On the corner of Bucky Pescaglia’s desk is a small printed note that says, “Wood is wonderful.” With a brief look around the office, it’s apparent he believes it: wood floors, wood panels, wood furniture and a wood nameplate.
“We can do that,” he tells a client on the phone. “We’ve got 50,000 feet of lumber in the kiln that’s going to be dumped next week.” Bucky is the president of Missouri Pacific Lumber (MoPac), based in Fayette, Mo. Over the past five years, production has increased 130 percent, from 1.3 million feet of lumber in 2009 to 3 million feet of lumber in 2013. Rounding out 2013, MoPac experienced a sales rush so large that it sold half of its inventory during the fourth quarter alone — more than the second and third quarter combined. “We’re now working overtime to try to replenish our inventory to satisfy the demand,” Bucky says.
MoPac began, literally, with a bump and a crash. It was 1935 when Louis Pescaglia got into a car accident with a timber driver while he was delivering coal in central Illinois. The other driver was uninsured and traded Louis some timber to pay for damages to his car, and Louis soon realized he could make a better living selling timber than delivering coal.
In 1960, Jim Pescaglia joined his father in the business, and the pair began to grow out of mining and crating woods into furniture hardwoods. By 1980, Jim wanted to expand the business and purchased a five-acre sawmill in New Franklin, Mo., which grew it to 36 acres by 1993.
Then a simultaneous blessing and curse struck the company: the flood of 1993. Two miles from the river and without flood insurance, MoPac was left under 14 feet of water with a tough decision. The business had outgrown its space but needed to remain close to the company’s timber sources and employees. The Pescaglias landed 12 miles away, in Fayette. By the late 1990s, the original sawmill in Illinois had split off under the ownership of other family members, and MoPac stood solid in its Fayette facility.
From Columbia Business Times: https://columbiabusinesstimes.com/21744/2014/02/27/tales-of-success-from-the-mid-missouri-timber-industry/