Employee Skills Training Grant Award

Rex Lumber

In November 2007, Rex Lumber Graceville was awarded an Employee Skills Training grant for $75,000 to be matched with $203,500. A leading manufacturer of Southern Yellow Pine lumber, Rex Lumber was established in Graceville in 1926. The company changed hands in the 1980s and 1990s but was repurchased by the original founders, the McRae family, in 2001. Today, the business is once again family owned and operated by Northwest Florida natives. Rex Lumber–Bristol, a sister company to the Graceville location, operates a second Northwest Florida mill.

Although the company is decades old, the technology used today is state-of-the-art. The continuous kilns in operation at Rex Lumber are on the cutting edge. At the time of construction, only five existed worldwide – Rex now has two in Graceville and one in Bristol. The kiln supervisor, Jason Bossert, trained under the WIRED grant has become a hot commodity so to speak. Other mills around the country have called on Bossert to consult with their staff.

“The Graceville mill is a real showplace,” says Randy Cummings, General Manager. “We recently hosted 37 representatives from several mills, including some from international firms. They were all amazed at how fast and efficient we operate.”

Rex Lumber, which hires locals almost exclusively, achieves that high level of performance through thorough training of its employees. “One of our employees, Gary Kiger, previously worked in HVAC. The work is very cyclical. We brought him in on the ground floor, and he is now a preventive maintenance specialist working on air compressors, as well as HVAC,” explains Nicki Davis, the human resources manager at Rex. “He now has steady, year-round work and marketable skills.”

Kiger’s training is paying off for Rex Lumber too. The compressors cost $60,000 to $70,000 each and machine failure resulting in downtime can cost the company $30,000 or more per week.

As an important part of its rural Northwest Florida community, Rex Lumber has taken chances on employees that many companies would overlook. “When Maurice Walker came into my office to interview, I knew he had been in trouble in the past,” recalls Davis. “He told me that his five-year-old son asked him every afternoon if he found a job today. I told him to go home and tell his son that he has a job at Rex Lumber.”

Walker received training under the WIRED grant and is now the top operator in Rex Lumber history on the Sennebogen 835M, a high level piece of equipment that is used to handle debarked logs on the production line.

Rex Lumber, which sits on 40 acres in Graceville, sells primarily to wood treating businesses throughout Florida as well as to customers in the Northeast and upper Midwest of the United States.