Norm Tilling

Tilling Timber

When I began in the industry in June 1956, wholesalers of the era fell primarily into three categories.

Firstly there were the major distribution outlets of primary forest resourced sawmilling groups who also had extended operations of value added products such as plywood, solid wood profiled products and, into the 1960’s, particle board and other flat panel products.

The second category were “brass plate” companies operating from offices only, specialising in the direct importation of globally sourced forest products but dominated by imports of west coast of America and Scandinavian softwoods.

They relied totally on the expert timber handlers of the day to land, measure and deliver their products to their merchant customers.

The third category were long established businesses, primarily subsidiaries of British timber trading houses that held the sales rights for both hardwood and softwood Australian producers.

In many cases they provided financing to the myriad of small but efficient de-centralised Victorian and New South Wales sawmills.

These companies, by and large, were also importers and re-cutters of west coast Douglas Fir (Oregon) which was the mainstay for domestic and commercial construction throughout Australia.

Whilst a number of major timber merchants maintained their own re-cutting facilities a great number of smaller suburban operations relied on these re-cutting wholesalers to provide this vital product.

Thus through these three categories the wholesalers of the 1950’s and 1960’s delivered essential benefits to the timber merchant, without which all but the very largest could not have operated.

Today’s industry structure has at its core, perhaps with the exception of the demise of the “brass plate” importer, changed in principle very little with major forest resourced producers delivering their products substantially through owned distribution outlets while independent wholesalers, whilst participating in these activities, are increasingly moving to deliver more specialised products and services.

Thus we have seen a continuing evolution of product specific wholesalers specialising in areas such as finger jointed mouldings, cypress pine, southeast Asian timbers, exotics from new areas of supply such as Laos and Cambodia, a myriad of other panel products and engineered wood products.

This latter product is one in which our company has become involved, moving from an oregon re-cutter of the 1970’s and 1980’s through pre-cut oregon in the 1990’s to this fare more hi-tech range of products.

With our competitors we have found it necessary to enter a multi layered scenario of influence previously not considered by traditional wholesalers.

Today we strive to influence the engineer to compute, the architect and designer to design and the builder to construct in engineered wood products.

It has been necessary to engage professional engineers, estimators, and train internal/external sales staff to a level of technical expertise unheard of in years gone by, for which I am personally grateful.

Of course training of the merchant’s staff to an acceptable level of expertise has also become vital, both from the suppliers point of view but arguably more importantly for the future success of the supply merchant whose customer (the builder) will demand an ever increasing level of expertise.

There are, however, danger signs.

Because the wholesaler, in some instances, is presently assembling the finished orders having provided the abovementioned technical expertise there is now a temptation, especially in New South Wales, for the merchant to persuade his wholesale supplier to deliver direct to his customer’s (the builder’s) construction site.

Hopefully, for the sake of the industry, this will not cause a re-run of the 1960 scenario where the merchants of the day were also tempted into insisting that sawmills deliver house lots of hardwood direct from the mill to the customer’s building site.

Somehow it was forgotten that keen builders could read “Joe Blow Sawmiller. Ph: Noojee 4” sign written on the side of the delivery truck.

As those readers who have been in the Victorian industry since this era will recall, within twelve months virtually all hardwood sales went from sawmill to merchant to builder - to sawmiller to builder direct.

As each part of the supply chain must tangibly contribute, I believe those merchants that implement staff technical training and invest in stocks adequate to service their customers’ needs will be in the forefront of the distribution of these emerging products.