84 Lumber, America's fifth-biggest pro-oriented construction supply company and the largest privately owned lumberyard chain, closed 10 more facilities today, seven of them in the Southeast.
The company shut these locations:
- Brooksville, Fla.
- Deland, Fla.
- Fort Pierce, Fla.
- Winder, Ga.
- South Haven, Miss.
- Springfield, Mo.
- Farmingdale, N.J.
- Tulsa, Okla.
- Anderson, S.C.
- Karns, Tenn.
"These 10 stores have consistently underperformed for quite some time, and while we do see some positive movement in the housing andconstruction markets overall on a national basis, these markets continue to either lag severely with no sign of a significant rebound that fits ourbusiness model, or we have multiple stores in the region and we can handle the existing store business from other locations," Jeff Nobers, 84's vice president of marketing and public relations, wrote iin an e-mail to ProSales. The company plans to sell the properties. The closure reports come about two weeks after 84 Lumber closed branches in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Richmond, Va. (Story.)
"We routinely review all of our stores and manufacturing operations to determine the viability of our operations in any given local market to determine whether operations should be consolidated with other locations or closed," Nobers said.
84 has steadily closed branches in recent years as the housing market shrank and financial challenges rose. On Feb. 14, it closed a deal that uses federal and private loans to pay off the final $40 million of a $195 million, 18% interest loan that has hobbled the LBM giant's operations.
84's $1.35 billion in sales in 2009 put it sixth on the latest ProSales 100 list of top LBM operations. A merger higher up the list has since moved it to fifth place. (See updated list.) At the start of 2010 it had just over 300 locations and 4,000 employees. With the latest closures it now has roughly 265 locations.
