St. Louis, MO– Mark Drone grew up in a lumber family in a small town in Illinois and now serves as general manager for Forest Products Supply, a wholesale lumber distributor headquartered here with affiliates throughout the Midwest. He said one of his key mentors, company President Rich Millman, has always stressed that there are three questions in the wholesale lumber business:
“It’s ‘Do you have it?’
‘Can you get it to me?’
‘And what’s your price?’”
Those questions are simple, but providing consistent answers is difficult, especially when you’re attempting to do so on a grand scale. That’s what Forest Products Supply is doing: in a 12-month period, the company sells 75 million to 80 million board feet of lumber.
Drone said those figures are just for the portions of the company that he personally manages, in Kansas City, KS and Omaha, NE.
In addition to those facilities, Forest Products Supply has a corporate headquarters and lumberyard in St. Louis, as well as lumberyards in Newton, KS; Columbus, OH, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis. The other branches have their own managers who purchase and sell in their markets.
Drone said the company prides itself on getting the products to its core customers: contractor-oriented retail lumberyards. “Because when it comes down to price, there’s plenty of competition out there. We’re about service and we’re about mixed trucks.
“You see one of our trucks going down the road, it has a bunch of different products on it. The buyer who’s just looking for straight trucks of 7/16” OSB may care only about the price. But the customer who wants service and a mixed load, and wants it there within a day or two, that’s where we really shine,” Drone explained.
The Kansas City and Omaha branches have their own trucks as well as working with a dedicated fleet operated by J.B. Hunt. To give a sense of the scale, a total of 14 flatbed trucks are assigned to Kansas City and two are assigned to Omaha. Dispatchers at each location help keep track of all the loads and shipments.
While the Kansas City and Omaha branches employ 50 people, companywide Forest Products Supply and its sister company FP-Supply employ 180 people across the seven branches.
A History Dating From The 1930s
Forest Products Supply is one of four lumber-related companies within the privately held Millman Lumber group. The larger business group was founded in 1931 in St. Louis and is now in its third generation of ownership by the Millman family.
Forest Products Supply first launched in St. Louis in 1987. Today, Rich Millman is the president of Forest Products Supply and his nephew Dan Millman is the vice president.
Drone’s father and uncle ran Carmi Lumber, a retail lumberyard located in Carmi, IL, and he worked side-by-side with his Grandfather William there as a child through high school.
He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1994.
Drone worked as a wood engineer for Trus Joist, first in Naperville, IL and then in Boise, ID, spending the last few years with the corporate engineering department testing and evaluating engineered wood products.
He left the company and earned an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. When he finished, he needed a job and contacted Rich Millman.
He recalls that Millman told him that while all the MBA education was a good start, he’d really complete his education working in sales at a contractor yard. He landed at a location of Great Central Lumber, a retail lumberyard that the Millman family owned.
That was in 2002.
Then in 2008, Forest Products Supply took over a Weyerhaeuser distribution yard in Kansas City. Rich Millman selected Drone to go run it, and he made the move.
Over the last few years the company has added several other locations. The company’s next expansion was Newton, KS and the former North Pacific yards in Columbus and Indianapolis.
The company launched its Oklahoma City location in 2013.
Then in February 2018, the company started up its Omaha branch.
“One thing I wanted to stress is we’re not bureaucratic. I came to (Rich Millman) with this idea about starting up an operation in Omaha,” Drone said.
Rich Millman and Dan Millman soon signed off on the idea and the company made the investments. It was a fast process and the decision was made with minimal fuss, Drone said. “We don’t believe in a lot of meetings.”
Commodity Lumber And Specialty Lumber
Today, Forest Products Supply carries about one-half commodity lumber and one-half specialty building products.
In Kansas City, here are some of the notable products in the commodity lumber category:
- Kiln-dried Douglas Fir No. 2, in 2×4 through 2×12, including long lengths
- Green Douglas Fir timbers, in 4×6 through 10×10 and special order timbers
- Kiln-dried Spruce Pine Fir in No. 3, No. 2, Hi-Line, and 4-square, in 2×4, 2×6
- Kiln-dried Hem-Fir No. 2, Select Structural in 2×4 through 2×12
- Kiln-dried Southern Yellow Pine in 2×4 through 2×12
- Treated Southern Yellow Pine
- Full line of Western Red Cedar, smooth and rough
- Pine boards and pattern stock · Ponderosa Pine, Radiata Pine, C and Better.
Categorized by lumber species, Kansas City’s top sellers by volume are:
Fir – 36 percent
Spruce Pine Fir – 34 percent
Pine/Spruce boards – 10 percent
Southern Yellow Pine – 10 percent
Cedar – 5 percent
Southern Yellow Pine treated with wood preservative – 4 percent
Southern Yellow Pine treated with fire-resistant chemicals – 1 percent
In the specialty building products category, Forest Products Supply-Kansas City also sells composite decking products from the company called Deckorators as well as James Hardie fiber cement siding.
Additionally, all branches are distributors for Trus Joist engineered wood products manufactured by Weyerhaeuser. That product has to do with the company’s history in Kansas City.
“We purchased the branch from Weyerhaeuser and became a distributor of Trus Joist engineered wood,” Drone said. “Weyerhaeuser decided they wanted out of being a distributor in the KC market but they still wanted to have a partner to market their branded product and that’s how we ended up in Kansas City.”
The company buys its products from mills throughout the United States and Canada and even as far away as South America and Germany.
Specialized Equipment
The company has invested in some notable equipment at its Kansas City location. A massive L-M Equipment Company I-Cut-30 Package Crosscut Saw can cut a bundle of lumber at once, and do so to unique lengths.
“We’ve had a unit saw for over three years now and we cut special trims nearly every day,” Drone said.
The company also recently invested in an Ironwood DSP2500 16” Planer for surfacing timbers.
Additionally, it owns a Kentwood HBR 400 XL Horizontal 12” Resaw, which can resize timbers to custom sizes.
The facility in Kansas City covers about 24 acres with nine buildings and 160,000 square feet of covered storage.
It also has two railroad tracks coming into its facility from the nearby Union Pacific railroad. Each rail siding can take over seven rail cars.
The Omaha satellite facility consists of four acres, with two buildings and 36,000 square feet of covered storage.
Association memberships
The company is a member of several organizations, including the North American Wholesale Lumber Association and the Western Red Cedar Lumber Association. It’s also part of the Mid-America Lumbermens Association and the Northwestern Lumber Association.
Key personnel
Currently the Kansas City branch has 13 salespeople, many of whom are former Weyerhaeuser employees that stayed when Forest Products Supply took over the branch. Drone said, “We are fortunate to have a sales team that isn’t afraid to wear many hats including acting as buyers. For example, Bob Bush buys Southern Pine, John Turner buys OSB, Matt Beikman buys plywood and Steve Shellenberger buys Cedar, timbers and even helps supervise our machinery. Without their help my job would be a lot less fun.”
Also in KC is the branch operations manager David Pickinpaugh, who had begun working for the company under Weyerhaeuser and continued when it was purchased. Dave Pickinpaugh laughed when he said, “it’s been a good challenge managing a site that has added so many products and services over the years. Great job security!”
The Omaha branch has three salespeople along with an onsite sales manager Jerry Wieseler. “Besides acting as my right-hand man in Omaha he allows me freedom to venture forth on new opportunities,” Drone said.
Strategy – service at the core
At the moment, the company is focusing on growing its sales and customer relationships at its existing branches. “But we will definitely take a look at opportunities if the right one comes along,” Drone said.
He says the only factors holding back the company’s growth have been limited time and limited resources, particularly a difficulty in finding enough staff to go out and seize all existing opportunities.
“We need more salespeople with a sense of urgency and customer service and we’re challenged just like the whole industry in trying to find good people. But getting good people, there’s nothing holding us back . . . Our biggest competitor is time. There’s only so much time in the day.”
Drone says the company is doing well despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recession it brought in 2020.
The situation contributed to supply chain breakdowns, but not for Forest Products Supply, he said. “We have a very financially stable company, so we’re able to keep our pipeline filled and we’re able to get it to the customer in a timely fashion.
“So right now it’s kind of good a lot of customers want to live more hand to mouth,” he said, explaining that in volatile times customers don’t want to keep a big inventory on hand.
“That’s where we really shine—we can get it to you in a timely fashion.”
Learn More At www.fp-Supply.com.
