordered this finger jointer in December of 2021 and installed it in October 2023.
They had removed an old finger jointer that September, so they were ready when the new machine came. They had a secondary finger jointer, which they used for a few months, so that they didn’t have to shut down production. Darren explained that the company was driven toward this Danish finger jointer because of its speed and efficiency, as their old machine could go around 140 lugs per-minute, while its replacement runs at 200 lugs per-minute. Four years ago, they went with a System TM MiCROTEC for their cut and optimization lines that they were pleased with, so the entire system, including the newer finger jointer, is System TM.
It has an automatic stacker, which Darren explained handles every blank individually and is “a big plus for us.” In addition to the automatic stacker, the perimeter on the outside is fenced-in for safety purposes and it’s a “lock-out,” Darren said, meaning that when someone goes inside, it stops the machine. “I think with our cut line and the finger jointer now, we are probably as state-of-the-art as anybody in the industry. It took two people off the line and probably looks like it will give us a 15 – 20 percent increase in production,” commented Fred.
Fred also spoke about how Darren encouraged him to “get the first scanner and an optimizing saw. After we ran it for a few years, Darren and I were up in Canada and we saw a competitor’s line, which was much faster and more accurate than ours. We were going to buy a similar cut line but my son and Darren went to a machinery show in Georgia, came back and said, ‘We have to look at this TM line.’ We looked at a couple of them and saw how those TM saws worked and made the decision to buy those and I think it was a good decision and probably the best decision I ever made.”
To learn more, go to www.siskiyouforestproducts.com.
