FORT SASKATCHEWAN, Alberta — When you are stuck between a very tight labor market and a limited budget for equipment, finding the right machinery can make a big difference.

The point was not lost on Scotford Woodworks after it bought its Third Man nailing machines.

Scotford Woodworks concentrates on manufacturing heavy-duty pallets used by businesses involved in processing natural resources. Over 80% of Scotford’s pallets are built for export applications.

The pallet company, owned and operated by Kurt Krohman, is located in the city of Fort Saskatchewan in northern Alberta, a rural region rich in natural resources. The economy is good in this part of Canada, but the downside is that the labor market is very tight.

During the frontier era, northern Alberta was known for building canoes. In 1875 the Northwest Mounted Police built the ‘Fort on the Saskatchewan’ river, soon shortened to Fort Saskatchewan. A community grew up next to the fort, and Fort Saskatchewan now is a city of 14,000 people.

Scotford Woodworks was started in 1986 by Frank Krohman, who was 55 at the time, along with the help of his wife and his youngest son, Kurt, then 20. Frank was a pipe fitter by trade and started the pallet company in his off-hours. He built an 11-bay multi-office warehouse building in the evenings and weekends while running the pallet business.

"We started the business from our home and it quickly grew," Kurt recalled. Within five years the company expanded to a site of nearly nine acres east of Fort Saskatchewan, where it is located today. As Scotford’s customers grew in the past 20 years, so did the pallet company.

Kurt, now almost 40, operates Scotford and his wife, Sharron, is the company office manager.

"Business is really good here in Alberta," Kurt said. "You can be as busy as you want to be, but finding employees is very much the biggest problem we all face."

Among other things, Kurt buys lumber for Scotford. He purchases a lot of 4x4 and 6x6 poplar cants from sawmills in northern Alberta.

In Scotford’s plant, cants typically are cut to finished length with an L-M Equipment Co. Ltd. (Canada) package saw. Then the sized cant material is resawn into pallet stock.

The company began operating with one Baker Products band resaw, according to Kurt. Now it has two Baker single-head horizontal bandsaws and two Baker PAQ II band resaws. "We run a single and a double-cut PAQ together," Kurt explained, "so we size it going in and have three boards coming out."

Pallets are assembled with the company’s six Third Man nailing machines and then are stacked by four Third Man automatic stackers. About 80% of the company’s pallets are heat-treated in a Kiln-Direct pallet heat-treating system.

Scotford Woodworks has 18 full-time and part-time employees. It operates a regular shift of eight hours and a second, four-hour shift for part-time workers. The staff includes three workers who perform plant maintenance. The company has one truck for deliveries and also contracts for trucking.

Kurt bought the pallet heat-treating system in kit form. "The people we were dealing with at Kiln-Direct couldn’t have been more helpful, and the project went really well from start to finish," he said. "Assembly was very easy. It went as well as we had hoped." The heat-treating chamber is 13 feet wide, 48 feet long, and about 12 feet high. Kurt is considering investing in a second kiln to heat-treat pallets or lumber.

The global phytosanitary requirements for wood transport packaging have been an opportunity for companies like Scotford to add value to their pallets, Kurt noted. However, the Canadian government’s interpretation of the heat treatment requirements has been a point of contention, he said.

"The system in Canada is very difficult," he explained. For heat-treating pallets, the regulation requires that the core temperature of the wood be 56 degrees (Celsius) for a period of 30 minutes. Canadian officials, however, have interpreted the regulations to go by wet bulb temperature. "So we have to run a minimum of 60 degrees wet bulb for two hours and three minutes," said Kurt. That is four times longer than what the companies are required to do under the global phytosanitary rule, he noted.

Pallet companies have raised this issue with the Canadian Wooden Pallet and Container Association. Association general manager Gordon Hughes has worked with Canadian officials in the transition to the new phytosanitary requirements for wood packaging.

"Gordon is an amazing guy," said Kurt. "He is a huge asset to all the members as his knowledge in the industry is invaluable. For the most part, if it wasn’t for Gordon I wouldn’t be as successful
as I am."

Scotford Woodworks manufactures pallets ranging in size from 24x24 through to 96x96. The company supplies flush sided and wing pallets, pallet boxes and crates. The company sells a large volume of heavy-duty four-stringer and five-stringer pallets weighing about 70 pounds.

Scotford strives for long-term relationships with companies that it does business with. "It is very important to have a close relationship with the suppliers and the customers," Kurt remarked. "This industry has a lot of very good people, and it’s easy to become close to the suppliers and customers on a personal level."

With a young family, running a pallet business and having taken on half ownership of Third Man Products, Kurt does not have a lot of leisure time. He is interested in race cars, however, and owns a hot rod. Robert, his partner at Third Man Products, builds dune buggies when he is not building nailing machines.

The common theme is that they both like fast machines, an indispensable requirement for small and mid market pallet companies looking to compete in a tight labor market.

Kurt discovered the Third Man nailing machines by accident. He bought a nailing machine from a different supplier but was not satisfied with it. He told a Stanley-Bostitch representative that if anyone built similar machines in Canada, he would be interested. He told Kurt about the nailing machines manufactured by Robert (Bob) Trembley. Kurt watched one in operation, then quickly purchased the first of six machines.

The Third Man nailing machine requires only one operator and is simple to run. Kurt’s company is building one pallet in less than minute on the Third Man, with daily production rates of 300 pallets.

The operator places the stringers in the jig, and the machine holds them in place. "You flip over some top jig sets and place all your deck boards," said Kurt. "The nailing gantry is counterweighted, so it is effortless when you go to pull it. And then when you go to nail, the tension is on springs, so it is also effortless. The speed you can get out of the nailing action is incredible."

Changeovers are simple. "We use the Paldraw pallet drawing software," said Kurt. "That gives you all your measurements. And it is so quick. You can just sit down in front of Paldraw and in a few minutes have your sketch. So we hand the worker the schematic, and he knows where to set everything. We change over the whole jig set bar. We have different jig set bars, and they can be changed over in minutes."

SIDEBAR: