At Wightman Lumber, we extend our range of lumber related manufacturing activities all the way back to the source of our raw materials – the forest. Our forestry related operations include the following:

• Purchasing cutting rights on standing timber from private landowners
• Bidding for timber cutting rights on tracts offered by independent foresters who represent private landowners
• Harvesting stands of timber.

We purchase cutting rights on standing timber from private landowners within a 60 mile radius of our mill in Portlandville, NY, on a continuing basis. One of our professional foresters will evaluate your timber lot and give you a free estimate on the value of your timber. If you like the price we will sign a contract with you covering the financial terms, what work will be done, what time frame it will be done within, and what timber will be cut. Upon signing of the timber purchase contract, we will give you a check for the agreed price. We are fully insured with both worker’s compensation and liability insurance.

If you decide to use an independent forester to do the same activities that our forester does, we routinely bid on jobs that independent foresters put out for bid to the various sawmills and loggers on their list of bidders. According to the standard procedures of the independent forester, we would sign a contract stating the terms of the sale and pay for the purchase of the timber rights upon signing the contract. It would then be the landowner’s responsibility to pay the independent forester his or her fee for services rendered.

All our forestry workers have partially or fully completed the “Game of Logging” safety course. We also establish a goal of treating private landowner’s forests with the same respect that we treat our own forest lands. All roads are appropriately water barred to prevent soil erosion and all danger trees that are accidentally damaged during the cutting process are brought to the ground to prevent potential injury to anyone entering the forest.

There is no substitute for sustainability

At Wightman, our commitment to the environment runs through every phase of the company’s operations.

Know the Source
The path that some lumber takes from forest to consumer can be thousands of miles long. Some mills import wood from across the globe, or outsource kiln drying and other processes that increase the length of the supply chain and the size of the end product’s carbon footprint.

Operate Responsibly
Wightman’s day-to-day operations adhere to strict principles of conservation and preservation of resources.

• Use of thin kerf saws allows for more lumber and less sawdust waste to be generated from each log, and thin kerf saws use less electrical power than many other saws.
• Advanced lasers and computerized setworks minimize yield losses during the sawing process.
• Chips of waste wood are sold to regional companies as raw materials for fiberboard, wood pellets and other products.
• Wightman reuses or repurposes materials that would have been waste, selling bark to landscapers, using 75 percent of sawdust generated to power boilers that heat the drying kilns and the other 25 percent goes to local farmers for animal bedding.