'Environmentalists and loggers'

RBM Lumber takes a different approach to wood

RBM Lumber Inc., a Columbia Heights sawmill that produces about 1.2 million board feet of lumber each year, began with two little boys cutting down a tree on a hill near their house and keeping it secret from their father.

"I just always liked to see trees fall. It started out that simple," said Ben Thompson, one of the owners of RBM. He received a bow saw for Christmas in fourth grade and found himself and his brother Roy hooked.

Later, their tree pursuit became more serious.

"In the spring of '74, I was 15 and Ben was 17," Roy said. "We bought our first timber-sale contracts from the Forest Service. We were underage so our parents had to sign. We traded 10 cords of firewood for a chain saw."

The two cut fence posts and then began logging in earnest. In 1979, the Thompsons bought a portable sawmill, powered by a Volkswagen engine, that they operated in their parents' back yard. Then the bottom fell out of the economy, much as it did last year.

"In 1980 when the country went into a recession and there was no market for logs, so we started milling," Roy said.

Ben, his brother Roy and their father, Malcolm, purchased a hayfield east of Columbia Falls in 1980 where they built the mill.

That mill has expanded to include a number of warehouses. Malcolm dropped out and his wife, Evelyn, took his place.

Roy joked that RBM now stands for "Roy, Ben, Mom."

Evelyn Thompson still works at the mill, cutting 1,000-pound logs into boards and operating the machinery with long-practiced ease.

The Thompsons log locally and offer a number of tree species including fir, larch, pine, cedar and aspen. Employees bicycle across the expansive facility where floor boards, cabinets, picture frames, doors, posts, molding and counter tops are produced.

"We log most of it ourselves," Roy said. "We produce everything we sell."

Roy is particularly proud of their interior products, such as molding and floor boards, which have a very low moisture content of only 6 to 8 percent.

"It's what sets us apart from other sawmills: The core of our quality is the moisture content," he said. "For the last 29 years that's all we've done, is try to figure out better ways to use the natural resource of timber."

But RBM hasn't escaped the economic downturn. The timber industry's grinding halt in the wake of plunging home prices and idled construction plague the local sawmill.

"Last year was the first time in 30 years that we've slowed down," Roy said. And while producing value-added wood products has saved them from the fate of several area Plum Creek mills, it hasn't stopped them from getting creative to generate business.

"We're expanding our sales area," Roy said. "We've opened a store in Missoula. We haven't really laid anybody off and we're hoping not to."

Ben said he's giving up his salary this year to keep their 30 employees on the payroll. He hopes his approach to logging will help the flagging industry.

"We want to let the trees grow bigger," he said. "We try to save trees as much as we can. That doesn't really make sense having a sawmill. We think more about what's left than what we're taking. We're trying not to cause more tension between the timber industry and the environmentalists."

Ben has a thin cross-section of a Douglas fir on which he's measured the tree's growth patterns. The tree, which was logged at 154 years old, produced 890 board-feet of lumber. Some 640 of those board-feet grew during the last 40 years of its life.

"Different species live different lengths of time," Ben said. "All of that fits into the wildlife needs. We're not starting over and taking away all of the habitat at once."

Ben likened the logging procedures he's developing to a slow-burning forest fire that burns the underbrush in the forest but not the trees.

"We want to creep around in the woods and take some here and there and leave a lot," he said. "It's more environmentally friendly. We're environmentalists and we're loggers."

Reporter K.J. Hascall may be reached at 758-4439 or by e-mail at kjhascall@dailyinterlake.com