Page 10 - Tree Line - NCFA - First Quarter 2020

TONY HOOD,
Director of Operations, on working at Turn Bull Lumber
“It is very different now than when I first started at Turn Bull Lumber over 20 years ago.
“Turn Bull Lumber is one of the most state-of-the- art mills for hardwood in North Carolina. A lot of the credit for that goes to Pem for modernizing things, and keeping the equipment up to and above standard.
“I work for one of the best bosses anywhere around, and we’ve come a long way together.
One of the greatest things has been seeing everything modernize over time and watching the growth of this mill through the years. Sometimes it can be a lot to manage, but things have gotten much easier to fix nowadays, whereas before it was not so simple.”
Pem Jenkins (center, navy blue shirt), Tony Hood (right, turquoise shirt), Lee White (left, coral shirt) and the Turn Bull Lumber office staff.
Before founding Turn Bull Lumber, Jenkins almost got involved with a pine sawmill operation in New Bern, NC. However, he chose to take a different path. Looking into another type of commodity business, Jenkins chose instead to pursue the establishment
of a hardwood sawmill. Because Turn Bull Lumber’s business model was outside the regional norm for sawmilling, which in eastern North Carolina revolves around wood products made from the various abundant pine species, Jenkins was not sure if the company would make it. “My wife being an attorney helped our family survive the early years, but we really had no idea how it would work out in the beginning,” he said.
When Turn Bull Lumber started, Ed Cashwell ran the mill and Jenkins did the trading. “Ed and I were a good team. The more I told him about the trading side of things, he
kept assuring me that the mill wouldn’t fail,” Jenkins said. “Today, we are milling tulip poplar, red oak, white oak, maple, ash and bald cypress with approximately 45 employees.”
So what were the instrumental factors
in Turn Bull Lumber’s success? Jenkins had several to share. “You can’t do it by yourself,” he said. “The most basic jobs are still necessary to business operations. The guys on the green chain are equally as important and have
as much impact as the guys in the skilled positions. We all have to work together to keep the mill running. Labor has gotten harder and harder to come by, so automation is a factor, but you still have to have people that you can count on; you can’t do it without them.”
Jenkins also attributes the operation’s success to the “Turn Bull Lumber Core Values,” which Jenkins established and incorporated into a poster now displayed
8 ncforestry.org / FIRST QUARTER 2020