Forestry students tour lumberyard in heart of Appalachian hardwoods

Instructor Erich R. Doebler's Forestry Products class (FOR210) traveled to Bingaman & Son Lumber Inc. in Kreamer on Monday for an industry tour. The group met with Nicholas Bisaccia, an export sales representative, who said the company annually processes 22 million board feet of lumber at that site alone. A similar yard in Clarendon processes more than 10 million board feet each year, noted Doebler, who also provided photos from the trip. Bisaccia spent many years in the pharmaceutical business, but found his true passion for hardwood lumber when he began working for Bingaman a little over three years ago. He explained the process from beginning to end, starting with receiving green lumber from over 100 different sawmills to sorting, grading, stickering, kiln drying and secondary manufacturing. He finished with a tour of a facility that thermally modifies wood to be resistant to natural decay. The process, an emerging technology employed by only a handful of businesses in the U.S., allows Pennsylvania hardwoods to be used in high-performance outdoor applications for which they traditionally have not been selected. Bingaman & Son has over 150 employees at the Kreamer facility, and boasts a number of Penn College forest technology graduates in various roles and positions overall. (Besides the Kreamer and Clarendon yards, the firm operates sawmills in Mill Hall, Nicktown and St. Marys.)