ROUNDUP, Mont. — A pair of been-there-forever family-owned sawmills in eastern Montana are surviving an economic firestorm in the wood products industry due to adaptability and fix-anything attitudes.
Kelly Gebhardt and his brother, Monte, muscle around an 8-foot, 100-plus pound wrench they made to tighten 28 monster bolts on the pressure-treating chamber. Fence posts are run through the chamber and treated chemically so they don't rot. A hydraulic door would have cost the Gebhardt Post Plant & Sawmill in Roundup at least $225,000.
"Gosh, for that kind of investment, you can pay somebody's wages for a whole day just on the interest," Kelly said.
Instead, the brothers buy used equipment or make their own, and in their spare time, they design more efficient mills.
"Anybody who is surviving in this business, that's because he's able to repair the stuff," Kelly said. "You buy used and then you wonder about your sanity because somebody went broke with it already."
Jim Barnum, a second-generation sawmill owner at B & J Sawmill in Reed Point, said the only time he hires outside help is for machining parts.
Jim and his wife, Eileen, have been running the mill for more than three decades with Bob Ott, Jim's brother-in-law, who retired five years ago.
These are two Montana mill owners who are the exceptions, surviving because of adaptability and their fix-anything skills.
Since 1990, about 30 sawmills, mostly in western Montana, have closed at a cost of at least 3,200 jobs.
In 1969, Bull Mountain sheep rancher and grain farmer John Gebhardt bought 14 acres and a single sawmill building, now today's Gebhardt Post Plant & Sawmill.
Through the years, he and his sons, Kelly and Monte, built 17 more buildings filled with specialized milling equipment.
At its peak, they employed 43 people and shipped most of their lumber to the Midwest. When that market changed, they had to change, too.
"All we did was fix broken equipment," Kelly said. "And having to ship the lumber up to 1,000 miles, we couldn't compete with the cheaper Southern yellow pine."
So the Gebhardts gradually cut back to seven employees, counting themselves, and now sell to buyers in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Few mills still sharpen their own blades. The Gebhardts have a full room of sharpeners, whining and sparking away, that shave down the blades through their cutting career from 60 inches to 24 inches.
In the early 1980s, an East Coast chemist bought Kelly coffee at the Busy Bee CafÉ in Roundup and had him sketch out on a napkin his energy-efficient design for the post-treating plant.
The man went back home, patented the Montanan's sketch and made millions, Gebhardt said. But he didn't consider suing.
"He's got to live with himself every day," he said.
After a hard winter and record flooding along the Musselshell that kept customers and employees at bay for three weeks, a fire in May burned three buildings and equipment, costing the Gebhardts about $200,000.
After growing up on a Bull Mountain ranch, Kelly took every welding class he could at college in Havre. In addition to operating the mill, he teaches flying, inspects airplanes for the Federal Aviation Administration, teaches firefighting for the state of Montana, runs the Roundup Airport and helps run a family company that recovers oil from stripper or marginal wells. He recently served terms as a state senator and county commissioner.
Still even after the floods, business is slow, said Monte Gebhardt.
"I think it's just a slump in the economy and no one has the funds to repair their places," he said.
For half a century now, lumber yards and mega-stores have been selling dimensional lumber that's been downsized like cereal boxes.
A 1x6 inch board is really 5/8th inch by 5 1/2 or even 5 1/4 inch now, Barnum said.
But at the B & J Sawmill in Reed Point, customers get rough-cut Douglas fir boards that are an honest cut.
"I'm similar in price on cedar fencing, but the neighbor's dog can jump on it and not break it," he said. "And you don't end up buying an extra plank to finish your fence."
The Barnums were reluctant to be interviewed, saying they like to stay low-key because they don't need more business and publicity might increase the already stiff competition for timber.
Reed Point's tiny mill sells to farmers and ranchers, contractors, homeowners and the Stillwater Mining Co., which buys specially milled timbers to shore up their underground tunnels near Nye.
"It is a niche market and it's real lumber. When I make a 10x10, it's a 10x10," Barnum said.
Stillwater's Nye mine makes up about 25 percent of his business now, he said. An extra employee is needed to produce the horseshoe-shaped cribbing and other special cuts. B & J also sells timbers that hold drilling pipe in the Bakken oil fields and crossing planks to Montana Rail Link.
But his best buddies are ranchers buying 2-by-8-by-16-foot boards to build cattle and horse corrals.
"I sell them all night long in my sleep and then all day, too," he said. "They're my favorite customers. They're always buying stuff to take care of their animals."
For 40 years, his father, Glen Barnum, ran a Reed Point sawmill at another location, setting the dimensions of the cut by hand. Barnum, a Marine who served in the Vietnam War and fixed computers for a couple years in Salt Lake City before moving back home, designed a more efficient mill that is somewhat computerized.
"We're not fully automated like the mill in Hulett (Wyo.) near Devil's Tower, where the computer tells you what your market is that day, cuts the wood, and you sell it," he said. "But we get along just fine."
Montana's sawmills also are struggling because loggers and skilled sawmill workers split for bigger paychecks in the oil fields, Barnum said.
The lumber business in Montana may be bad right now, but Barnum's not worried.
"If you have a quality product, you don't really have to advertise," he said.
Information from: Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com