Many lumber market reviews reported by sources throughout the Southeast have an element of negativity.
A lumber sales representative in Arkansas said that the market is “very soft” because “no one is really using hardwood right now” and that the market is worse than it was six months ago.
They offer Gum, Red and White Oak, which are their best sellers. They work with 4/4 and FAS No.1 in Gum for flooring.
Their customers consist of distribution centers, flooring companies and moulding and furniture manufacturers. His customers have commented that there is “not much demand and that sales are off.” He went into detail about the experience of one of his customers, sharing that he “makes frames for an upholstery company for furniture that used to get about 10 loads of lumber a month and he’s using about three now.”
He pointed to lack of demand, interest rates and the election as the main culprits for the downturn.
One lumber spokesman in Alabama said the market is “very bad” but “might be a little better,” even though not much has “changed in the last six months.”
Species they sell include Red and White Oak, Hard Maple, Poplar, Hickory and Ash. They offer some 5/4 but for the most part, they sell 4/4. The upper grades in Red Oak are selling well and so is White Oak. They also cut pine 2-3 days a month.
He explained that the company sells to hardwood flooring plants and also sells “quite a bit of lumber” to a truck/trailer flooring plant. In addition, he said they “sell higher grade lumber to middlemen that kiln-dry and resell it. We sell a lot of railroad crossties and we sell pallet cants and pallet boards to pallet mills.” The commentary his customers have provided about the marketplace is rather gloomy, as he said, “everyone’s in sort of a state of depression.”
In Tennessee, one lumber spokesman commented that the market is “okay” because “the selectivity of the customer is just getting more and more difficult to supply. There has just been so much lumber, that they’ve been able to demand exactly what they want to buy and they’ve kind of been spoiled because of that. Some things are not very good and some are extremely weak to poor from a demand standpoint but a lot of things are still relatively decent.” His review was not as negative as the others, as the company’s ‘okay’ market status is due to, as he said, “the way we fit into the industry. We’re doing some things that are still finding some market demand for the grades of lumber we’re trying to market but we also have a lot of other items out there. We’ve just tried to stick to the niche that we have and that niche is reasonably okay but we can’t run our business just on the niches. However, we have enough of the niches to keep us going.”
As for how the market was compared to six months ago, he mentioned that it’s “about the same.”
They handle Red and White Oak, Ash, Basswood, Cherry, Hickory, Poplar, Walnut and “the Maples” mainly in the upper grades and in thicknesses of 4/4-8/4, he explained. White Oak, he added, is selling the best at the time of this writing.
The company sells to distributors, millwork, moulding and furniture manufacturers. Many of his customers, he noted, have said the “orders they have for their products are soft.”
In Kentucky, a lumber sales representative commented that “it’s definitely tougher than average” because “log supply is very low. The residential flooring and truck/trailer flooring markets are just really tight on getting orders.” According to the source, it is worse than six months ago.
He said they “pretty much cover all Appalachian hardwoods. Poplar is on the rise. The upper grades in Red Oak are doing well. White Oak is doing well, too.” They don’t work with any cedar or pine.
He mentioned their “biggest customer would be concentration yards. We sell everything green, so we sell a lot to concentration yards. Our second biggest customer would probably be pallet companies and then after that, it would probably be split between residential flooring and truck/trailer flooring.” He told a story about one of his customers, in addition to more details to depict how their markets are faring at the time of this writing. “He’s about 20 percent over the target set by his bosses. He’s having a tough time pleasing his boss and his suppliers. So, his concern today is that he has too much wood but his concern for tomorrow is that the supply is not going to be there when he needs it. What they’ve all mentioned is that they’re really concerned about the attrition of sawmills. There are just sawmills falling by the wayside everywhere,” the source explained.
