By Cadance Johnson
Associate Editor
Hope For The Spring Season and Concern Over House Bills Circulate In The Northeast
Lumber representatives share their worries about the tariffs, trying their best to brace for the impact or adopting a “wait and see” approach. Many remain optimistic that business will improve once the weather gets warmer.
A lumber representative in New Hampshire commented that the market is “better than six months ago and is picking up the pace partly because of the new administration. Many people were holding out at the end of the year waiting to pull the trigger on anything, which always helps. I think with some of these tariffs up in the air, people are trying to get stuff on order in their yard before prices go up even more. Those are just my guesses because we’re pretty small and so follow the market.”
They offer Eastern White Pine in 4/4, Industrial, Standard, Premium and Select grades. Premium and Select grades are their current best sellers.
Their main customers consist of wholesale distributors and retail lumberyards. When asked about how the markets for his customers’ products look, he replied, “from what I’ve heard, people are a little surprised with how busy it’s been.” He added that they “do a little bit of exporting but try not to” and they only ship about four to six loads a year to Canada just to “keep that market open for us.”
He believes that the tariffs are “going to severely reduce the market for United States wood.” A key concern of this is that there are “some house bills up in the air that would significantly affect some of the energy we produce. They’re trying to weaken the renewable portfolio standard in New Hampshire, and we can generate thermal renewable energy credits (RECs) with combined heat and power plants. We have one and there is a good market for thermal RECs right now. There has been a bill proposed in New Hampshire that would essentially take away these thermal RECs, which would significantly hurt sawmills that have combined heat and power like us. The biomass powerplants that rely on being able to sell these thermal RECs would be hurt, too.” He named House Bill 567 as one of the culprits.
A lumber source in Pennsylvania noted the market in his area is “mediocre” because “we’ve seen stronger demand and worse demand. We’re kind of in some place in the middle,” he said. It is also “about equal” to six months ago.
They handle Hemlock and Eastern White Pine. “Generally, it’s millrun and it’s 1-inch, 3-inch and some 4-inch material. I would say Hemlock is a little bit better than White Pine. We also do timbers in 8×8, 10×10, 12×12 and up to 20 feet long,” he explained.
Most of his customers are in the industrial and municipal construction businesses and they have informed him that “there’s fierce competition from other mills and it’s not that great.”
As for any issues his company has encountered such as labor and transportation, he noted, “they’re both a challenge but at the moment, I have everything under control.”
In New York, a lumber representative reported that, at the time of this writing, “business is slow but not atypical for this time of the year.” He referenced January during “those few pandemic years when we couldn’t keep any product on the ground but I don’t think it’s unusual that business is a little slow right now. The weather obviously doesn’t help. People are content to keep their inventory fairly low as far as what’s on the shelf.
“Six months ago,” he said, “was during the busiest time of the year for us because it was towards the end of the summer and early fall.” He doesn’t believe that, at the time of this writing, business is any slower than it was around this time last year.
Eastern White Pine is the “primary source of our softwood sales,” he said. They “basically work with the whole tree,” he added, continuing to list 4/4, 5/4, standard patterns, premium grades, “some Selects” and proprietary grades “mixed in” when asked for a more detailed description of their products.
Primarily, their clientele are retail establishments but they have a few manufacturers in the mix. As for what his clients have said about their marketplaces, he explained, at the time of this writing that the “seasonality of everything is very typical for our industry. I think our dealers are feeling the same thing. The winter months are typically very slow and based on anticipated business and the larger buying shows that should happen, we’ll see some of these customers pick up their inventory levels within the next couple of months. That’s what we hope for, at least.”
He also commented on the challenges of finding labor. “For the past several years, finding quality help has been difficult. We try to be opportunistic when we can if qualified people become available but it’s a continued struggle in our industry all across the board; not only in our wholesale side but also in the retail level as well.”
As he mentioned they import “quite a bit of products” from “all over the globe,” from countries such as Malaysia, New Zealand and Canada, his outlook on tariffs was requested. He noted in his answer that “we’re still trying to evaluate what the changes will do to our business. Fuel is only a small part of it. We will definitely feel the effects but we’re still trying to figure out what those effects will be.”
