Since 1947, Mead Lumber’s Cheyenne location has seen a lot of change. And a lot of growth. Multiple products and services were added over those seven decades to keep pace with the growing population and ever-changing construction industry. Yet, the very “house” that serves those builders has remained pretty much unchanged. Until 2022, that is.
It Was Time
“We realized our Cheyenne location just wasn’t working anymore,” said Jeff Taake, VP of Manufacturing and Commercial Sales for Mead Lumber. “We squeezed as much out of it as we possibly could, but it no longer effectively served our customers—or our employees.” So, Mead bought a much larger footprint around their Cheyenne store and tore the existing buildings down for a completely fresh start. And they called Rick Stout at CT-Darnell Construction and Sunbelt Rack.
“We’ve worked on a number of projects for Mead over the years,” said Rick, “but this one was significant. It was a completely ground-up design-build project with multiple racking solutions.”
Let it Flow
According to Mead Site Manager Mark Bradshaw, “Rick and the CT-Darnell team know this industry so well. They asked all the right questions and quickly developed a site plan that maximized our new space for product storage and traffic flow.”
CT-Darnell and Sunbelt Rack created logical “areas” based on like products, services, and bundles that made sense. “Our goal was to limit movement and wasteful steps,” said Rick, “to make sure they could pick, bundle, load, and move a truck quickly and safely through the order shipping process.”
Winning the Storage Wars
Mead integrated multiple Sunbelt racking and storage solutions into three brand-new warehouse buildings:
- A 150′ x 150′ door millwork building features fully integrated pallet racks and stack racks for maximized vertical storage of millwork.
- A 92′ x 115′ double-aisle rack-supported drive-thru building ensures easy load and unload for multiple lumber SKUs.
- An 82′ x 150′ building for bulk storage, sheet goods, and molding, which also includes a yard office.
The new lumberyard also features two automated Power Bin® systems for highly efficient product stacking. These game-changers quadruple storage volume, and they’re faster, safer, and easier on the product and personnel.
“The result of this project was a home run,” expressed Bradshaw. “For the business, it was obvious: more SKUs—safely covered and well maintained—are able to be picked and loaded in a fraction of the time, allowing for a better customer experience and more sales than ever before. But,” he continued, “the biggest impact of all was on the Cheyenne employees. They absolutely love this new yard. As a 100% employee-owned company, this team takes great pride in their jobs! They appreciated being able to provide insights and input along the way to the CT-Darnell team. It made them feel fully invested in the end result and they’ve been totally energized ever since!”
CT Darnell and Sunbelt Rack have been supporting LBM businesses with innovative storage systems and buildings for over 35 years. We have provided more rack systems and pre-engineered steel buildings in more lumberyards across the nation than any other supplier.
