Empire has been recognized as a premier supplier of lumber for over 55 years. We want to thank our customers for helping us grow to one of the largest Wholesale Lumber Distributors in the country, ranked 29th in the nation by National Home Center News. Empire was founded in 1949 as a direct-mill Forest Products shipper selling to retail lumber yards, primarily in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. Gradually, Empire added more salesman, buyers and support personnel as our sales increased. During Empire's growth, our customer base increased to industrial and manufactured housing buyers, home component and roof truss manufacturers for both carload and truckload shipments.
Our Specialties
We currently specialize in Eastern and Western spruce dimension lumber both from the United States and Canada, and panel products from the south and west coast. Southern Yellow Pine dimension lumber, Plywood, and Oriented Strand Board (OSB) are also becoming a big factor, as the lumber producing areas become more regionalized due to changing freight rate structure in North America. Empire actively distributes forest products in 48 states.
Empire Expands Market Coverage
In recent years, Empire expanded its market coverage by bringing lumber from the west coast by ship through the Panama Canal to New Orleans, where cargo lumber and plywood were off-loaded onto barges and brought up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to Marietta, Ohio for break bulk truckload distribution. We also have shipped barges of Southern Yellow Pine plywood up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to Pittsburgh for distribution.