Henson Lumber Ltd. Hangs Their Hat On Family Values And Customer Care
“We hang our hat on being independent and just taking care of business and making our customer’s jobs run smoothly.” – Casey Wallace, senior vice president, Henson Lumber Ltd.
Shown here are the inside and outside lumber and millwork sales employees, along with the millwork manager, the CFO and the COO.
Henson Lumber Ltd., based in Cresson, TX, celebrated its 50th anniversary servicing Hood, Parker, Johnson, Tarrant, and other counties in 2023. The company buys and sells lumber, operates a millwork division, and offers other products to satisfy a customer base of home builders, remodelers, and walk-ins in addition to a few DIY clients.
Henson Lumber offers Spruce, Pine and Fir (SPF) as 2x4s in No. 2 Common and No. 3 Common. They handle more Yellow Pine in 2×6, 2×8 and 2×12 than they do SPF. Occasionally, as a special order different from their usual moulding stock, their millwork department purchases some hardwoods such as Oak. The lumber they buy is already kiln-dried, except for Cedar and Douglas Fir, which are green.
On average, they purchase over 5.5 million board feet of No. 3 Common, 2.5 million of No. 2 Common and around 1 million Western finger joint studs mainly from Canada.
In this image, loads are ready to roll to the job site.
Casey Wallace, the senior vice president of Henson Lumber, said the company owns a separate reload business called Cresson Transmodal Distribution Ltd. Henson Lumber sits on a total of 80 acres, with 22-25 of those acres dedicated to the Cresson location. Henson Lumber boasts over 80 employees that include: CFO Glenn Wilson, Millwork Manager Ronnie Hassell and Outside Sales Manager Mike Rainwater. Their Cresson location is equipped with a door shop, their main office, manufacturing buildings and a rail spur that brings the lumber into the yard.
The layout of the offices, facilities and T-sheds can be seen with a “bird’s eye” view on their website, stated Wallace. Wallace added that “back when it initially started, the business was more farm and ranch oriented and currently, we have 10 outside salesmen for millwork and lumber servicing our builders. We purchased Decatur Lumber in November of 2023 for our second location.” When they moved to their Cresson location in 2001, they installed the rail spur.
2×6 in Southern Yellow Pine, 2×4 in borate and overstock of Southern Yellow Pine are depicted here.
The Covid-19 pandemic was the most “lucrative time” in Wallace’s career and he has been a part of the industry since the 1980s. He said that “business was off the walls. Nobody knew what to expect. We couldn’t get products and we couldn’t keep labor,” all while dealing with the pandemic rules. “We were so busy as most yards our size were, that we couldn’t take on any new customers during that time frame because we just couldn’t get enough product. We were trying to take care of our existing customers that had been trading here for however long and our order file was so big, that it was a challenge. It was stressful for everybody in our organization. We had the situation with labor, the payroll situation, having to look at pay every few months because companies were offering more, having to pay more. But business-wise, we looked at the price of material and the average board foot price and sales being off the charts, combine those factors, and everybody had record years,” Wallace added.
Loads of Southern Yellow Pine, Douglas Fir and Hem-Fir are in storage at Henson Lumber Ltd., which is based in Cresson, TX.
Since then, according to Wallace, the company’s stress levels have “gotten a whole lot better.” Product lead times now are similar to those prior to the pandemic in 2018 and 2019. Wallace also shared his thoughts on the interest rate situation at the time of this interview and how it was affecting other businesses. “Everybody knows what the interest rates are doing and what that’s doing to some of the new starts. Texas is pretty blessed from the standpoint of having no state income tax. Even though it slowed down quite a bit, our business is still pretty good. It could be better, but things have definitely leveled off,” he said.
LP® SmartSide® trim and siding, by LP® Outdoor Building Solutions®, in addition to siding and trim manufactured by James Hardie Building Products Inc, are packaged in the back of this photo, while the staged loads are in the front.
Staged loads of Southern Yellow Pine in 2×6, 2×8 and 2×10 are in the foreground, while loads of No. 2 Common in Spruce-Pine-Fir are in the background of this image.
As for the future, Wallace hopes that the company can expand but finding personnel is such a “tremendous struggle.” That can stunt any expansion plans, he noted, unless “you buy somebody out, like we did in Decatur and they already had the personnel in place.”
As an independent company, Wallace insists that they’re “not one of the big three or four where you’re just a number. We take pride in knowing our customer base.” They also have a lot of long-time employees who honor their family-type atmosphere.
Millwork employees in this photo are building door units.
Regarding prioritizing customer service, he commented, “if a plan comes in the door, we assign a salesperson, and they make contact if it’s a new customer. So, we try to take care of them the minute they walk in the door. As for existing builders, we have a lot of tenured ones that aren’t looking to move their business and they know that we are going to take care of them and take pride in their account. We really appreciate their business.” By taking care of their employees and retention of customers, Henson Lumber Ltd. continues to uphold their family-style values and make everything operate seamlessly.
This is the inside of the lumber sales counter.
Henson Lumber Ltd. is a member of the Lumbermen’s Association of Texas and several builder’s associations, as well as being a member of the LMC Buying Co-op.
To learn more, visit hensonlumber.com.
