Lady Lake’s South Eastern Timber Buzzes to Meet Demand for Oak Crane Mats

Wed January 22, 2003
Amanda L. Gutshall

For a company that has been around for more than 30 years, South Eastern Timber is seeing some of its best business in the past two.

The company, based out of Lady Lake, FL, with a sales office in Coral Springs, has managed to keeps its oak crane mat production flow up in spite of a weak economy over the past few years.

Diane Murray, vice president of the five employee outfit, credits the steady flow on a newer, better carriage, installed about a year ago, and a recently introduced Web site. “We’ve been getting more and more hits and on it and people e-mail for price quotes. I hope it continues,” she said.

The new carriage has increased production at the mill as well, getting more mats out to customers. “It improved our capacity for speed and accuracy for sawing. That, in turn, picked up our volume,” Murray noted. “We are pretty set [with orders] for the time being. We go as fast as we can with the volume to keep everyone satisfied.”

The Lady Lake mill was originally built in the 1950s by Roger Hartsock, a sawmill lumberman, and called Hartsock Sawmill. In 1971, he sold the business to South Eastern Timber. The company sits on 7 acres at 2939 E. Hartsock Sawmill Road.

The company sells its oak mats to highway and bridge contractors, dragline excavator companies and anyone with a need for timber mats, Murray explained. The mats are used mostly as barge mats. Especially in Florida’s marshy climate, these mats become extremely important to transport cranes and other equipment over unstable ground conditions.

South Eastern Timber specializes in crane mats only. “We figure we should do one thing and do it right. So we stay strictly to mats. It keeps us going,” she said. The chips and sawdust left over are sold to a wholesaler in the area.

The mill does most of its business in the southeast including Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. But it also ships its wares to all 50 states including Alaska and Hawaii and other countries like South America, Europe and the Caribbean.

“We are basically centered in the southeast, where business has been strong. We are extremely happy and grateful that business has been the way it is,” Murray said. “We pride ourselves on making good quality solid mats.”

And oak is the wood of choice for South Eastern Timber, as it is stronger than mixed hardwoods, Murray explained. “A lot of competitors sell the mixed. It is not as strong and durable as the oak.” Most oak mats, she added, can last two to three years depending on how well they are taken care of. “We have a lot of happy customers that like our mats because they are oak.”

South Eastern Timber buys oak logs and saws them into timbers, said Murray, noting the process. “The new carriage helps us to saw the logs into timbers more accurately,” she said. The mats are then built to customer’s specifications. “Everything is custom-built to what a customer needs,” Murray commented.

The mill can produce a truck load of mats in a day’s time depending on the size, ranging from 16 to 30 ft. long. “The inventory is fresh as everything is custom built,” she said.

As for the future, Murray said that the company will keep things as they are for now, since demand is strong and has actually increased in the past couple of years. “We are grateful to be in business all these years and to have a good, steady customer base. We look forward to more growth in the future.”

For more information, call 800/752-3804 or visit www.crane-mats.com.