Family roots run deep at Hud-Son Forest Equipment, a New York company that began as Oscar Hudon’s logging business in 1946 and remains family-owned. Now operating with a fourth generation entering the business, Hud-Son manufactures portable sawmills for people who want to process timber themselves, from homesteaders to commercial forestry users.
Hankle Lumber IncFamily members have logged Northeastern New York timber since 1954, and Hankle Lumber Inc. remains family owned and operated today. Based in East Nassau, the company turns regional logs into native lumber for customers ranging from builders to local farms, with its sawmill’s wood by-products also serving agricultural and landscaping uses.EAST NASSAU, NY
Ghent Wood Products & Meltz LumberThe Meltz family has been sawing wood in Columbia County since Emil Meltz Sr. started his mill in 1946, and the business remains family-run across four generations. The family added Ghent Wood Products in 2003 after purchasing Tipple Logging & Lumber, growing from a small handset sawmill powered by a car engine into a modern operation supplying carefully milled wood for builders, contractors, and woodworkers.HUDSON, NY
Norwood SawmillsNorwood Sawmills pioneered personal portable sawmills with Peter Dale’s original LumberMate in 1993, and now manufactures North American-built portable band sawmills and forestry tools. Its mills are designed to be customized and expanded as a sawyer’s work grows, with tens of thousands operating in more than 100 countries and lifetime owner support behind them. Norwood says its portfolio includes more than 85 patented innovations.BUFFALO, NY
Mellott Manufacturing Co., IncRooted in a family sawmill and farming tradition, Mellott Manufacturing designs and builds log and lumber handling equipment for sawmills, pallet producers, and woodworking operations in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. The family-owned company began in the early 1960s with Hayes Mellott’s hydraulically operated log turner and now operates a more than 50,000-square-foot plant, pairing in-house engineering and fabrication with equipment service and support. Mellott says it has produced more than 3,400 log turners along with other long-running lines of forest-products machinery.MERCERSBURG, PA