The New Hampshire Retail Lumber Association (NHRLA) and the Retail Lumber Dealers Association of Maine (RLDAM) gathered at the Mountain View Grand Resort and Spa in Whitefield, N.H., on September 15–16 for their annual celebration weekend.
The weekend began with each board of directors holding separate meetings on Friday afternoon. Friday evening saw an outdoor cocktail reception where attendees were treated to a spectacular sunset with every color of the spectrum reflected across the glorious White Mountains.
After dinner, a trivia contest ensued, with a Maine and a New Hampshire team tying for first place, while another Maine team placed third.
Attendees had several different activities to choose from on Saturday, including a couples “quota” golf tournament where three New Hampshire teams swept the podium. New Hampshire was paced by the winning team of Dave and Deb MacFarland of Moynihan Lumber, who edged out daughter and son-in-law Courtney and Jason Mora of Simpson Strong-Tie. In the afternoon axe-throwing event, Kelsey Small of Hancock Lumber and Rick Pierson of US Lumber triumphed out of a field of 36 throwers!
Women’s Axe Throwing Champions. Pictured L to R: 4th Place, Tiffany Pushard (Reeb Millwork); 1st Place, Kelsey Small (Hancock Lumber), 2nd Place, Jean Brockmyre (Hood Distribution), and 3rd Place, Kerry Jankins (Hood Distribution).
Men’s Axe Throwing Champions. Pictured L to R: 3rd Place, Rod Wiles (Hammond Lumber); 1st Place, Rick Pierson (US Lumber); and Dick Willard (Hammond Lumber).Later that evening, a modern-day record number of attendees convened to celebrate the industry and fete both states’ very special award recipients. On the Maine side, Kevin Hancock of Hancock Lumber honored the career of Lifetime Achievement Recipient Mike Boulet of Mainely Trusses, and Bob Thing paid tribute to his longtime colleague and Lumber Person of the Year, Rod Wiles, both of Hammond Lumber.
Lumber Person of the Year Recipient: Rod Wiles Biography
When Rod Wiles entered the lumber industry, he “started at the absolute bottom of the barrel, doing all the things no one else wanted to do,” he says.
He joined the team at Hammond Lumber in 1986. “It took me four interviews,” he recalls. “Don Hammond must have either gotten sick of me or was desperate because he finally gave me the job.”
Rod started out in the yard, but with a combination of his eagerness to learn and the company’s willingness to invest in its people, it wasn’t long before other opportunities presented themselves. He first moved to inside receiver, developing a new position in a fast-growing company, handling paperwork for incoming deliveries.
From there, Matt Masse, the director of purchasing, took Rod under his wing, showing him the ropes of purchasing in addition to his receiving responsibilities. For several years, he wore multiple hats, helping out a bit with retail sales as well. Before long, an outside vendor would inadvertently change the course of Rod’s career.
At the time, Hammond was investing a lot in print, radio, and television ads through an agency that did both creative and ad buying. Their rep decided he no longer wanted to be a full-service agency and would only work on creative.
Rod says, “I caught wind of that and thought, I’ve been buying windows and plywood; how hard can it be to buy advertising?” The company was willing to give him another opportunity in a marketing position.
For Rod’s next career move, it was the office configuration that set things in motion. With nowhere else to put the newly minted marketing director, the company placed him in an office separate from most everyone—except the director of operations, Bob Thing. Bob began mentoring Rod, who took on personnel issues at a time when the company was growing at a steady clip. When he started in 1986, there were three retail locations; by the time he was learning this new role, that had more than doubled. (They now have 22.)
Rod learned human resources the same way he had every other aspect of the lumber business: through on-the-job training. “I don’t have an HR degree. What I’ve learned has come through years of real life, first-hand experience,” he explains. “Because of how much the company was growing, I had a lot of opportunities to move into areas that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.”
When Bob retired in 2017, Rod took on his current role as vice president of human resources, overseeing approximately 900 employees company-wide. Not bad for a guy who originally applied for a job at Hammond not long out of school because his dad was working there and making good money.
Outside of work, Rod is learning about the industry from yet another perspective: that of a consumer. Earlier this year, he and his wife of (almost) 35 years, Lori (they have three adult children and eight grandchildren), began working on their dream house in Skowhegan, building on a plot of land they purchased back in 2019.
“I’ve been in the industry for 37 years, but now I can more fully appreciate the complexities of actually building a house,” he says. They hope to move in by the first of October.
Rod has also put his ever-expanding portfolio of skills and experiences to work on behalf of the industry at large, serving on the RLDAM board in several capacities, including a term as president from 2012-14, and as chair of the NRLA in 2018-19. “We’re competitors outside of the association,” he notes, “but when we come together, we’re all working collectively to help the industry.”
Lifetime Achievement Recipient: Mike Boulet Biography
Mike Boulet might seem a touch young for a Lifetime Achievement Award, but then, he started young. Like many, Mike entered the industry as a teenager, working spring breaks and summer vacations in the family business. His father, John, founded Mainely Trusses in 1991, and Mike really had no plans to join him after graduating from Bryant University in Rhode Island, where he studied business administration.
In March of the following year, Mike found himself a college graduate facing an uninspiring job market.
“I had interviewed some places, but nothing was really jumping out. I thought I was going to get into wholesale lumber. One of my goals was to not wear tie,” he recalls.
Then his car died, and he needed to come up with cash for a new one. His dad asked him how much money he had. Mike estimated he had enough to carry him through August. His dad asked what his plans were after that and noted that there was a job waiting for Mike “at home.”
“I asked him if he was creating a job for me, and he said no,” Mike explains. “We didn’t talk job or salary. He just told me there was work and he needed my help. More importantly, he wanted my help.”
Mike started full-time building trusses in May. Before long, his dad threw him a curveball. The person running the back office wasn’t doing the job to John’s satisfaction. “It’s yours. Take it over, figure it out,” he told his son.
In October 1993, Mike had another curveball thrown his way, this one much more shocking and life-altering: his father died unexpectedly. At the time, John owned one third of the company, Mike owned a third, and his mother owned the final third.
“I was running the show full-on at 23,” Mike says.
He got a fast education, purchased the remaining shares of the company from his mother in 1996, and hasn’t looked back since.
“I worked a lot, tried a lot of things, had some success, and kept building on it. We just kept growing every year. It was a lot of work. My wife would probably say I was always at work,” he laughs. “I don’t remember it like that, but that’s what she’d say.”
In 2000, he moved the business to a new facility, custom-built for the company’s needs. He installed automated equipment to make things more efficient, outgrew the new facility, and expanded it. The staff grew from 6 to nearly 50 employees.
Finally, in 2018, Mike sold the company to Hancock Lumber.
“I had been going for quite a long time and was looking for an exit strategy. Hancock reached out to me, and it was a great way to allow the business to grow and survive for the next generation,” Mike explains, adding, “I’m still managing it like I own it.” Mike lives in “the grand metropolis of Palermo” (pop: 1,500) with his wife, Jody. They have a daughter and two sons. Both of his sons currently work at Mainely, but he doesn’t foresee any of his children making a career of it.
Looking at his lifetime in business, Mike believes the lessons he learned from his dad have been crucial, most importantly, honesty. “Dad started this business on a shoestring budget with a handshake deal from someone at a bank he had known for 20 years,” he recalls. “Give somebody your word, and that’s it. Being honest was the number-one principle. If you do that and work hard, the other stuff gets easier.”
The New Hampshire awards were unique in that both award recipients were introduced by their brothers. Brad Benson celebrated the dedication of Lifetime Achievement Recipient Grant Benson, both of Benson Lumber & Hardware, and Rob Schuler honored Lumber Person of the Year, Ron Schuler Jr., both of Portland Stone Ware.
Lumber Person of the Year Recipient: Ron Schuler Jr. Biography
Pardon the pun, but you might say Ron Schuler Jr. is a pillar of the building materials industry. As the second generation of the second family to run Portland Stone Ware Co., Ron, along with his brother Robert and sister Donna, have built on upon the rock-solid foundation (okay, that’s two puns) laid down by their father, Ronald, Sr., and the Winslow family before him.
Of course, unlike the typical Lumber Person of the Year, Ron didn’t grow up with “sawdust in his veins”—more like concrete. That material is where Schuler did most of its business in Ron’s early days.
“I started working with my father and brothers back in 1974, while I was still in high school. I worked my way through college in the plant. The biggest job was making concrete columns,” he recalls.
College was Plymouth State, where Ron graduated with a degree in business management in 1979, which was immediately put to work on behalf of the family. “It was always my goal to work for the company with my dad and brother,” he says.
He’s been there ever since, seeing every aspect of the business up close, from manufacturing cement-filled columns to working in the lumber yard to distribution. The core of his work, however, has always been sales, just like his father, who started in sales for the Winslow family in 1952, when the company was still mainly making clay pipes.
“My dad was a salesperson, and then I was—that’s how you learn,” explains Ron, Jr., who worked in sales from 1979 to 2007. “Mostly what I learned from my dad was service, service, service. You build relationships with the customers one at a time, and you service them properly.”
Over time, Ron has seen the company grow and adapt, moving from Cambridge to Dracut in 1999, expanding to Methuen in 2017, and, most recently, purchasing another manufacturing company to strengthen their product line and efficiency. But Ron says the most important change has been a move to make the company greener.
“Building materials have changed a lot, and we’ve tried to change with those new ideas,” he says. “We’re becoming greener and trying to adapt to a cleaner environment, building new warehouses, and designing the product so it’s cleaner to produce. We’re also making concrete more efficient and stronger. Columns can carry a lot more weight, so you don’t need as many. I think it’s a competitive advantage.”
Ron is now helping to steward the Portland Stone Ware legacy. With his daughter working there now (he also has a son who owns a separate lumber business) and trusted employees who have been with the company for many years, he feels that it will be in good hands for the future. But he also sees the challenges of continuing to recruit and train the workforce that will keep the industry going. “We need to be more involved with the voc-tech schools; they’re so important for our industry,” he notes.
In his spare time, Ron loves skiing the slopes with his family, especially at Wildcat Mountain, where he works part-time and the entire family has lifetime memberships. It’s an appropriate pastime: Ron and his wife of 44 years met on a ski lift; now they have a granddaughter who’s learning to ski.
Summarizing the principles that have guided his career, Ron says, “You have to be yourself; don’t pretend to be anyone else. Learn from and listen to the customers; they are the secret of our success.”
Lifetime Achievement Recipient: Grant Benson Biography
What makes a lifetime for a “Lifetime Achievement Award”? Is it the fact that Grant Benson is the fourth generation of his family to preside over the Benson Lumber & Hardware business? Or is it that he’s been in that position, alongside his brothers Brad and Scott, for more than 40 years now? Maybe it’s that the Benson family umbrella today extends over Boulia-Gorrell Lumber Co. in Laconia, the oldest lumber yard in New Hampshire ((established in1872).
Perhaps the detail that best captures this concept of a “lifetime” in the business is this: When Grant Benson was just a child (“The lumber yard was my daycare,” he notes), there was an employee still working for the family who used to deliver lumber by horse-drawn wagon. He told Grant stories of delivering loads from Derry to Chester, a 12-mile trip that took two full days, including an overnight stay at an inn and unloading by hand. Today, one of Grant’s drivers can make that run in about 15–20 minutes. That kind of institutional knowledge and ingrained history can only accumulate over a lifetime.
“When I started, we had just the Derry store, one pickup truck, and one rack truck,” Grant recalls. “Today, with the help of my brothers, we have three stores, 20 forklifts, 18 or 19 pick-ups, and 11 or 12 delivery trucks with Moffetts and cranes.” That’s not to mention the mill shop at the Laconia store, the door shop at the Londonderry store, the full garden and nursery, also in Londonderry, and the kitchen and floor covering divisions with in-house installers. That’s the kind of growth that can only happen over a lifetime.
It’s also why, in an era when so few things seem made to last, so many employees choose to spend a lifetime at Benson Lumber. “The whole key to why we’re now five generations [two of Grant’s nephews have joined the family business] is the amazing staff that work here. In today’s world, you don’t see a lot of employees that have 15, 20, or 30 years of being at the same company,” Grant notes. “We’ve been so blessed to have a large number of people that fall into that category. In fact, we have several employees that this is the only job they’ve ever had.”
Grant has spent a lifetime in this business for the simplest and best of reasons: because he loves it. “I love all aspects of the lumber industry, from harvesting trees to seeing them become incredible items, whether it be a house or furniture. It’s amazing to see the transformation,” he beams, adding, “If you don’t love what you do, do something else. Life is short.”
He has also spent a lifetime (or at least 33 years and counting) with his wife, Susan, with whom he has raised three children and four grandchildren. They’ve lived in Hooksett for the last three decades. When he’s not carrying on or expanding the Benson Lumber legacy, Grant likes to spend his time fishing, hunting, camping, and simply enjoying some time in the woods. In addition to his relationship with the NHRLA, Grant is also a member of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association and the Northeast Loggers Association.
Grant sums up his philosophy of life in two basic rules: “Number one: If you don’t put in the effort, you’re not going to get the results you want. Number two: Moderation is the key.” Those guidelines might seem simple enough, but there’s a lifetime of wisdom and experience behind them.
The Border War Trophy Returns to New Hampshire
NHRLA reclaimed the ME-NH Border War Trophy in the 11th annual version of the “friendly” competition between the states. Narrow Maine victories in trivia and axe throwing weren’t enough to overcome New Hampshire’s wide margin of victory in the golf tourney. New Hampshire now leads the series six to five which began in 2012 with a pool tournament pitting state vs. state. Maine will look to take back the trophy next year on their home turf at the Portland Regency Hotel & Spa in Portland’s Old Port on September 6–8.
To learn more about NHRLA, click here. To learn more about RLDAM, click here.
