When the most recent guidlines came out defining essential and non-essential businesses, Kretz Lumber Company was deemed essential. You might be wondering, what makes us essential?
One of the core products we provide is pallet boards. From food to healthcare, pallets are instrumental in shipping and transporting of goods. The pallet industry needs these boards to protect against supply chains disruptions.
Our sawmill also produces animal bedding to farmers, and chips to paper mills. The majority of these products stay here in the central Wisconsin region. It is a good feeling to know our efforts are helping out people right here in our backyard.
In terms of the forestry side of our business, we are adjusting our work to follow CDC guidelines while still providing a vital service. It’s important that logs continue to get harvested and lumber and wood by-products like I mentioned earlier continue to be made in order to limit supply chain disruptions.
When the ‘safer at home’ and ‘shelter in place’ orders were released a couple of weeks ago, there wasn’t a lot of communication about guidelines and as a result, we had some lumber orders cancelled. We were starting to get concerned, but once the details related to the government orders became more clear, these issues cleared up.
Our foresters are limiting person-to-person contact as best they can. Most of their days are spent working and organizing our log yard, or out marking properties for upcoming summer harvests. We are right in the middle of what we call the spring break-up, where woods and backroads are muddy and messy and weight restrictions are somewhat prohibitive. No doubt, we are looking forward to warmer, and sunnier days ahead in order to continue our work in the woods.
As is the experience for all of us, this virus and the guidelines given to us are changing rapidly. While today, we operate as best as we can, we all realize that tomorrow could be a totally different story. Our hearts go out to all those impacted by this pandemic. We’ll continue to update you should any significant changes get announced related to our operations.
Stay safe, friends. Together, we’ll get through this.
