Chapter 16

February 2004

The next several weeks were busy, busier than Randy had come to expect in the winter. As spring approached, things around Clark Construction began to speed up with construction season approaching. There were bids to prepare, materials to order, and literally hundreds of details that had to be ironed out, some big, some tiny.

For example, after a couple of weeks Carlos came back with a recommendation that they plan on replacing the Galion grader, but not be in any big hurry about it. He was of the opinion that buying at that time of the year would mean paying the high dollar, and that it wouldn't hurt to wait for fall, and perhaps consider a lightly-used piece of equipment if shopping around turned up something that fit their needs. "Works for me," Randy told him. "Let's get that one on the back burner until fall and get the use out of the Galion this summer."

For the first few weeks after Crystal and Preach left, Randy spent half of each work day and sometimes more over in the temporary office at Clark Plywood, working on his recommendation for the location of the new pellet mill. This proved to be a lot more complicated than he had expected, and several areas he wasn't terribly familiar with had to be explored. Aware that time was passing, he put a lot of hours into it. Once or twice a week his father asked how he was coming on the project, and the best he could say was "Along."

Finally, almost a month after the chore got dropped in his lap, he was able to head into his father's office and say that he'd reached a recommendation, and handed across a report several pages thick documenting his reasoning. "I think we should keep it here," he said. "When you look at it on the surface it almost looks like an either/or, but when you dig into it things become clearer."

"I can read the report later," Ryan said. "Give me a thumbnail of your reasoning."

"Well, there are several points," Randy told him. "The big one is that we're talking either a new building here, or utilizing the old Jerusalem Paper plant in Rochester. There are several problems with the existing plant. It's old, not in the best of shape, and something of a firetrap. It's really too big for anything in the foreseeable future, and I'm not convinced that the wood pellet business is going to grow enough any time soon to fill the space, anyway. It would be hard to subdivide to keep the heating costs down. It's going to need a lot of work, and while I'm not trying to think of it from the viewpoint of Clark Construction, it's probably more cost effective to build a new steel-on-slab building here. It would be easier to do in a number of ways."

"Right," Ryan said. "I looked at that one as a tossup. What else?"

"Well, we've dragged ass around on this so long that with the amount of work to be done there's no way we're going to be able to get production under way over there this year. The building needs too much work, and we don't own it, anyway. It could take three to six months to get clear title on it so we could get started on the project. On the proposed site here, we can break ground as soon as the frost is out, since we already own the property, and will most likely be in production this fall, early winter at the latest."

"That's a plus issue for here. Any other thoughts?"

"Well, it's almost fifty miles over there, so that means that there'd be a lot of running back and forth, and that adds up after a while, especially during the construction phase and getting production running. That effectively adds up to cost that can be avoided."

"How about work force?"

"That's a little tricky. Granted, there's a lot of work force available there, more so than here. But our people in the pilot plant know what they're doing, and we might as well make use of them. Probably some would be willing to drive or relocate to Rochester, but we'd be starting further behind in terms of experience. More important on the distance issue, if we're going to be using wood from Clark lands for the plant, that means a lot of trucking that we wouldn't have to do if the plant is here. I know you're interested in better wood utilization, and it would be harder to do it from Clark lands."

"Right," Ryan said. "I've been of the opinion that we leave too much slash behind from the pulp operations. It just lays there in piles and rots, so it isn't even of much use in soil renewal. I've kicked around the idea of hiring independent contractors to turn some of those slash piles into wood chips that could be used in either the plywood plant or the pellet mill."

"I knew that," Randy agreed. "And it's not a bad idea. There would be more work force to do it in Rochester, but our lands are around here, and if we're going to do that we pretty well have to do it on our lands unless we're willing to spend more time dealing with the DNR than we want to. There are some minor issues, like rail service. I don't know how much we're going to want to ship by rail and it's hard to guess. However, if we keep it here we at least have that option open to us. There's no way of telling whether the D&O is going to abandon that line or not, but I suspect that if we do build in Rochester we're not going to have enough car loadings to change their mind if they are thinking abandonment. It all comes down to several good reasons to build here, and not many good ones to do it there."

"Well, I'd pretty well reached that conclusion myself," Ryan admitted. "But I wanted to see if you came up with anything I hadn't considered. I'll have to study your report, but I suspect you've come up with an angle or two I hadn't looked at in quite that way. How soon can you break ground?"

Randy was aware of the shift of tone of the conversation. Now he was the construction guy again, and this was business for Clark Construction. "I don't want to say as soon as the frost goes out," he said, "but pretty close. There are a couple smaller jobs the steel crew needs to get on as soon as they can, but there won't be the site preparation that the new plant will require. We'd need to iron down the site plan but there's time to do that. We're talking a pretty standard steel building with only a few modifications, so I'd guess the steel crew will be ready to go to work on it as soon as the site is ready and the slab is poured. I'm guessing the first part of May, depending on spring breakup, of course."

"Sounds reasonable to me," Ryan agreed. "Are you going to have everything ready to go by then?"

"Should be," Randy told him. "I've seen the building specs, we'd have to get stuff ordered and get the site plan ready."

"All right then, let's do it," his father said. "Get rolling on it, and get the contracts and stuff drawn up."

Randy was feeling pretty good at home that evening. "It's going to be the biggest project we've done for the plant for a while," Randy told Nicole, who was sitting nude with him in their hot tub. She was now well into her seventh month and her pregnancy was showing a lot more than it had when Crystal and Preach had visited a month before – and her not having any clothes on only exaggerated it. "And that should do a pretty good job of filling up the summer. We're not going to be able to take on any more big projects. Maybe a house or two if that came up, but we're already a little late to be getting started on this big of a project."

"At least it's not going to be a school project," Nicole sighed.

"Yeah, no fooling," Randy agreed. School projects, while they could be lucrative, were also a pain in the neck, mostly because of all the extra inspections involved. They hadn't done a school project in a while and didn't have one scheduled for this summer. "We were going to be about as busy as we wanted to be with the job over at Three Pines, but we should be able to work this one in all right."

"I suppose that means that you're not going to be able to get away to go somewhere this summer," Nicole sighed.

"Well, probably not much," Randy nodded, getting her meaning. "I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to get away for a long weekend or something sometime, but a major trip is out of the question. I'd pretty well figured that it was going to be out of the question anyway, because of the baby."

"Maybe not," Nicole told him. "Sure, we're not going to want to be away from the baby for two or three weeks, not at that stage, but a long weekend is possible if we can leave the baby with one of our mothers. There might be something we could do and take him or her along."

"It would be nice, but I don't see how we can plan anything at this point," he agreed. "Really, from my viewpoint, it's going to be like any other summer, which is to say don't make any plans since something is sure to come up. It usually does when we're that tightly scheduled."

"I know," she shook her head. "And with a kid involved, or possibly kids in future years, it's going to get harder, not easier. I sure wish we could have managed a little more in the way of major trips together the last few years. The Grand Canyon a couple years ago, and then Patagonia back over the holidays is about all we've been able to manage. I'd be tempted to try getting away as soon as I start my maternity leave, but that strikes me as a little risky. I think I'd better stay around home as much as I can."

"Well, I think so too," he agreed. "But the way things are shaping up, I probably won't be able to get away much by about the time that starts. We're running late enough on this pellet plant project that we're going to have to do a lot of catch-up. To top it off, Dad is going to have me looking at a couple other issues at the plant when I get the time."

"Oh, cripe," she shook her head. "Something else to keep you busy."

"Well, yeah," he said. "But I plan on keeping it under control. I need to be learning about stuff around the plant, Nicole. I mean, I don't need to do it in a rush, but I learned a lot in doing this pellet mill location project for Dad. I need to at least have an idea of what questions to ask when the time comes."