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The manager of a lumberyard in a small eastern Iowa town talks about life as a dealer as well as a firefighter.
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You can't succeed without a top-quality sales staff, Jim Sobeck argues. Here are his tips on how to find stars.
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Dealers today are exhausted but optimistic about future prospects. That's good, editor Craig Webb says, so long as they seek to avoid being one of the housing crash's last victims.
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Mike Wall discusses his job running a company that started operations in Montana 22 years before it became a state.
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In traveling around the country and observing not only Stock Building Supply but other LBM operations, I can't help but offer a "welcome back" to the true sales professional.
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Curt Koth has worked in LBM for 40 years and with Michigan Lumber for 32. Here's how he manages this roughly $5 million single-store yard in a Rust Belt capital where the unemployment rate is half again the national average and city officials are promoting programs to demolish existing homes.
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Talk to dealers and consultants about the best ways to calm construction company chaos and you'll hear lots of tips.
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In many ways, Nebraska-based Builders. is as simple as its name: One word, period. But it's also five very different operations, spread across more than 450 miles. How Builders. manages that complexity makes it our Dealer of the Year.
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You bought the house, you moved in, but now you wonder what to do next.
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I – and I'm guessing many of you–at first welcomed the opportunity this housing downturn presented to slow down, think about operations, clean the trucks, sharpen the pencils. But now I've done all those things three or four times each. There is not much left to do except look deep into my soul and...
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For several years, ProBuild senior management has worked to build an LBM operation in which decisions get made at lots of levels throughout a company that spans the country and employs 13,000 workers. The Denver headquarters operation is small, but there's no question it calls the shots. And what...
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Industry roundtables are a great way to give you the information and insights you need to make your business run circles around the competition, Chris Rader says.
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Sometimes a set of numbers can whack you as hard as a 2x4. That happened to me recently when one of several dealers in Grand Junction, Colo., whom I met last year passed along the building permit numbers for his county:
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A longtime associate member of the Florida Building Materials Association told president Bill Tucker that he wouldn't be able to make his dues for the year.
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Business in the building supply industry in Florida has been tough this year for most people, and there is no way we can put a new dress on it to make it look any better. Like most of you, I can't wait until about three months from today, in which I will be sipping on cheap champagne, singing Auld...
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After watching the movie, "Saving Private Ryan," I'd bet a lot of Americans would call the D-Day invasion a bloodbath. Historians estimate 2,500 Allied soldiers died, and another 7,500 were injured or lost in action while storming the Normandy beaches. But to the allied commanders, those were good...
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Guest columnist Jim Enter says a confluence of deadly factors are making it vital for dealers to start charging for their deliveries. Whether it's called a delivery charge or a fuel surcharge doesn't matter; what's important is that dealers start collecting for the service.
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Lives are not at stake in the housing market's crash but livelihoods are, consultant Ruth Kellick-Grubbs says. Her recommendations: Prepare for the worst, tighten operations now, work fast, get creative and think big.
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A reckless man inspired this month's cover story. On a lumberyard visit a few years back, senior editor Andy Carlo saw a yard employee standing on the tines of a forklift high in the air, holding down a pallet of 2x4s as the machine rolled across the yard. With the man's back to the forklift's path...