Sliver me timbers: sell the high trees, come a board, walk the plank--it's all life on the cutting edge at a lumber yard.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Each day that it's not raining, about 20 tractor-trailers loaded with freshly cut logs make the turn off Falling Oak Road into McDowell Lumber Co., a sawmill about five miles southwest of Asheboro. The best become top-grade lumber, good for furniture or door frames. Others will be used in kitchen cabinets or flooring. The lowest-quality are turned into pallets.

McDowell deals in hardwoods, mostly red and white oak and poplar. It buys trees from tracts 10 acres or larger, says Doug McDowell, 53, director of manufacturing and safety. He came to the business--his brother, Ken, 52, owns it--in December after 28 years in the furniture industry, most as a supervisor at Asheboro-based Klaussner Furniture Industries.

The lumber company contracts its logging. Hardwoods 10 inches or more in diameter are trucked to the plant. There, logs are doused with water to prevent staining. Softwoods such as pine are sold to other mills, part of a forest-products industry that employs about 145,000, annually produces about 2.6 billion board feet--a board foot is a foot long, foot wide and inch thick--and ranks seventh in the U.S.

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After the bark is removed, each...