A tradition of service and integrity
This company is going into the fourth generation with its values intact
Thomas Dougherty founded Dougherty Lumber Co. in 1931, after being the
last employee let go from his previous employer. Against the advice of more
experienced advisors, he decided to start his own lumber business. He knew
that his drive, ability, and experience would serve him well, even then,
in the depths of the Great Depression. He had returned to his hometown of
Cleveland following his marriage to Mildred. He worked for a small lumber
company as a foreman and a teamster. A teamster, "in the genuine sense
of the word, a nursemaid for horses," he used to say. He rented office
space and a small part of the yard at the old streetcar barns at E.121st
St & Euclid Ave. They scrimped and saved and were soon able to purchase
a used delivery truck, and retired the team of horses. They saved on heat,
too, by leaving the stairwell doors open on their way up to their third
floor office. Coal was a luxury. Persistence, hard work, and an expanding
network of customers and suppliers pulled them through. Mr. Dougherty would
later buy the property at 12100 Euclid Ave. for Dougherty's then main offices
and retail store.
As business began to improve before the war, Dougherty's main yard was
located on E. 68th St. in Cleveland. A tremendous fire, in 1956, completely
destroyed the facility. It was the second worst fire in the history of Cleveland,
at that time, eclipsed only by the tragic East Ohio Gas fire. Dougherty
had assembled a parcel of land off Lloyd Rd. in Wickliffe, prior to the
fire, that had a rail siding and some covered storage. He bounced back and
had railcars of lumber moving to Wickliffe, before the ashes of E. 68th
St. had cooled. The Wickliffe yard would become one of the largest lumber
concentration yards in the world, eventually totaling over 1 million square
feet of warehouse and timber deck. The yard was run for years by legendary
local lumberman, "Rocky" Svoboda, before he joined the Dougherty
outside sales team.
The World War II years brought with them challenges and opportunities
for growth, and for supporting the war effort, if inventory and products
could be secured. Dougherty, always resourceful, had assembled a pile of
gasoline ration books and spare tires, and dispatched his daughter, Mary
Louise, to the West Coast in a beat up Ford to buy as much lumber as she
could. She was fresh out of Lake Erie College, and despite having grown
up in the business and having managed the newly acquired Keystone Lumber
Co. in Pittsburgh, she found herself in the high timber with the lumberjacks.
She had to shatter the wood ceiling, to be taken seriously by the all-male
club in the sawmill industry, but she knew the language of lumber and had
her father's persistence and ability to negotiate and make deals. Soon redwood,
Douglas fir, cedar,ponderosa and sugar pine were flowing by the boxcar to
Cleveland. It was on that trip that she found a small, old fashioned sawmill
in Willow Ranch, California that produced the most beautiful, soft textured
Ponderosa Pine that anyone had seen.
In 1946 Mr. Dougherty purchased the mill and assigned Mary Louise to
run it. She became the first woman to run a sawmill in the United States.
She was still the only woman running a sawmill, in 1959, when the company
purchased a mill in Alturas, California that met their needs for modern
manufacturing and distribution. Through the years, the company had acquired
timberland in California and southeastern Oregon to supply the mill. The
company operated Calandor Pine Corp., in Alturas, until 1989, when it saw
the handwriting on the wall that the days of the small, independent sawmill
were coming to a close and sold the plant to a large firm in Portland, Oregon.
Goose Lake Timber Company still maintains the timberland, and now sells
the mature trees on the open market. "We're growing the wood for the
future, and for the coming generations of the Dougherty family and customers."
says Marc Hanna, third generation Dougherty President. The next generation
is already learning the business. Marc's daughter Tiffany Binkowsky is working
as office manager at the Cleveland Plywood Co., next door to the Dougherty
yard at 5900 Harvard Ave.
Dougherty Lumber's main offices and yard at 6000 Harvard Ave. were acquired
in 1967. Ironically, this was the site of the old lumberyard, from which
Mr. Dougherty was let go in 1931. He demolished the old buildings that he
had helped build, and erected a modern distribution yard to accommodate
the Dougherty Lumber and Cleveland Plywood operations. The facility has
good rail service, a custom mill, and stands a half mile from I-77, affording
rapid distribution of materials. BXM
Dougherty Lumber:
a whole family of companies
The firm has diversified across the country
to include a multitude of products and services
Dougherty's diversification is a natural outgrowth of customer demand.
"We found our customers calling us for items, and we wanted to be a
one-stop shop for wood products," says Don Beran, Executive Vice President
and COO. "We started out in lumber, and plywood was a natural progression,"
Beran says.
At one time, plywood was a new technology, followed by composite panels,
OSB, fiberboard, and particleboard. But the firm has always kept up with
the rapidly changing lumber industry and learned to bring on more effective
new products and to teach customers about their advantages and best uses.
"We are constantly looking for new products to better serve our expanding
customer base," says Don Beran. "We are in the game from 2x4's
on up. We scour the trade shows and industry to learn about new products
to add to our mix," he says.
Because of the diversification and the growth of specialty products in
the Dougherty offerings, the company formed a management company, Dougherty-Hanna
Resources in 1982. "This allows our separate locations to concentrate
on their products and markets, while we are able to research and develop
new products and new markets," says company president Marc Hanna.
"We have been a proud distributor of Formica brand products since
the fifties," says Hanna about the Ohio based decorative surfacing
producer. The company distributes Formica products from Cleveland Plywood,
Buckeye Surfaces, Independent Wholesale Distributors, and Arrow Laminates.
High pressure decorative laminate is available in over 300 colors, patterns,
and finishes. Formica Corp. is the design leader in decorative surfacing.
Formica Solid Surfacing is an exciting, high end surfacing solution. Formica
Granite is the company's newest offering. Hanna says, "We are excited
to be a beta distributor for the new Formica Granite line in Ohio. It offers
our customers a pre-finished solid granite countertop, in popular colors,
at a price point that can't be beat." Beran is also enthusiastic about
one of the new Dougherty Lumber products, Cement Siding by James Hardie,
because it offers "less maintenance, combustibility and decay worries."
While Dougherty Lumber is poised for the future, it is proud of its past.
Partially because of loyalty (It has grown with some of Mr. Dougherty's
original customers and vendors) and thanks to a very stable work force,
it still employs some workers originally hired by Tom Dougherty.
Dougherty Lumber Co. and its family of companies and people are proud
to be a part of the building industry in Cleveland and surrounding areas.
"The Builders Exchange is a unique and important organization that
has been a key factor in the growth of Cleveland and of Dougherty Lumber
Co.," says Hanna. Dougherty Lumber has been a B/X member since the
Thirties, with Tom Dougherty serving as president of the Exchange in 1947-48.
It is uniquely positioned to face the opportunities and challenges of building
for the 21st century. BXM
