‘I Got a Guy’: What You Lose When You Buy Reclaimed Wood From a Middleman

“Penny Wise, Pound Foolish”

This old English saying does a good job of describing someone who ends up missing out or costing themselves a lot of money because they tried to save a few bucks.

In the reclaimed wood game it’s often a contractor who is told by a supplier that they don’t have what they need — but they know someone who might. This may be an odd lot left over from a project, a new product available from a foreign company, or, heck, just a guy with a loading dock and a truck.

Working with an untested middleman might work out fine, especially if for you it’s all about the price. You might get lucky and find the wood is exactly what you want, and in the grade and quantity you need. But there’s a lot that can go wrong, too.

Limited Inventory

A truckload of wood is great for a home project, but what if your supplier doesn’t have enough of what you need or the grading is not what you expected? You find yourself being steered to other options that might also do the job, and before long you’re compromising and breaking promises to your client.

That’s because responsible wood reclamation is a long game. Committed suppliers like Virginia-based E.T. Moore, take years or even decades to identify and source vast quantities of wood of a consistent quality. Harvesting, cleaning, and grading this wood, and storing it carefully in controlled conditions takes time, money, and patience.

For these reputable suppliers, it’s a trade-off that works if you can provide a superior product and a deep source of quality woods that your clients can rely on not just today, but long into the future.

“What separates us from most other companies in the business is not that we’re awesome or great or that we’ve got the best equipment“, explains Taylor Moore, head of marketing at E.T. Moore. “No, for us it all comes down to inventory.

For smaller wholesalers without the same connections or depth of inventory, providing a consistent supply of quality wood can be a problem. That problem can quickly become yours if you underestimate your order, or are asked to match or replace existing work.

Where’s the Beef?

Limited inventory can affect you in other ways. For example, you’ll find a lot of suppliers offering lower-priced boards for flooring. That’s because flooring is by far the biggest part of the reclaimed lumber market. It’s easier to break into with limited stock or poorer quality wood and offers a narrower range of product specifications. Some suppliers even offer low-price “box beams” made from three repurposed flooring boards.

Some suppliers will even choose to mill large-dimension old-growth beams into flooring boards, just because it is easier to move on to buyers who should know better.

Once again, this might be fine if you can afford to take a chance on the quality and availability of your product, but don’t be surprised if you are caught short on a job where your client expects a little more than the lowest-priced item on the menu.

Established suppliers have built a name not only by providing large amounts of consistently graded timber over a long period but also by supplying a full range of reclaimed woods suitable for use as beams, paneling, floorboards, and furniture.

“Flooring is for most parts the hamburger of the industry. If you’re fine with hamburger patties and cook those on the grill, then that’s great,” jokes Moore. By contrast, at E.T. Moore “we sell the whole cow. So if you want ribs or filet or hamburger or chuck roast, it doesn’t matter. We do it all.”

In other words, while you might have been able to source reasonable flooring from, say, a foreign-based company, at a great price don’t expect the same supplier to have your back if you need quality matching wood for a staircase or decorative features that complement existing work. Instead, you’re likely to be steered to available products that don’t match your needs or your client’s vision for their project.

“What you lose is the ability to make choices,” says Moore of contractors who choose to source wood this way. “We can sell you the hamburger, we can sell you the plain stuff, but our strength is in customizing our products to exactly what you want.”

Failing the Grade

A third way you can be caught out by relying on unproved or unscrupulous middlemen and cut-price suppliers is in the consistency and quality of your purchase. You need to be able to trust that the specification and grading of an entire lot that you pay for match the samples you were shown up-front.

There’s a reason why reputable suppliers put such a premium on accurate and consistent grading of their products. Expert grading is a traditional skill learned over a lifetime and high-quality grading is incredibly labor intensive.

It’s hard to overstate how important grading is to the reputation of companies like E.T. Moore. It’s a bond of trust with our customers that the product they see in our yard is the same as what they will see from wall to wall on the finished project.

Limited inventory can make it hard for small-scale suppliers to match and maintain grading throughout a lot. That can mean unwelcome surprises for you when it’s too late to go back and sloppy-looking finishes that will tarnish your reputation as a craftsman.

Simply put, as a contractor, being able to trust the grading on the product you buy lets you keep your promises to your client.