Gary Ort, president of Wolf River Lumber Inc., with his daughter, Kari Ort-Bunting, vice president of operations and executive marketing.
Wolf River Lumber Looks To The Future By Wayne Miller
New London, Wis.—In the past year, the Ort family has invested a lot of money and effort into their company, adding kilns and rip lines and updating manufacturing processes—all in an effort to become more efficient, add quality and provide a better product to customers and increase their yield.
Kari Ort-Bunting, vice president of operations and executive marketing, said that in May of 2004 the company installed a Mereen-Johnson 411, along with a Cameron Automation Opti-Rip System—also known as the rip line—to meet customer demands. “Now, we are doing a lot of ripped products for customers, either for the exact size that they want, or for product yield.” They have a lot of extra capacity to service their customers.
The addition of the new kilns began in February of 2005. After installing the original 30 SII dry kilns, company management decided to install an additional 20 SII kilns. The new kilns are stainless steel as opposed to aluminum, to prevent damage from acid in the woods.
The company’s headquarters is located in New London, Wis.
“We are mainly drying 4/4 and 5/4, so we’re getting approximately 2.5 turns on the kiln. We can dry between 4 and 5 million board feet per month now,” stated Ort-Bunting.
Wolf River’s largest volume of product comes from Hard and Soft Maple, followed by Cherry and Red Oak, however the company provides 15 different species and they come in 4/4 & 5/4 thicknesses, but the firm will manufacture up to 8/4. Ort-Bunting added that if a customer asks for something specific that they do not already offer, every attempt is made to fill the specific request.
Most of the lumber the company processes comes from a close-range area, with a majority coming from Wisconsin and Michigan.
“Depending on the species, sometimes we will bring in material out of Canada, from the East or even south of here,” Ort-Bunting stated. “However, our primary focus is in the Northern species.”
Employees at the firm pile dimension lumber.
Wolf River ships their kiln-dried products in various sizes, offering bundles, truckloads or boxcars. Shipping is accomplished in two shifts, beginning at 5:30 a.m. and continuing until 12:30 a.m., in order to accommodate their customers. The company is also focused on saving their customers money on shipping, having the options of trucks, containers or rail.
While most of the firm’s business is domestic, Wolf River does export some of its products.
“We have one sales representative who has been traveling to China, and we are looking into expanding that market in the future,” Ort-Bunting explained. “But our largest customers are domestic kitchen cabinet manufacturers, and we still do a lot of business with high-end moulding manufacturers. We do some business with door and floor manufacturers, and are really interested in marketing our products to anyone looking for quality and a long term relationship.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, Wolf River sold products to many furniture manufacturers in the United St
National Hardwood Lumber Assoc. inspectors grade on the green line at Wolf River Lumber Inc.
ates, but Ort-Bunting said that with changing markets, the company’s focus hasn’t necessarily changed.
“Our quality and service have gone up steadily over the past several years, thanks to our great group of people,” Ort-Bunting said. “Competition is tough, but with the employees that we have, we are always working to lower our overhead and achieve a reasonable profit.”
Although the sales staff is smaller compared to years past, the company is looking to add to that group this year. Mike Schulke has been with the company for two years, and handles the company’s sales to China, and John Andraschko, has been with Wolf River for 25 years. Chris Martinson has been in the sales department for four years. Also, Al Smith is a part-time outside sales representative for the company and has been with them for 16 years; Dave Fischer is the sales coordinator and has been with them for 12 years. We have recently hired a new sales representative Ralph Bartles who will work out of his home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. Steve Niemuth is the purchasing manager joined by Rick Smrcka, Dean Fischer, Loren Jakkola, Ron Devereaux and Paul Evans.
Employees at the company use a forklift to load one of the 40 SII dry kilns at the operation.
President Gary Ort believes that safety is the number one priority. The company added a full time safety director several years ago, Gladys Schultz, whose job is to educate prevention of accidents and keep insurance premiums down, our modifications and costs are now under industry averages. Wolf River also provides employees with several other benefits, including smoking cessation programs and a Wolf River Lumber Family Clinic.
“We are a ‘no tolerance’ company when it comes to drugs,” Ort stated. “We do pre-employment drug screens and monthly random drug tests.”
“We want all of our employees to know where we are coming from,” Ort-Bunting said. “We care about each and every one of them, just like we do our customers and vendors. That’s why we have added extra measures for safety.”
She added that another one of the reasons that the company has been successful is the way the company treats their vendors and customers.
The Wolf River facility is around 440,000 square feet on approximately 10 acres of land.
“It’s important for us to treat our vendors right,” Ort-Bunting stated. “They want to be able to market their products long term. In order to do that, communication, projections are very important. We have to ensure we ship customers the correct product by length, width and color on a timely basis so that the customers can ship their customers a quality product on time.
Ort-Bunting’s great-great-great grandfather settled in Appleton, Wis., in 1878. Her great-great grandfather, Ed Ort Sr., had a portable sawmill in the town of Center, Wis., in 1930. Her grandfather, Gerald, and his four brothers logged and sawed millions of board feet of lumber before 1964. Gerald and two of his brothers purchased Miles Lumber, which was located in the mouth of the Wolf and Embarrass Rivers. In 1969, Gerald started Ort Lumber Co. with his four sons. Today the Ort family operates three facilities, located in New London, Tigerton and Wittenberg, Wis., and produces more than 32 million board feet of lumber annually with more than 100 employees.
Ort Trucking, based in New London, began in 1979 and operates 280 refrigerated trucks hauling frozen foods and 56 flatbeds, which haul logs to sawmills and finished lumber to customers.
In May of 1982, the Ort family purchased Wolf River Lumber. At that time, the company only employed three people. Today, it is one of the largest yards in the Midwest. The Ort family added a dimension company to their list of facilities in 1994, known
Rick, the dry line manager, and Jason, another employee at the company, inspect lumber before it goes into the rip line.
as Menominee River Lumber & Dimension in Menominee, Mich. Tigerton Lumber Co. was acquired by the Ort family in 1998, and included 50,000 acres of Northern Hardwoods, bringing total acreage under Ort control, to 75,000 acres, with four sawmills, producing 32 million board feet per year. The newest family owned facility, Aacer Flooring, Peshtigo, Wis., was added in 1998. It is a 90,000–square-foot Hardwood flooring manufacturing facility. They built a second flooring mill in July 2005.
In December of 2004, Gary Ort was made aware of a 6,000-acre hunting club that had a lot of timber, 80 elk, 180 deer and 12 buffalo with 5,500 fenced acres. He purchased it in April 2005, and set it up in trust for future generations. The timber will be managed or sustained yield. It has 75 percent Hard Maple and 10 percent Cherry, and logging will start in the summer of 2006.
Gary also purchased a large sawmill in Florence, Wis., located 12 miles west of Iron Mountain and one mile from Michigan. This mill cut White Birch and was closed in April of 2005. The mill is being updated to cut 6-inch to 12-inch Hard Maple small diameter logs; this is a log better than pulp but too small for a conventional carriage sawmill. This will give the operation a different source of raw material, which will keep supply steady and pricing stable. There is a lot of timber growing, 50 percent more than we are cutting but the public doesn’t know or believe this so the timber cost is going up in species such as Hard Maple. Hopefully this thinking will change so more timber off private and public lands becomes available.
The plant is located on 80 acres and has 70,000 square feet under a roof that is sprinkled for safety and insurance reasons.
Machine operator Raul runs a Mereen-Johnson rip saw optimizer.
It has five dry kilns, a wood boiler and a rip and chop saw and glue tenant capability. It will cut approximately 20 million board feet annually on two shifts. The facility will produce SMI finish, Hard Maple, Cherry and Red Oak cabinet parts, Green and Dry floor lumber & blanks and green pallet lumber. Wolf River Lumber will do all the marketing. Production will start mid-May.
Wolf River Lumber is a member of the Lake States Lumber Assoc., the Hardwood Manufacturers Assoc., the Canadian Lumbermen’s Assoc., the Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen’s Assoc. and the National Hardwood Lumber Assoc. They are also members of the Wood Component Manufacturers Assoc., the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Assoc., the National Wood Flooring Assoc., the American Hardwood Export Council, Great Lakes Kiln Drying Assoc. and other national/local organizations. They also support the Hardwood Federation.
