THE FAMILY SAWMILLS
Delbert, Walter and I began sawing as partners in July 1935. We all moved to Lena. Times were rough and we had a pretty lean year. Walter and Alice's first in, a son, was born at Galena.
The river bottoms were a new experience for high land loggers. We had a terrible winter. The Mississippi River never stayed the same.
The winter of 1935 and 36 is still recorded as one of the two worst winters in
history. We were snowed in for 3 weeks with one only way out by caterpillar tractor or walk.
Walter and I moved to the Abington-Gailesburg area for two years, 1936 and 37, then moved back to the Mississippi River bottoms. We had two years experience andyears to ponder about what went wrong 1935, and felt better equipped to try again.
This time we logged very heavy during the winter, then sawed during the summer.
This proved to be very successful. If we needed more logs we would log the hills in
This proved to be very successful. If we needed more logs we would log the hills inthe summer. We let the river have its mud and mosquitoes.
In 1939, the Army engineers took over the river bottoms and closed all logging.
1940 we moved to Dubuque, IA and sawed railroad ties for nine months. We sawed 29,000 ties and I had experience on high-speed sawing. Alice and Hazel were very persuasive and convinced us to settle in a permanent location so our children could receive a better education. The days of the portable sawmill were coming to an end.
In October, 1940 we moved to Savanna and set the mill up permanently and hauled logs to the mill. We kept 3 employees. The first year we showed a small profit. During World War II, we worked long hard hours as most Americans did. We'd cut logs, skid them out to the truck, then haul them to Savanna mill. We would stop for supper then work with railroad employees, which were called moonlighters, sawing several hours after supper. Then it would be back to the timber again the next morning.
We worked between seventy and ninety hours per week. It was very hard work, carrying slabs and lumber by hand. There was no electric or hydraulic power back then, not at our sawmill anyway. The lumber was used to build shipping crates for war materials and machinery. Most of the crates were used in gasoline-powered, electric generating plants. These plants were used for field hospitals and other military installations. Lumber sawed at Savanna mill was shipped to all parts of the free world.
In 1942 we put a new power winch on our boom truck for skidding logs. In 1942 we designed a new style boom which could be raised on a high position for loading logs on the truck and also lower for skidding logs in the woods. It was our own creation which reduced our loading time from one or two hours to about fifteen minutes. This method was used for about fifteen years. As one of the first in a new industry we had the job of inventing and designing our own methods. Much was done by trial and error. Several of our better designs were later placed on the market by major machinery manufacturers. We gave permission to copy our designs. It was a new day for logging in our area. This was also a more dangerous era.
By 1952 we were employing between fifteen and twenty people. We had replaced most of the older machinery with new, modern equipment. Business looked good.
In 1953 we bought our first fork truck. Another step to make our work load lighter but the mechanical failures kept us busy.
We began to convert to building pallets for fork trucks. This involved adding more room to our plant plus hundreds of thousands of dollars for pallet machinery and trucks. Basically, an all new business was to be built. We traveled extensively but could not find a modern pallet factory to pattern ours after.
The year of 1973 was a high profit year. Then came 1974; a fair year. The years of 1975 and '76 were two years with severe financial loss. We never did fully recover our losses.
THE DECADE OF THE EIGHTIES
BROUGHT MANY CHANGES
THE CLOSING OF A BUSINESS
Part of life is failures and scars. To cover a few of the world events which changed our lives during this decade, I will begin with 1974 when the Illinois legislature and Governor Walker got over generous with workman's compensation laws. They passed laws that increased our annual insurance cost from $35,000 to $85,000 per year. Later administrations made some corrections but over all this cost our business, Savanna Wood Products, over $400,000 in the years between 1975 and
1986. The corrections were too late.
At this same time in history, cost of diesel fuel doubled. Then fuel went up near
double again in 1979. These costs were beyond our control. We were not able to get prices up and were losing money at a frightening rate. Better management would have closed, but Walter poured farm money in the business. I did the same with what I had saved. I guess we were too soft hearted to put fifty people out of work. Some had been with us over 35 years. Many over 20 years.
About this time the environmentalist and various other organizations, The Sierra Club, The Izack Walton League and others lobbied Congress to stop cutting timber on the Mississippi river bottoms. Some estimate that beavers cut more timber than loggers. The great timber on the Mississippi River bottom was taken off the market, to die and fall down and rot away... Such a terrible waste. This forced us to buy nearly all timber on the highlands. It is impossible to estimate this cost as we were buying timber up to 150 miles from Savanna.
Between 1935 and 1975 we had cut over 30 million feet of logs on the river bottoms. I have estimated the extra cost of our timber and transportation was over $100,000 per year. It was heart breaking to see the losses pile up but after 40 years of success, we as a group thought the business was worth saving if we could. We did really believe prices of lumber and pallets would recover enough to cover the additional cost. But when interest rates went to over 15%, it appeared hopeless.
A business with fifty employees and sales over 11/2 million dollars a year that had prospered at Savanna for over forty five years was not making it.
Three items; insurance, fuel and timber was costing us over two hundred thousand dollars a year more in the late 1970's and the 80's than the same items had cost in previous years. It had became very obvious to me that we could not move logs the distance that we were moving them and pay the price that timber was costing and still show a profit. We eventually closed the business in June, 1986. In July Harley and I started a small pallet factory in Fulton, IL. I help out part time.
On October 25, 1986 a public auction sale was held at Savanna Wood Products.
TRAGEDY STRIKES HOME
During the auction, I received a call from Hazel who was in the hospital for tests. She said the medical report was in and she had Cancer. The doctor had told her she might live to Christmas or possibly Easter.
The news from Hazel was like a wild frightening nightmare. I went to the hospital immediately. The sale of the business now seemed so unimportant.
During this same month we also received word that Gene's wife, Maxine, also had Cancer. Maxine died on July 11, 1989.
A cancer specialist was able to put Hazel's Cancer into remission. She lived to July 15, 1989, just four days longer than Maxine. Our loss cannot be expressed in words.
Sheldon
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