People who harvest timber out of the Black Hills are no longer just big burly men who lug giant chainsaws up the side of the mountain.
Computers now play such an integral part of the lumber industry that Jim D. Neiman, vice-president of Neiman Enterprises said to me, “If you know anyone willing to work from your area and has a background in Electrical Engineering, send ‘em my way. We’ll put them to work.”
The Neiman Family are the new owners of the saw mill in Spearfish, South Dakota, rescued out of bankruptcy and saving hundreds of jobs in the area. Jim is a 3rd generation lumberman out of Hulett, Wyoming.
I was surprised by how much I didn’t know about this topic. And, fascinated by how much conservation is part of every phase of the lumber business. It’s about cutting the right trees and getting the most usable wood out of them in the milling process. That’s where computers play a huge part. Neiman said that at some point in the future, he sees a “MRI-type process” being utilized to determining the right trees to be harvested.
The only things you hear outside of timber areas are phrases like “clear-cutting” and “spotted owls.” But that just doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t you take care of the resource that feeds your family, your employees and supplies this country with wood and paper products? The answer is obvious.
“Let’s go on back to 1900; this forest had an inventory of about one-and-a-half billion board feet, which was a little bit above what was here when General Custer went through.” (General George A. Custer’s journey to the Black Hills in 1874 was the best documented military expedition ever and provided incredible detail and a superb record of the area.)
“Today that inventory is around 6.2 or 6.4 billion board feet, so it has four times the amount of inventory,” Neiman said. “It’s partly why we have forest ‘health issues.’ The overstocking of the forest is creating an oversupply. The trees’ defense mechanism is ‘water.’ It has to have water to survive and create the sap to eject bugs.”
Neiman said that the industry removed over six billion board feet in those 100 or so years and is an example of why the Black Hills has one the healthiest forests in the country.
Neiman Enterprises is a group of family-owned and operated sawmills manufacturing and re-manufacturing ponderosa pine lumber in a manner that is respectful of the environment, economy and communities. The company’s three production facilities produce a variety of primary and secondary wood products, including boards, dimension lumber, decking and wood shavings.
Devils Tower Forest Products is a third generation family-owned and operated sawmill. Founded in 1948, the mill has grown to become one of the premier sawmills in the Black Hills, offering over 45 million board feet of ponderosa pine product annually.
Rushmore Forest Products became part of the Neiman family operations in January 1998. Spearfish Forest Products was added in 2008.
Each sawmill utilizes 100 percent of the logs brought to their operation sites. Neiman sawmills produce hundreds of thousands of board feet of lumber every day. Lumber makes up approximately 60 percent of every log. The remaining 40 percent is considered by-products. Of that 40 percent, 15 percent goes to landscape bark; 10 - 15 percent becomes shavings and is utilized primarily as livestock bedding. The remaining 20 - 25 percent of byproducts are sawdust and used as boiler fuel. The boiler fuel is to heat water, which heats the drying kilns, and the sawmill.
At the mill in Spearfish, the sawdust heads for Heartland Pellets, creating a pelletized product that is burned in gravity-fed wood stoves. “Except for what’s left in the forest and we’re looking at that too, every bit of the tree is utilized for animal bedding, mulch, particle board and paper products,” Neiman said.
The saw mill is a wonder to me. I felt like a kid on a really cool field trip. There were saws and noise and the heavy smell of pine in the air. And, computers manned by humans were driving the automation process. Maybe what impressed me most was that every part of the lumber has a purpose and a destination. I likened it to Native Americans using every part of the buffalo from the hunt.
Neiman Enterprises has continued to contribute to the region in other ways, as well. They constructed a world-class golf course and donated the land for an airport in their home town of Hulett, population 450. “If for some reason this forest is shut down, then that town can at least have a foundation and infrastructure to help them get a start,” Neiman added.
That’s efficiently using one other byproduct of the lumber process to create sustainability; the profit.
Jim D. Neiman, Neiman Enterprises [24:45m]: 
Tags: Black Hills, Devils Tower Forest Products, General George A. Custer, Heartland Pellets, Hulett, Jim D. Neiman, lumber, Neiman Enterprises, ponderosa pine, Rushmore Forest Products, sawmills, Spearfish, Spearfish Forest Products
Having had a personal work and friendship relationship with the Neiman family dating back to 1973, I can tell you that it is these type of hard working family operations that are the backbone of America. Thank you for highlighting their sawmill operations, as these are the kind of people that deserve recognition for their effort and perserverance through good times and bad. BH
I like Jim Neiman’s idea of putting a cogeneration plant on the Spearfish Forest Products site to supply heat and electricity to the sawmill and to the nearby Black Hills State University. Why send large amounts of money to far-away natural gas suppliers when we could both keep the money within the Black Hills and reduce heating costs (& make them more stable)? The Spearfish public schools, the local hospital and the Black Hills Training Center are all large users of heat and are close to BHSU, so they could also economically be connected to the network of insulated underground hot water pipes and improve the economy of scale for the cogeneration plant. Furthermore, the public school board is now deciding about the design of a new elementary school and could choose either natural gas heating or possibly being connected to the Neiman district heating system. The Rapid City Journal’s article “Three sites considered for new Spearfish school” (11-18-08) had a comment about this.
Jim Neiman and family are one of a elite group of people who truly “give back’ to our nation and there community.
This man has an excitement in his conversation as he uses every part of his product, every part of his soul with an ever present thought of taking care of his employee’s and communnity. May other leaders in America follow his effort and commitment to the over all well being of the environment and the economy.