A Wealth Of Experience Makes Allegheny Mountain Hardwoods
In August of 2024, Allegheny Mountain Hardwoods (AMH) was born from the acquisition of two dry kiln facilities in Petersburg, WV, and Hazelton, WV, by Delson, QC-based, Goodfellow Inc. These facilities were previously known as “Allegheny Wood Products” (AWP).
AMH’s General Manager, Dean Alanko, explained why the previous name wasn’t retired after the acquisition. “It’s no coincidence that our name starts with ‘Allegheny.’ We are not a part of the old AWP, but that name had value in the marketplace, and we’ve continued that value with the lumber and the service that we provide.” They even use the same shade of green paint for their company logo as their predecessor. “That stencil on a pack of lumber says ‘AMH’ — Allegheny Mountain Hardwoods, but it’s a simple ‘AMH.’”
AMH’s owner, Goodfellow Inc., is a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange and headed by Patrick Goodfellow, the company CEO and president.
Goodfellow Inc. has celebrated their 125th year of operation. “They are a huge distribution company throughout Canada, and they have one distribution yard in Manchester, NH. Allegheny Mountain Hardwoods is a division of Goodfellow Distribution Inc. Goodfellow Distribution Inc. is the U.S. based company that is part of Goodfellow Inc.,” added Alanko.
Goodfellow also has locations in La Grange, KY, and Pittsfield, PA, both of which handle green lumber drying, grading and packaging. Treating, making laminated beams, distributing and carrying flooring are also among Goodfellow’s services. Trois-Rivieres (Three Rivers), located in Drummondville, QC, is just one of Goodfellow’s hardwood drying operations.
“We are a concentration yard that puts up full or mixed loads or mixed containers of random width, length, kiln-dried Northern Appalachian hardwood lumber. This is not a distribution company that decided in the last few years to get into the hardwood business — there’s a wealth of experience and knowledge inside of the company in drying lumber, procuring hardwood lumber, grading it, and a wealth of customers who have been associated with Goodfellow for a long time,” added Alanko.
Procurement Manager Ed Carr stated, “Our number one species is Red Oak (4/4 through 10/4), and after that they kind of fall in line: Cherry, White Oak, Soft Maple and Hard Maple all in 4/4 through 8/4, and then Poplar (4/4 through 12/4). We also buy Walnut (4/4 through 8/4) and Hickory (4/4 through 8/4). We do buy No. 1 Common & Better predominantly in all species.” They make half-packs for long length, FAS material such as 14’ through 16’ in all species. 15 million board feet is processed between the two facilities.
AMH buys thicker stock from green mills and other sawmills. “Probably two of our top 10 suppliers also have dry kilns,” explained Carr. Most of their lumber, predominantly the Red Oak and Cherry, is sourced from Pennsylvania and West Virginia but they also “reach out into Ohio and Maryland. We almost always stay west of Route 29,” which is known for Poplar and White Oak.
and White Oak.
Carr claimed they have a “million acres of National Forest which has some of the best timber that hasn’t been harvested in over 100 years,” in West Virgina. “If you start with a good log you are going to have great lumber.”
Their Red and White Oak and Poplar are, as described by Alanko, “really high-end color products for the Northern Appalachian region” due to the Color No Defect (CND) they use. “If during our manufacturing process we see, for some reason, some excessive mineral or some sap stain, we put up a CND product.”
“Everything that comes in is either delivered by one of the suppliers or Ed gets with Sam Blizzard, our transportation manager, and arranges the trucking through a contract trucking company to bring the lumber to us. Everything that leaves here is protected. The flats have tarps on them,” he said. Most of the time, what they ship to the West Coast and beyond the Mississippi River, is in dry vans.
Operations Manager Brian Booth added, “At least 90 percent of the wood is going to be on a profile stick and primarily everything is one-foot sticker placement. Everything is locked — left hand or right hand adjusted — to make sure every other board with a high-load chain can balance the pack. When we are stacking up four-packs high, be it in the kiln or air yard, we don’t get that pack to cling to it even when we distribute it.”
“Many of the customers that we sell to (which include but are not limited to distributors, cabinet, cabinet part, furniture and flooring manufacturers), especially in the export market, are import distributors and our lumber goes in a container to their facility. They take it out and put it in a warehouse with a lot of our competitor’s lumber and we have found that appearance makes a huge difference. Our packaging is first rate,” explained Alanko.
They have package makers at both facilities. Booth, who is located at the Petersburg facility, noted, “We do approximately four million board feet of lumber on the third yard. There are 16 kilns at the facility, nearly 1 million feet of kiln capacity. At both facilities we have a stacker with automatic stick placement. The Petersburg facility has three boilers, two Superior boilers (one of the Superior boilers has AFS upgrades), a Hurst boiler that has AFS upgrades (it is a backup boiler for the main site at the Petersburg facility).
“At the Petersburg facility, all the boilers are wood waste boilers. As far as the Hazelton facility, there is a Hurst gas boiler for four of the kilns and a large Hurst wood waste boiler with AFS upgrades. The Hazelton facility has nearly one million feet of kiln capacity. Both facilities have dip tanks that we dip our lumber into when we receive it from the sawmills if they haven’t already dipped it in some anti-stain, anti-fungal dip to protect the color of our Oaks. Moreover, we wax the end of the lumber to prevent end splits.”
ISK Biocides is the dip vendor and AMH uses NeXgen and NeX-Brite products as well.
AMH adheres to OSHA safety standards and DEP regulations to maintain a safe workplace and strives for zero lost time accidents. “I would say easily 80 percent of our employees in the last year-and-a-half have had perfect attendance,” Alanko stated. The average tenure is 12.5 years.
“Patrick Goodfellow asked me to be on as general manager, and he asked Ed Carr to join as our procurement manager,” he noted. “Ed had already been with AWP in the procurement side. Brian had been with AWP in the operations side, running several of the kiln operations for AWP and I was the vice president of sales for AWP, so the familiarity with these facilities was there from the start with who could be considered for the Executive Committee of the company.”
Alanko had been in the industry since 1984, graduated with the National Hardwood Lumber Association (NHLA) Grading School’s class of 1983 and was a member of the NHLA board.
Carr got his start in 1993 and, according to Alanko, “spends a wealth of time on our grading lines at both facilities looking at inbound lumber but also working with the inspectors on the outbound side.”
Booth began in 2003. Alanko noted, “He worked previously in the treating business with Koppers Inc. Brian has a lot of experience,” whether it is supervising, inspecting, running dry kilns or doing yard work.
Blizzard has a “wealth of experience coming to his role with us,” commented Alanko. “He is responsible for all our container, flatbed and dried shipments. He has good connections with our A-#1freight forwarder and with several of the trucklines that haul lumber for us, whether it is on a flatbed, a Conestoga, or a dry van.”
Domestic Salesman Paul Gilbert handles their business with their agents in Spain, Portugal and Italy.
Including Alanko, Carr, Booth, Blizzard, Gilbert and their Hazelton plant manager who has been with AMH for 27 years, they have 56 employees in the U.S. and two in China — Sales Representative Damon Yan and Sales Admin Tingting Wang. Alanko described Yan as a “well respected salesman in China and a brilliant young man. He is a real asset to our company.” Having Tingting “administrating all the paperwork and all the logistics that come with the volume of lumber that we ship into China and Southeast Asia, is a real blessing,” Alanko added.
“We’ve got great administrative staff domestically and in China. The ladies in the pool group are responsible for cataloging or recording inbound lumber, sending purchase orders out for lumber that we are purchasing, putting in the orders for the customers, the salesmen’s orders, following up and doing the paperwork with the export loads, the FIDO certificates and the tallies,” he stated.
“There is not an employee on these jobs that is not proud of every pack of lumber that leaves here,” stated Alanko.
Allegheny Mountain Hardwoods is a member of the NHLA, American Hardwood Export Council, West Virginia Forestry Association and Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen’s Association.
For more details, visit amhwoods.com.
