The Lind family made shakes and shingles at their Arlington mill for decades, turning cedar into roofing and wall material and employing numerous workers at the company’s high point.
“Years ago, we used to have 10 people on salary,” said Sally Lind, whose husband, Kenny, started Lind Shake Co. 42 years ago.
A week ago, a fire destroyed the 7,000-square-foot plant, which was uninsured. At least $5,000 to $10,000 worth of shakes went up in flames with the building.
That followed a July 7 fire that destroyed a similar mill belonging to B&B Cedar Sales of Sultan.
Those two blazes practically cut in half the number of shake or shingle mills remaining in Snohomish County.
Since the late 1980s, when cedar shake and shingle manufacturing peaked in the United States and Canada, hundreds of mills have shut down in the face of higher log prices and falling demand.
Rick Blacker, who operates Blacker Shake with his brothers, said not many people are building new homes with wood roofs.
“It’s just for the people who want that look and don’t mind a little maintenance,” said Blacker, whose family-run business near Oso dates back to the mid-1940s.
Instead, asphalt and composite roofing materials have taken a significant part of the wood market, said Tim Cochran, an assistant editor at Random Lengths, which tracks the lumber and wood products industry.
Alternatives to shake and shingle roofs have been helped by insurers’ perception that wood roofs burn easier and faster.
“The wood shakes are premium, because insurance companies would rather you put on a composite roof. Also, a cheap composite roof is less expensive than wood,” Cochran said.
While shake and shingle production figures are hard to find, Cochran said it’s clear the industry has continued to shrink in recent years. Random Lengths’ list of shingle mills in the United States from 1998 was more than four pages long, while the list Cochran has today is about half that size.
One of the industry’s largest survivors is 58-year-old Miller Shingle Co., based in Granite Falls. The company employs 130 people overall, including 20 in its shingle mill and another dozen on logging crews that supply the mill.
With those numbers and its output of roof and wall shingles, Miller is believed to be the largest cedar shingle maker left in the United States, said Bruce Miller III.
The company has established its place in the market by making high-end exterior wall shingles, which were featured on the public TV program “This Old House” a few years ago. Those wall shingles have been in much higher demand that the company’s more traditional roof products, Miller said.
In order to obtain cedar logs at the best price possible, Miller Shingle gets the majority of its logs from salvage logging on private lands, he said. That gives the company a steady supply of old cedar logs, which otherwise are hard to find due to old-growth restrictions on federal and state lands.
Miller blames limits on most logging activity in the federal and state forests for the increasingly scarcity of cedar shingle mills.
“The unfortunate thing is there’s enough wood out there to run several mills in our county for years,” he said.
Sally Lind said that just when the availability of cedar logs declined and demand began falling, the cost of unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation payments made it hard for small shingle mills to make money. In recent years, Lind Shake employed only family members.
Similarly, B&B Cedar’s Sultan mill had become a one-man operation before it burned. That fire, which did at least $50,000 worth of damage, has been ruled an accident.
Because neither of those mills was insured, it’s likely the businesses won’t be back.
Lind, whose son was running the mill, said she’s sad to see the shake mills disappear.
“It’s a dying art,” she said.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
Dan Bates / The Herald
Bruce Miller III, “Bruce III” to his co-workers, shows off some No. 1 shingles at the Miller Shingle Co. mill in Granite Falls.
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