Hillcrest Lumber prepares to celebrate 50 years
This year marks the 50th year for Hillcrest Lumber, located at 8667 Zuercher Road in Apple Creek, and the company is planning on marking the anniversary with a special event on Sept. 21.
This year marks the 50th year for Hillcrest Lumber, located at 8667 Zuercher Road in Apple Creek, and the company is planning on marking the anniversary with a special event open to anyone who has done business with it.
Customer Appreciation Day will be Friday, Sept. 20 with tours of the mill from 9-11 a.m. and lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. It will feature Dennis Raber sausage.
Hillcrest Lumber specializes in timber harvesting, woodland and wildlife management, kiln-dried lumber, veneer, and rift and quartersawn white oak.
“Ninety percent of the time, it’s usually the first time for a customer to sell timber or to manage woods. They’re usually cautious and stressed out,” said David Hershberger, now the majority owner of Hillcrest Lumber who grew up watching his father Fred run the business.
With 50 years of experience — and with a holistic philosophy that wants to help the customer fill their needs — Hillcrest Lumber hopes to ease the process.
David’s two brothers, Henry and Edward Hershberger, are part owners. Their leadership team consists of Edward’s oldest son, Henry’s oldest son and David’s son-in-law.
“We’ve got a great team here,” David Hershberger said. “They’re young, but it’s kind of cool. The last two years in my position here as the majority owner, the most satisfying and fulfilling part has been to see people have different personalities fit in the right role here and to watch them develop and grow.”
Started in 1974 by Fred Hershberger, Hillcrest Lumber has grown and expanded. Originally, Fred Hershberger would buy trees and saw them into boards, but eventually, he built his own mill. After a while he changed from a circle mill to band saw, and then about 18-20 years ago, he turned the business over to his sons and semi-retired.
Hillcrest Lumber buys any hardwoods including white oak or walnut within a 100-mile radius.
“With 70 sawmills in Holmes County, we probably have the largest congregation of saw mills in the world here in this area,” Hershberger said. “But the good news is that we also have a lot of woodworkers. It’s very competitive, but a lot of us are friends.”
Hillcrest Lumber also sells kiln-dried lumber and is trying to expand that part of the business. “You can cut out the middleman and buy direct, so we can sometimes offer better prices,” Hershberger said.
An average harvest is $1,000-$2,000 an acre. “There’s more and more people that just have wooded acreage just to manage for timber because they’re realizing that they can have a profit every 10-15 years, and it usually increases as the trees get healthier,” Hershberger said.
Hillcrest Lumber has a person on staff to mark and measure the trees and to help decide what trees should be removed. “We’re not just buying trees. We’re buying the trees that need to come out for the health of the woods,” Hershberger said.
Their philosophy is deer management and timber management can work together.
“This fall I harvested the biggest deer of my life on a property that Hillcrest Lumber timbered and provided a deer management plan for,” said Zach Schlabach, a Hillcrest client. “After creating more cover from the select timber harvesting, we noticed the property was holding more mature deer. We had as many as four mature bucks on the property at one time.”
David Hershberger does the timber management plans for Wayne County, and Hillcrest Lumber is specially trained in that field.
“Managing timber is a bit like managing a herd of cows,” he said. “You’ve got a limited amount of space, and you just want to make sure that your good genetic trees are the ones left there, that your good, healthy young trees that still have 15 years of growth are growing good, and to make sure the bad ones are out of their way.”
Besides the challenges of high trucking costs and the dangers inherent in logging, another big challenge is invasive plants that are brought in because of landscaping.
“We will identify them for people and share in their report what they have, and then they can hire someone to come cut them out,” Hershberger said. “If you’re a landowner that wants to manage your timber, we can help you. If you’re a landowner who wants to get every dollar right away, we can help you. If you’re a landowner that wants to have a plan for your wildlife, we can help you. We can come out and do a plan for you.”