Weyerhaeuser Company

WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY

Weyerhaeuser Company, based in Washington state, was incorporated as Weyerhaeuser Timber Company in 1900. The company was a joint venture between railroad magnate James J. Hill of Pacific Northwest Timber, and Frederick Weyerhaeuser, joint owner of Weyerhaeuser and Denkmann—a Midwestern lumber company that relied on Wisconsin and Minnesota forests. Prior to World War I (1914–1918), the company was run by Frederick Weyerhaeuser, A German-born immigrant to the Midwest. His business philosophy evolved over his lifetime and became the operating philosophy for the new company. Weyerhaeuser felt that "The way to make money is to let the other fellow make some too."

Timber holdings doubled in the period preceding World War I. The company opened a sawmill to produce lumber and soon had the nation's first all-electric lumber mill in 1915. Although demand for lumber for railroad cars declined during World War I as steel was more heavily utilized, demand for lumber for military planes and other military uses increased.

John P. Weyerhaeuser, eldest son of the founder, led the company during the war and through the 1920s. He relied heavily, as his father had, on George Long, general manager from 1900 to 1930. Long, an early proponent of reforestation, approached the federal government before World War I to lobby for cooperative forest fire prevention and for lower property taxes for timberland to make reforestation economically viable. This lobbying led to the Clark-McNary Act in 1924, which addressed these issues and expanded the national forest. The act also encouraged changes in taxation policies at the state level to promote reforestation. Weyerhaeuser responded by creating the Logged Off Land Company in 1925 to handle the sale of "logged off" land, study reforestation, and lobby at the state level for lower timberland taxes. By the end of the 1920s Weyerhaeuser was the largest private owner of timber in the United States.

The Great Depression (1929–1939) produced hard times for the company, as few businesses or homes were being built. The depression in the lumber market would have been devastating if not offset by the company's 1931 diversification into pulp (a wood-derived raw material in the manufacture of paper, paperboard, and other products). By 1933 profits from pulp offset losses from lumber. In 1940 the company expanded its lumber business to include plywood and paneling. In 1941 the company started the first tree farm in the United States, near Gray's Harbor in Washington.

Rapid technological and commercial changes in the lumber industry following World War II (1939–1945) affected Weyerhaeuser. The hand-operated whipsaw was replaced by the power chain saw, and truck hauling replaced hauling by rail. Pent-up demand in construction, from the 1930s and early 1940s, led to greatly increased sales of lumber in this postwar era. Under the continued leadership of the Weyerhaeuser family, the company expanded into particle board production, ply-veneer, hardboard, and hardwood paneling in the 1950s. Timberland holdings expanded beyond the Pacific Northwest for the first time, as land was purchased in Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina. In 1959, with its increased diversification, the company dropped "Timber" from its official name to become Weyerhaeuser Company, and adopted its current trademark, a triangular tree over the word "Weyerhaeuser."

In 1960, and for the first time in company history, the presidency of Weyerhaeuser passed out of the family to Norton Clapp. Under Clapp the company went public in 1963 and expanded overseas, into Japan. George Weyerhaeuser succeeded Clapp as CEO in 1966, and served until 1988. The volcanic eruption of Mount Saint Helens in May 1980, was a setback for the company. Weyerhaeuser's Saint Helens Tree Farm was just below the mountain's dome and the company lost 68,000 acres of timberland. By 1983 the company had completed a timber salvage program and replanted 18 million seedlings in the volcanic area.

As part of a diversification program, Weyerhaeuser entered the insurance, home building, mortgage banking, garden products, pet supplies, and disposable diaper markets in the 1970s and 1980s. These new ventures added little to the company's profitability. Under John Creighton, who became president in 1988, Weyerhaeuser returned to a focus on forest products. Weyerhaeuser strengthened its core businesses through the purchase of two pulp mills, several sawmills, and approximately 175,000 acres of timberland in Georgia from the Proctor and Gamble Company in 1992 for $600 million. By the end of the twentieth century, Weyerhaeuser was the world's largest private owner of softwood timber and the world's largest producer of softwood lumber and market pulp. Weyerhaeuser had annual sales of nearly $11 billion and owned 5.3 million acres of timberland in the United States.

See also: Lumber Industry, Environmentalism

FURTHER READING

Taylor, John H. "Rip Van Weyerhaeuser." Forbes, October 28, 1991.

Twining, Charles E. F. K. Weyerhaeuser: A Biography. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997.

——. Phil Weyerhaeuser: Lumberman. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985.

Weyerhaeuser Corporation. Where the Future Grows. Tacoma, WA: Weyerhaeuser Corporation, 1989.

Weyerhaeuser, George H. Forests for the Future: The Weyerhaeuser Story. New York: Newcomen Society in North America, 1981.