Making progress in spite of COVID

When COVID-19 first popped up in the news, we weren't too worried it would affect us here in Seeley Lake. Then it became a pandemic and things changed. We urged our employees to follow all recommended precautions, but were still left with many questions about whether the virus would reach Seeley Lake, and if it did, what would that look like for our workforce.

We identified that our primary exposure to outside personnel is in shipping. We took extra precautions in our shipping office by limiting the contact with lumber truck drivers. We implemented a system where, instead of a driver having to come into the office, we have personnel work with them in the yard and transfer paperwork through a window. The drivers had little to no contact with our employees and did not have to touch anything in our offices.

We also closed our break rooms for a period of time to eliminate employees congregating in small areas. We closed our offices to the public and stopped offering mill tours.

While we have had a number of employees who had to take time off during the last six months for various reasons, our production did not suffer due to COVID. We are hoping that continues to be the case.

COVID has also had an impact on the lumber market.

In the initial stages of the pandemic, the stock market crashed pretty hard and the lumber market followed suite within weeks. We saw serious price decreases and sales and shipping fell off drastically. Luckily, this downturn didn't last too long and soon the market started to come back up.

With the 'COVID shutdown' in effect across the country, people started staying home and working on 'DIY' projects, increasing demand for lumber. At the same time, the Southeastern United States saw production shortages due to COVID shutdowns and British Columbia has been experiencing issues with a limited timber base, which lead to a supply shortage.

The wood products industry, which includes Pyramid, our suppliers (including loggers and landowners) and our customers, was deemed an essential industry. We were able to continue operating. Sales and shipping picked up and production could hardly keep up with demand. While this frenzy was short-lived, it was exciting while it lasted. Sales are still steady and the market, while it has decreased significantly recently, is still pretty solid.

Through the challenges of the pandemic, the uptick in the market allowed us to move forward with improvements here at Pyramid. The Pathfinder covered our first project, the installation of our GradExpert, in October 2019. The GradExpert is a machine that automatically grades the lumber and determines the trim solution (how much to cut off either end, or both, to get the best value out of each board). We also installed an updated trimmer that can trim faster and more accurately.

After those two projects were complete, we looked at putting trays in above our dry chain and a new high-speed lumber stacker. With all the improvements ahead of the dry chain, we knew we were going to see that area become a bottleneck. We could not run as fast as the GradExpert would allow because we would overload the personnel pulling lumber on the dry chain. We were able to work with West Coast Industrial, a company out of Oregon that had worked on the GradExpert and trimmer projects, to design the trays for us.

We now have eight trays above our dry chain that push the lumber to the new automatic high-speed stacker. We were able to reduce the number of people pulling lumber, one of our most labor-intensive positions, from six or seven people, down to two or three with the physical demand reduced. We were then able to send those 'extra' people to other areas where we were short-handed.

One of our next projects, which we anticipate will be completed around the first of the year, is to put in a new strapping station. Once the lumber is all surfaced, graded and stacked, it has to be strapped with banding and wrapped in our paper wrap. Every unit that comes from the trays through the high-speed stacker, along with lumber from the dry chain and any lumber we run through our moulder to put pattern on, has to go through this linear process and that added production has created a bottleneck. The latest project will install a new automatic strapping station that will compress each unit, place dunnage, apply two or three bands per unit depending on the length and move the unit down the line for paper wrap. We will also gain space for backlog so we don't have to stop production when we have more than a couple units waiting to be strapped.

The final bottleneck issue we have been able to address is our waste system.

All of our trim ends from the planer go through a chipper, which then is conveyed into a bin where the chips can be dumped into trucks. Now that we can run faster and increase production, our waste system struggles to keep up with production. We will be putting in a larger capacity hog, which is similar to the chipper but it will essentially pulverize the trim ends rather than cutting them into small pieces. The improvements in the waste system should allow us to further speed up production and reduce downtime.

In order to be competitive in today's market, we had to either hire more people or automate some of our processes. Our attempt at hiring people was unsuccessful, so automation won out. We have retained all of our employees through these projects and are hoping to now increase our production.

None of these projects would have been possible without the support of our owners, and especially our crew. These projects have created challenges at times and our people have stuck with us through all of it! We are looking forward to the future and growth of Pyramid Mountain Lumber and Seeley Lake.