East Texas Lumber Part 3
/As the East Texas lumber industry grew, it attracted people to the region and also gave opportunities to those already living there. A highly skilled workforce thus developed, which led to growth in manufacturing and other businesses which piggybacked on the skilled workforce. And, some lumber businesses adapted and changed, using their skilled workforce to enter other lines of business and prosper.
Here are a few examples:
Lufkin Industries. This company was founded in 1902 as a machine shop to manufacture and repair sawmill equipment. Soon it expanded to locomotives. Eventually it moved into manufacturing oilfield equipment. It was purchased by GE/Baker Hughes in 2013 for $3.3 billion. It was subsequently spun off from GE and exists still today and is a leader in oilfield/downhole technology;
Brookshire Brothers. This well-known regional grocery chain is still headquartered in Lufkin and began in 1921 as a wholesale lumber company. It added a general store not long after starting in the lumber business, and the rest is history. Today, Brookshire Brothers has more than 100 locations, is 100% owned by its 7,000 employees and in 2021 had revenue north of $2 billion;
Temple-Inland Inc. Formed in 1893 as a lumber company and sawmill, Temple-Inland eventually became a leading manufacturer of corrugated packaging, paper products, building products and specialty chemicals. It was acquired in 1973 by Time, Inc., to build their forest products business. Several other iterations of the company followed, including a sale to International Paper and then most recently to Georgia Pacific.
American Lumber Company. Founded in 1901 in Rusk, Texas, the company started as a lumber producer and sawmill operator, but eventually diversified into oil and gas, transportation and real estate. It formed a subsidiary in the 1940s called American Freightways Corporation, which became a leading less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier. In 2001 it was acquired by FedEx.
These companies and others form a pretty impressive legacy for the East Texas lumber industry! And this is exactly how economic development happens. A natural resource is identified as an economic resource, technology and human capital are applied to solve an identifiable and quantifiable problem, and value is created.
The inevitable change then happens, problems get redefined, skills and knowledge acquired by doing things in the (now) old way are retooled, updated and applied to a (somewhat) new situation, and the cycle continues.
This is all very human, and there is something compelling, poetic and beautiful in histories like this.