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- Brightman Lumber and its Reclamation Business is a True Family Business
- Only 4 or 5 sawmills within a 50 mile radius
- was recently honored as Massachusetts Wood Producer of the Year
ASSONET — The site laser above the large blade at Brightman Wood Sawmill is covered in sawdust before Ed Brightman Jr.’s workday got too old. He doesn’t mind cleaning it.
A handy tool for many who operate carriages in sawmills, the sight laser only slowed the 44-year-old Brightman’s work. Brightman began the process of cutting logs into rectangles and trimming them into boards.
No knock-on technology, he says. Just because he’s been in charge of Sawyer’s booth at his family’s sawmill for a very long time (25 years), it’s quicker for him to scale up his work in his eyes. am.
Once Brightman has squared the log — stripped by a debarker before being loaded onto the wagon — Brightman manipulates the Sawyer Booth controls to position the wood for job slicing. During this writer’s visit, the order he ordered was a 1,000 foot board, 1 inch by 12 inch.
The beginning of Brightman Lumber
The sawmill is half of two operations at 181 South Main St, Brigtman Lumber. Another of his businesses is a land reclamation business run by Ed Brigtman Sr. The sawmill is the older of his two started by John Brightman. 1978, Jr. and Mrs. Nancy (Ed Sr.’s parents) drove a truck and two skidders (to drag fallen logs and cut logs) to the workshop on Monday, returned home on Wednesday, and did a second similar run on Thursday. Make the move and come home Friday night or Saturday.
“My father had a dream one night,” says Ed Sr. “He said we should have our own sawmill.”
Easier said than done? surely. But John Brightman Jr. and his wife Nancy knew how to get things done. They found their current business site on South Main Street and purchased it.
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John scoured the area and built a sawmill piece by piece. Brightman Lumber Company is born.
The first three years in the sawmill/sawmill were very old school. The sawmill workers had to lift the logs and put them on the trolleys. Business was successful. And they modernized.
The Breitmans initially sold not only raw (undried) timber, but also finished timber for home construction. He had 25 employees and he had two eight-hour shifts.
Change in business model
Their finished wood production ended at the turn of the century. The reason, according to the Breitmans, was the high cost of the diesel fuel needed to run the finishing machines. they have become smaller. Currently, we basically only produce logs at a sawmill with three employees. The business is strictly retail. Most of their wood is used for fences and storerooms. Someone might stop by and buy a board. Or 10. Or 100. Brightmans welcomes all.
Johnny Brightman was an extraordinary Sawyer, and his brother, Ed Sr., recalls. Johnny died of a heart attack during his delivery in Maine in 2013. Founder John Brightman his Jr. died in August 2021 at the age of 83. a few feet from the blade. Nancy Brightman continues to be the owner of the She Brightman Lumber. Her daughter Patty, 57, runs the business. Ed Sr. (65) is a land clearing tsar and Ed Jr. is in charge of the sawmill.
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Ed Jr. said there are about four or five sawmills within a 40 to 50 mile radius of BrightmanLumber Co. “They couldn’t produce fast enough because the price of timber went up. That’s what happened to us at the last minute of the mill. became very expensive and we weren’t able to produce the product fast enough.”
What is Sawyer’s day like?
Ed Jr. said lumbering is a rewarding business, but not one he hopes to get out of. He often works 12 hours from 4:30 am. It’s not just his job. It’s a family matter. He said he started working for his father when he was nine years old.
“That’s all I know,” says Ed Jr. I milk cows. It’s the same thing every day. That’s basically what this business is. When you run a business, you always have to maintain something.”
The main blade, the bottom blade (48 inches in diameter), has 50 teeth that are sharpened twice a day.
In addition to $5 per gallon of diesel fuel, other operating costs for the machine are worth noting. Some of Brightman Lumber’s hard-working machines cost $1,000 or more for oil changes (every 350 hours, previously 250 hours). A 2″ x 4″ oil filter for your machine costs $200. And over the past three or four years oil prices have jumped from $550 to $900 to fill a 50 gallon drum.
The big saw blade is about 40 years old. Ed Jr. says they aren’t something he replaces every year, every six months, or even every decade if he can avoid it. According to him, only a handful of people can hammer a large blade back to working condition when the steel has tempered or lost its stiffness. The Brightman family knows how to contact the Magic Hammer Men. Ed Jr. estimates that his new 48-inch blade will cost about $3,500.
Honored as Massachusetts Wood Producer of the Year
Brightman Lumber produces approximately 20,000 to 25,000 feet of wood per week and 1 to 1.5 million feet of wood per year. According to Ed Jr., huge sawmills all over the world he works a million feet a week. But the little man can be recognized. Ed Brightman Sr. was recently honored as Massachusetts Lumber Producer of the Year by the Massachusetts Forestry Alliance in Marlborough.
According to Ed Jr., the Brightman Lumber is 95% Eastern White Pine lumber and very efficient. Nothing is wasted, he says.
The stripped bark becomes bark mulch. Trimmed wood, which is not useful for even the smallest board, is chopped into chips that are popular as animal bedding.
Ed Jr. said he is finally seeing a gradual slowdown in business after more than two years of very busy sales at the height of the COVID pandemic.
“There were no piles (of timber) here,” he says, pointing to the lumber yard. “We couldn’t keep the boards in stock. If we had a cracked or defective board, people would buy it because they couldn’t get wood anywhere else.”
Ed Sr. says the Brightman Lumber crew can sometimes seem like they’re working twice as hard to keep the business thriving. He knows other people feel the same way. Like Ed Jr., he’s not complaining.
“We go in. We laugh. We joke about things,” he says.
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