Roseburg Forest Products Lumber company president, Allyn Ford in Missoula to meet 200+ new employees

Allyn Ford’s father started Roseburg Forest Products http://www.rfpco.com midway through the Great Depression, convinced that hard work and good people would make his patchwork sawmill a success.

By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian

He had 25 employees, a lot full of salvaged milling equipment and a tiny one-room office he hardly ever used. He was the mill superintendent, the head salesman, a sometimes-logger, and – when needed – the logging camp’s cook and waiter.

Today, Kenneth Ford’s company is indeed a success and his son oversees 3,700 employees and a veritable wood-products manufacturing empire: one sawmill, four plywood plants, two particleboard plants, one engineered wood products plant, a veneer plant, and an export dock and loading facility for wood chips.

Still headquartered in Roseburg, Ore., the company has facilities throughout southwestern Oregon and northern California, and now also in Missoula. But the whole thing still relies upon hard work and good people, Roseburg president and CEO Allyn Ford said Friday.

In Missoula to meet the 200-plus employees at his company’s newest acquisition – the former Louisiana-Pacific Corp. particleboard plant on Raser Drive, Ford said the people were one of the attributes that made the mill so attractive to Roseburg.

"This plant has a history of people who work well together," he said. "Our industry is experiencing a tremendous amount of change; if we are going to adapt to those changes, we need a group of people who can really work together."

"There’s a revolution going on," Ford said.

Roseburg remains a family-owned company, tightly controlled by Allyn Ford, his three children and their mother. It also remains committed to the wood-products industry and to a "very flat" management structure.

"There is a very short line of communication between the top of the organization and the people who make things happen on the floor," Ford said. "We all have sawdust behind our ears and grease beneath our fingernails. You can’t run a business from behind a desk."

(One of the many stories told about Ford’s father – who died in 1997 – is how he brought a new engineer to Roseburg’s plant in Riddle, Ore., and immediately took him into the bark hog: a hole 12- to 15-feet deep with about 7 inches of oily water in the bottom.

The new engineer wore a tie and dress shoes; Kenneth Ford wore high-top work boots. The man followed Ford down the ladder into the pit, thereby passing the first test of his employment.)

Nowadays, Allyn Ford spends a lot of time thinking about – and strategizing for – "the revolution."

Everything about the wood-products industry is in flux, he said. Producers have a much closer relationship to the customer than they did historically. That’s the effect of big-box stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot, he said.

Every board Roseburg ships to a big box must be stamped with a bar code, ready for sale. Many must also be shrink-wrapped. Some orders call for 25 units, some for 5,000. Some boards leave the mill with a melamine finish, some with a wood-grain design printed on the particleboard.

By adding the Missoula plant to its mix, Roseburg can offer customers a pine-core particleboard – a board valued for its ability to be machine-cut. Pine is softer than the Douglas fir that forms the core of the particleboard manufactured at Roseburg’s plants in Oregon, so is more "machinable," Ford said.

"Furniture manufacturers and home builders and cabinetmakers want one supplier," he said, "so we want to be able to offer them all the different cores and all the overlays. Now we have access to Douglas-fir core, pine core and plywood core. When this plant became available, we were very interested. It was something we were looking for."

Roseburg’s future is in particleboard and composite products, its president said.

And while any ownership change unnerves workers, the Missoula plant employees are excited to be part of a company that specializes in the product they manufacture, said plant manager Art Green. "There’s a new sense of security."

Hank Snow, Roseburg’s vice president of human resources, said all of Louisiana-Pacific’s employees in Missoula were interviewed by Roseburg before the plant changed hands. Fourteen hourly and three salaried employees did not receive job offers.

"They were not good fits for us," Snow said.

The rest were offered and accepted jobs with Roseburg. The hourly workers were given a 25 cent-an-hour raise beginning last Saturday, and the salaried workers were told their pay would be reviewed over the next month and adjusted to fit similar positions at other Roseburg mills.

"When we look at pay, we look at internal equity – what do we pay other, similar jobs inside the corporation – and at external equity – what’s going on in the outside world," Snow said. "And we look at geographic location. Is there a geographic difference in the cost of living?

"Already, we know there are four or five positions that are under-compensated from our standpoint. So those people will see a change because of what we believe is the value of their job."

And while change is a certainty, Roseburg will not rush into any retooling or reorganization at the Missoula plant – in part because the wood-products market is so difficult these days, in part because the company is not one prone to quick decisions, Ford said.

"We see a potential in this operation. We see a future in this operation," he said. "That’s why we made this investment. And like any investment, you have to nurture it, you have to feed it."

(Roseburg paid Louisiana-Pacific $20 million for the Missoula plant and its inventory.)

"Now we have to focus on the future," Ford said. "What do we do with that board? How do we brand it? How do we upgrade it? What are the synergies with our other plants?"

"Historically, people in northwest Montana have been very innovative, very creative," said Lindsay Crawford, Roseburg’s vice president of manufacturing. "That’s why they have survived when others have failed."

"That’s why," said Ford, "we are so excited to be in Montana. We are excited about working with this group of people."

Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at [email protected].

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