GREENSBURG, KY – Eagle Lumber Company is a labor of love for Paul Peachey, head of the company, and his two sons, Josh and Jeremy. The sawmill manufactures between 10 million and 12 million board feet of Hardwood lumber per year. Among the species they saw are Red and White Oak, Poplar, and Walnut, mostly harvested within a 75-mile radius of the mill, located here in Central Kentucky. All of their lumber is sold green, mostly in 4/4 and 5/4 plus some 8/4. Sub-contractors do the logging and trucking.
Paul Peachey, the father, who was born in Pennsylvania, started in the pallet business in 1993. Twenty years later, he established his first mill to cut logs into pallet lumber. Later, he began manufacturing grade lumber.
“I really enjoy sawmilling,” Paul Peachey said. “I enjoy purchasing equipment, setting it up, mill-rigging, hiring a team of men, and then putting it all together to get a sawmill up and running. It was something that I thoroughly enjoyed in 2019 when we upgraded our mill here and built the new mill in Hustonville, KY.”
“I just firmly believe in giving back after we have received so much. We are an indebted people for how blessed we are, living in a free country, free enterprise and being able to operate, and in return, let’s reach out and help each other.”
Paul Peachey, Eagle Lumber Company
In 2015, the primary mill, Eagle Lumber in Greensburg, got a McDonough run-around system. In 2019, the business added a Cleereman debarker, and a seven-foot McDonough band head rig with a scanner from Lewis Controls.
When these extensive upgrades were made at Eagle Lumber, the well-maintained used equipment from there was transported to the then-new mill, Lincoln Hardwood Lumber in Hustonville. The Peacheys also own a company called Quality Pallet. It ships around 30 loads of new pallets per week.
Quality Pallet employs 27 people. Lincoln Hardwood Lumber in Hustonville has 12 employees. Josiah Hershberger is the mill manager in Hustonville. Tim Yoder works closely with Hershberger and is heavily involved with maintenance. Lincoln Hardwood Lumber is operating a Cleereman circle sawmill and a 600 series West Plains resaw with 80 percent of their production being pallet material for Quality Pallet. The remaining 20 percent is split between 4/4 grade lumber and industrial products.
Eagle Lumber employs a head log buyer and truck dispatcher named Rodney Zimmerman. Jay Scantland is production manager in the sawmill. Weldon Stauffer and Doug Aaron are foresters. All maintenance, electrical troubleshooting and machinery installs are handled by in-house maintenance staff, Merle Stauffer and Jeremy Auker.
One of the last improvements the company made was the addition of a concreted wet deck and water storage pond. This will help them achieve their yearly goal of 2.5 million board feet of log inventory by Thanksgiving of 2021. This allows them to be more consistent with production during the winter months and keep a steady supply of lumber flowing to their customers.
What it takes to run these businesses brings joy to Paul Peachey. He observed, “It seems like when you work at a sawmill, you get sawdust in your blood and you can’t hardly get it out.” Among other duties, he enjoys working with data about his business. “I love information, and I spend a lot of time in my office looking at last week’s production runs, what they cut, what we sawed per hour, and our yields that we are getting on the logs we buy,” Peachey said.
“My philosophy is: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. That’s a very, very important statement in our sawmill industry. You’ve got to know where your log costs are. You have to know what your costs are per hour, or you will simply not know where you are at the end of the day on your profit / loss statement. That is something that I really enjoy, and it’s interesting to watch all the numbers add up at the end of the month.”
The firm’s mission statement is “to make a good product, price it fairly, and do what you say,” Peachey stated. He added, “My greatest mission here is to take care of my employees.” He said he enjoys hiring young men, or boys, having an older employee groom them in the industry, and then “seeing a young boy blossom into manhood while he has worked here. I have a lot of boys who have started here when they were younger and now are married men, bought places of their own, and have a beautiful young family. That blesses me about more that anything does.”
Another core value of Eagle Lumber Company is found in the Bible, in Malachi 3:10: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Peachey, whose family are Mennonites, stated, “I just firmly believe in giving back after we have received so much. We are an indebted people for how blessed we are, living in a free country, free enterprise and being able to operate, and in return, let’s reach out and help each other.”
Every Monday before work begins, the 23 employees at this mill meet in order to talk about how work is going, have a safety talk, and to “have a word of prayer together,” Peachey noted. Every Tuesday he provides lunch for the office staff.
Besides Paul Peachey, the hierarchy of the company includes his sons, Josh and Jeremy. “This is a family business.” Peachey says. Josh is the main mill manager at Eagle Lumber Company. Jeremy owns 20 percent of the companies and works at the mill when he is not teaching grades five through eight at the local church school.
Paul Peachey’s initiation into sawmilling occurred when he was growing up. His maternal grandfather, the late Emery Weaver, was a sawmiller. His grandfather “was a great man of great character,” Paul recalls. “He was very well liked in the business world. He treated his men very well. The surrounding tracts of timber were readily available to him, because of the name that he held in his local community. He was a very well-respected man, a fine Christian man, and I am indebted to him.”
“I also attribute a lot of my success in the business to my uncle Abe Weaver,” Peachey recalled. “Often, when I had a question or was in a difficult position, he would have words of wisdom for me and was just a great mentor. Many times, I would call him, and he would encourage me in a certain direction, and hardly ever if I followed through with his advice did it fail. I just learned a lot from him and his first cousin, John Weaver. I patterned off of them a lot in how to treat your employees. ‘Take good care of your men.’ If you expect them to be there at 6:00 a.m. every morning, then be there yourself to pump the enthusiasm. Practice the golden rule and treat them well, and they will do you well. I have found that to be very true. So, I guess my hat is off to my Uncle Abe Weaver and his cousin John Weaver of Bedford, Pennsylvania, two great men that have done very well in the industry and are very well respected.”
“With our mission statement: ‘do what you say,’ we really pay attention to detail,” Peachey continued. “If someone wants some lumber cut that is 4/4, we make sure that it is a full inch and an eighth. If they want 5/4, then that’s what we cut, and if they want certain grade sorts, we really pay attention to detail and have found it pays off very well. When Josh goes into sales, they pretty well know that they are going to get what they order, and it’s a name that we have established here that we are proud of: we deliver a product that the customer wants and deliver it on time.”
For more information about Eagle Lumber Company, call Josh at (270) 405-6424.
