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In 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression, Kenneth Ford began building a timber empire out of salvaged machinery and “everyone else's scraps.”
“My father built this company as a quest of survival,” said his son, Roseburg Forest Products President and CEO Allyn Ford, 69.
A company history quotes a young Kenneth Ford telling an employee: “What I do ... is I work. I don't do anything else. I don't have a social life to speak of. I don't read. I can't drive a nail in straight. I work. That's what I do.”
Kenneth Ford worked with survivalist fervor well into his late 80s.
His relentless perfectionism and perpetual drive forged Roseburg Forest Products. The company will mark its 75th anniversary this week — a huge milestone considering the number of timber companies that have gone under in the past several decades.
From its scrap-parts beginnings, Roseburg Forest Products, based in Dillard, has grown to five particleboard and specialty panel plants, four melamine plants, three plywood plants and a veneer plant, as well as a chip export terminal.
RFP employs more than 3,000 people in Oregon, Northern California, Montana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia.
“I hope my dad would be proud that RFP is still here and still on the move,” Allyn Ford said. “ I'd hope he'd be proud that we're not sitting still.”
Sitting still is something Kenneth Ford never did.
Jim Pratt, who was hired by Ford in 1960 as an entry-level millworker and rose to become a plywood plant manager, said his boss was never in the office.
He could usually be found in the sawmill under a piece of machinery, with a wrench in his hand and grease on his face.
“He understood every aspect of the company,” said Pratt, 77.
Kenneth Ford's cousin, Orvis Ford, who was a RFP sawmill manager for 25 years, witnessed Kenneth's determination daily.
“His attention to detail is what has made Roseburg Forest Products so successful,” said Orvis Ford, 93. “He was really focused. Terribly focused.”
By World War II, Kenneth Ford's mill was running day and night to keep up with the war effort. The boom motivated RFP to build an updated, more modern mill in Dillard, which opened in 1947 and quickly became RFP headquarters.
Modernity became something Kenneth Ford strived for.
“Up until he died, Kenneth always wanted the latest and best technology,” Pratt said. “He was really upset if he heard about something new from someone outside of the mill. He wanted to be at the very cutting edge.”
In the mid-1940s, Kenneth Ford turned his focus to the future. The company purchased the Mount Scott timberlands, 15,000 acres of forest east of Roseburg. It was the first of many land purchases.
Allyn Ford said some of the acquired timberland had already been logged, but his dad envisioned growing a new forest.
Allyn Ford said unlike publicly traded companies focused on quarterly earnings that would “cut out and get out,” his father was looking out 20 to 30 years,
Allyn Ford attributes much of RFP's success to securing its own timberlands.
Logging restrictions on federal land first hit the Northwest timber industry in the 1970s and then again in 1990 when the spotted owl was listed as a threatened species. Many companies buckled without a steady influx of logs.
RFP, which currently owns more than 650,000 acres of forestland in Oregon and California, had timber in reserve.
“They were our ‘rainy day' lands, our piggy bank,” Allyn Ford said.
In the heart of the baby boom, Kenneth again looked to the future and recognized that America would need more houses.
As home building picked up, RFP's engineers began designing a mill to manufacture plywood, which was about to revolutionize the building industry because of its versatility, strength and low cost.
In 1952, the plywood mill opened in Dillard. A second was added in 1956 to keep up with demand.
“Kenneth had an uncanny ability to predict what was going to happen,” Pratt said.
The 1960s at RFP revolved around using the whole log.
Combining resin with the sawmill's leftovers — sawdust, shavings and wood flakes — the company started producing particleboard, plywood's cheaper cousin.
By the mid-1960s, RFP had the largest particleboard plant in the world.
In 1968, the company built an export terminal in North Bend and starting shipping wood chips to Japan. The shipyard quickly became one of the larger chip export terminals in the world.
“Kenneth enjoyed change,” Pratt said. “It didn't bother him a bit.”
Also in 1968, after earning a degree at Yale University and a master's in business administration from Stanford, Allyn Ford returned to Roseburg for good.
Like his father, Allyn Ford learned the business from the ground up. At age 14, Allyn started out sorting and running cards though an IBM computer. He graduated to working in the woods and in the mill during the summer.
His first task after coming home would prove to be the most challenging. Kenneth Ford put his son in charge of overseeing the construction of a 750,000-square-foot plywood plant, a quarter of a mile long, in Riddle. It opened in 1970.
The '70s saw more change, but this time for the whole timber industry. The era of cutting down big trees was coming to an end and the environmental movement was blossoming.
A lot of private and federal old-growth stands had already been cut, which meant relying on smaller trees. Plus, federal timberlands were coming under tighter restrictions.
Many companies buckled during this time. They couldn't afford to revamp their mills to cut smaller logs or they relied too heavily on federal timberlands.
RFP had the money to retool and the logs to keep the company in business.
The company saw the economic downturn of the '80s as a time to invest.
RFP purchased a veneer mill in Weed, Calif., and built a melamine lamination line at Dillard.
“If you don't grow, you won't attract good people,” Allyn Ford said. “You'll wither on the vine. You have to push and keep growing.”
Amid the spotted owl controversy, Kenneth Ford put the company up for sale in 1992, though his son convinced him to hang on to it a while longer.
Instead, Kenneth Ford sold 320,000 acres in California to fund the Ford Family Foundation, an organization with countless philanthropic platforms, from health care to child abuse to education.
To fill the land gap created by the sale, Kenneth and Allyn Ford sought to purchase the International Paper lands, 216,000 acres in Western Oregon.
In 1996, the duo sealed the deal, doubling the company's acreage in Oregon and increasing timber holdings to the number it is today.
Kenneth Ford's last big idea was to build a small-log sawmill that cut metric lengths for the Japanese market.
Before the mill was completed, Kenneth Ford succumbed to cancer on Feb. 8, 1997. Allyn Ford became head of the company and carried out his father's last vision.
He also kept with family tradition and sought to keep growing and changing.
The early years of the 21st century were spent acquiring a mill in Montana and buying seven mills in the South from Georgia Pacific, though three have since been shut down.
In June, the company purchased a Louisiana particleboard and laminating plant. A few weeks later, RFP closed two plants in South Carolina.
RFP said it will be more economical for the company to use the Louisiana plant to distribute products to the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys, rather than ship from the East Coast.
The company said the moves will position it to grow when market conditions improve. RFP cited a lack of demand for its products when it laid off 230 to 240 workers in May at mills in Dillard, Riddle and Coquille.
“The wood industry is very cyclical. It's no secret that right now we're losing our shirt, but to be in the timber industry, you must be a long-term player,” Allyn Ford said.
Lee Weaver, who has worked for RFP for 28 years, said the company has become bigger and more aggressive under Allyn Ford's supervision.
“Allyn is always looking for growth, and as a private owner you can assume more risk,” said Weaver, a project manager and pipe shop supervisor.
Weaver said Allyn Ford's dedication and personal investment in the company trickles down through the ranks.
“I think it really makes the employees say, ‘If the Ford family is dedicated to this, then, by God, we are too.' ”
Allyn Ford is optimistic about the future for the timber industry and his company and says he and his employees are preparing for the next 75 years.
“There will be recovery. I've been through five or six of these (downturns),” he said. “The question is, are we going to be ready when things come back?”
• You can reach reporter Anne Creighton at 541-957-4211 or by email at acreighton@nrtoday.com.
“My father built this company as a quest of survival,” said his son, Roseburg Forest Products President and CEO Allyn Ford, 69.
A company history quotes a young Kenneth Ford telling an employee: “What I do ... is I work. I don't do anything else. I don't have a social life to speak of. I don't read. I can't drive a nail in straight. I work. That's what I do.”
Kenneth Ford worked with survivalist fervor well into his late 80s.
His relentless perfectionism and perpetual drive forged Roseburg Forest Products. The company will mark its 75th anniversary this week — a huge milestone considering the number of timber companies that have gone under in the past several decades.
From its scrap-parts beginnings, Roseburg Forest Products, based in Dillard, has grown to five particleboard and specialty panel plants, four melamine plants, three plywood plants and a veneer plant, as well as a chip export terminal.
RFP employs more than 3,000 people in Oregon, Northern California, Montana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia.
“I hope my dad would be proud that RFP is still here and still on the move,” Allyn Ford said. “ I'd hope he'd be proud that we're not sitting still.”
Sitting still is something Kenneth Ford never did.
Jim Pratt, who was hired by Ford in 1960 as an entry-level millworker and rose to become a plywood plant manager, said his boss was never in the office.
He could usually be found in the sawmill under a piece of machinery, with a wrench in his hand and grease on his face.
“He understood every aspect of the company,” said Pratt, 77.
Kenneth Ford's cousin, Orvis Ford, who was a RFP sawmill manager for 25 years, witnessed Kenneth's determination daily.
“His attention to detail is what has made Roseburg Forest Products so successful,” said Orvis Ford, 93. “He was really focused. Terribly focused.”
By World War II, Kenneth Ford's mill was running day and night to keep up with the war effort. The boom motivated RFP to build an updated, more modern mill in Dillard, which opened in 1947 and quickly became RFP headquarters.
Modernity became something Kenneth Ford strived for.
“Up until he died, Kenneth always wanted the latest and best technology,” Pratt said. “He was really upset if he heard about something new from someone outside of the mill. He wanted to be at the very cutting edge.”
In the mid-1940s, Kenneth Ford turned his focus to the future. The company purchased the Mount Scott timberlands, 15,000 acres of forest east of Roseburg. It was the first of many land purchases.
Allyn Ford said some of the acquired timberland had already been logged, but his dad envisioned growing a new forest.
Allyn Ford said unlike publicly traded companies focused on quarterly earnings that would “cut out and get out,” his father was looking out 20 to 30 years,
Allyn Ford attributes much of RFP's success to securing its own timberlands.
Logging restrictions on federal land first hit the Northwest timber industry in the 1970s and then again in 1990 when the spotted owl was listed as a threatened species. Many companies buckled without a steady influx of logs.
RFP, which currently owns more than 650,000 acres of forestland in Oregon and California, had timber in reserve.
“They were our ‘rainy day' lands, our piggy bank,” Allyn Ford said.
In the heart of the baby boom, Kenneth again looked to the future and recognized that America would need more houses.
As home building picked up, RFP's engineers began designing a mill to manufacture plywood, which was about to revolutionize the building industry because of its versatility, strength and low cost.
In 1952, the plywood mill opened in Dillard. A second was added in 1956 to keep up with demand.
“Kenneth had an uncanny ability to predict what was going to happen,” Pratt said.
The 1960s at RFP revolved around using the whole log.
Combining resin with the sawmill's leftovers — sawdust, shavings and wood flakes — the company started producing particleboard, plywood's cheaper cousin.
By the mid-1960s, RFP had the largest particleboard plant in the world.
In 1968, the company built an export terminal in North Bend and starting shipping wood chips to Japan. The shipyard quickly became one of the larger chip export terminals in the world.
“Kenneth enjoyed change,” Pratt said. “It didn't bother him a bit.”
Also in 1968, after earning a degree at Yale University and a master's in business administration from Stanford, Allyn Ford returned to Roseburg for good.
Like his father, Allyn Ford learned the business from the ground up. At age 14, Allyn started out sorting and running cards though an IBM computer. He graduated to working in the woods and in the mill during the summer.
His first task after coming home would prove to be the most challenging. Kenneth Ford put his son in charge of overseeing the construction of a 750,000-square-foot plywood plant, a quarter of a mile long, in Riddle. It opened in 1970.
The '70s saw more change, but this time for the whole timber industry. The era of cutting down big trees was coming to an end and the environmental movement was blossoming.
A lot of private and federal old-growth stands had already been cut, which meant relying on smaller trees. Plus, federal timberlands were coming under tighter restrictions.
Many companies buckled during this time. They couldn't afford to revamp their mills to cut smaller logs or they relied too heavily on federal timberlands.
RFP had the money to retool and the logs to keep the company in business.
The company saw the economic downturn of the '80s as a time to invest.
RFP purchased a veneer mill in Weed, Calif., and built a melamine lamination line at Dillard.
“If you don't grow, you won't attract good people,” Allyn Ford said. “You'll wither on the vine. You have to push and keep growing.”
Amid the spotted owl controversy, Kenneth Ford put the company up for sale in 1992, though his son convinced him to hang on to it a while longer.
Instead, Kenneth Ford sold 320,000 acres in California to fund the Ford Family Foundation, an organization with countless philanthropic platforms, from health care to child abuse to education.
To fill the land gap created by the sale, Kenneth and Allyn Ford sought to purchase the International Paper lands, 216,000 acres in Western Oregon.
In 1996, the duo sealed the deal, doubling the company's acreage in Oregon and increasing timber holdings to the number it is today.
Kenneth Ford's last big idea was to build a small-log sawmill that cut metric lengths for the Japanese market.
Before the mill was completed, Kenneth Ford succumbed to cancer on Feb. 8, 1997. Allyn Ford became head of the company and carried out his father's last vision.
He also kept with family tradition and sought to keep growing and changing.
The early years of the 21st century were spent acquiring a mill in Montana and buying seven mills in the South from Georgia Pacific, though three have since been shut down.
In June, the company purchased a Louisiana particleboard and laminating plant. A few weeks later, RFP closed two plants in South Carolina.
RFP said it will be more economical for the company to use the Louisiana plant to distribute products to the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys, rather than ship from the East Coast.
The company said the moves will position it to grow when market conditions improve. RFP cited a lack of demand for its products when it laid off 230 to 240 workers in May at mills in Dillard, Riddle and Coquille.
“The wood industry is very cyclical. It's no secret that right now we're losing our shirt, but to be in the timber industry, you must be a long-term player,” Allyn Ford said.
Lee Weaver, who has worked for RFP for 28 years, said the company has become bigger and more aggressive under Allyn Ford's supervision.
“Allyn is always looking for growth, and as a private owner you can assume more risk,” said Weaver, a project manager and pipe shop supervisor.
Weaver said Allyn Ford's dedication and personal investment in the company trickles down through the ranks.
“I think it really makes the employees say, ‘If the Ford family is dedicated to this, then, by God, we are too.' ”
Allyn Ford is optimistic about the future for the timber industry and his company and says he and his employees are preparing for the next 75 years.
“There will be recovery. I've been through five or six of these (downturns),” he said. “The question is, are we going to be ready when things come back?”
• You can reach reporter Anne Creighton at 541-957-4211 or by email at acreighton@nrtoday.com.
