Brightman Lumber in Assonet is a true family business

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Brightman Lumber and its land clearing business is a real family affair
There’s only four or five sawmills within a 50 mile radius
Recently honored as Massachusetts Lumber Producer of the Year

ASSONET – The site laser above the large blades of the Brightman Lumber sawmill is covered in sawdust before Ed Brightman Jr.’s day’s work is too old. He doesn’t bother to clean it.

A useful tool for many who work the carriage at a sawmill, the jobsite laser would only slow down Brightman, 44, as he begins the process of turning a round log into a rectangle of lumber to carve it in planks.

No knock on technology, he says; it’s just that he’s been tending the sawyer’s cabin for so long—25 years—at the family sawmill, it’s quicker for him to assess the work with the naked eye.

Once he’s squared his log – stripped by a debarker before it’s thrown onto the cart – Brightman works the controls in his saw cab to get the lumber into position for the slicing job. When this writer visited, the order was for 1,000 feet of 1-inch by 12-inch boards.

How Brightman Lumber Began

The sawmill is one half of the two arm business which is Brigtman Lumber, 181 South Main St. The other arm is the land clearing business, run by Ed Brigtman Sr. The sawmill is the older of the two, started by John Brightman. Jr. and his wife Nancy (parents of Ed Sr.) in 1978. Previously, the Brightmans, originally from Fall River, had worked clearing land for sawmills in Connecticut and Rhode Island, where their typical workweek consisted of taking their trailer, two lumber trucks and two skidders (to drag fallen and cut logs) on Monday to a construction site, return on Wednesday, then on Thursday make a second similar trip, with a return on Friday evening or Saturday.

“My dad had a dream one night,” says Ed Sr. “He said to have our own sawmill. »

Easier said than done? For sure. But John Brightman Jr. and his wife Nancy knew how to get things done. They found the current commercial land on South Main Street and purchased it.

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Traveling through the area, John set up a sawmill, piece by piece. Brightman Lumber Co. was born.

For the first three years or so of the sawmill/lumber yard, it was very old school. The sawmill employees had to lift and place the logs on the cart. The business prospered. And they have modernized.

Originally, the Brightmans sold not only raw (unseasoned) green lumber, but also their own finished lumber for home construction. They had 25 employees and worked two 8-hour shifts.

Business model changes

Their production of finished wood ceased at the turn of the century. The culprit, the Brightmans say, was the high cost of diesel fuel needed to run the finishing machines. They have downsized. Today it is essentially a three-employee sawmill that produces only raw green lumber. Businesses are strictly retail. Most of their wood is used for fences and sheds. Someone could come and buy a board. Or 10. Or a hundred. The Brightmans welcome everyone.

Johnny Brightman was an extraordinary sawyer, his brother, Ed. Sr., recalls. Johnny died of a heart attack while making a delivery in Maine in 2013. Company founder John Brightman Jr. died in August 2021, aged 83. Ed Jr. has photos of the two men on his control panel in the sawyer’s glass cabin, one a few feet from the blades. Nancy Brightman remains the owner of Brightman Lumber. His daughter Patti, 57, runs the business office. Ed Sr., 65, is the land clearing czar while Ed Jr. is in charge of the sawmill.

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Ed Jr. said there were about four or five sawmills within a 40 to 50 mile radius of BrightmanLumber Co. “As the price of lumber went up, they (couldn’t) produce it fast enough. This is what happened to us at the final end of the factory. … The problem was that we were out of generators and the price of fuel had gone up so much that we couldn’t make the product fast enough. »

What a day in the life of a sawyer looks like

Ed Jr. said sawmilling is a tough business, but not one he’s looking to get out of. He often works 12-hour days, starting at 4:30 a.m. It’s not just his job; it’s a family affair. He said he basically started working for his father when he was 9 years old.

“It’s the only thing I know,” says Ed Jr. “To me, it’s not work. It’s more a way of life. It’s almost like a farmer. He wakes up. He takes care of his animals. He treats his cows. It’s the same every day. That’s basically what this business is about, when you run it. There’s always something to maintain, always something that needs work. It’s like having a child that never matures. That’s the truth.”

The main blade, the lower blade (48 inches in diameter), has its 50 teeth sharpened twice a day.

In addition to diesel fuel running at $5 a gallon, other machinery operating expenses are notable. For some of Brightman Lumber’s hard-working machines, an oil change (done every 350 hours; previously it was 250 hours) can cost upwards of $1,000. A 2-inch by 4-inch oil filter for machines costs $200. And the price of oil over the last three or four years has gone from $550 to $900 to fill their 50 gallon barrel.

The large saw blades are about 40 years old. They’re not, Ed Jr. explains, something you replace annually, semi-annually, or even every ten years, if you can avoid it. There are a handful of people, he says, who can restore a big blade to working order when its steel loses its temper, its rigidity. The Brightmans know how to reach the magic hammer guys. A new 48-inch blade, Ed Jr. estimates, would cost around $3,500.

Honored as Massachusetts Lumber Producer of the Year

Brightman Lumber produces approximately 20,000 to 25,000 feet of lumber per week and 1 to 1.5 million feet per year. The world’s mega sawmills, says Ed Jr., are making a million feet a week. But the little guy can be recognized. Ed Brightman Sr. was recently honored as Massachusetts Lumber Producer of the Year by the Massachusetts Forest Alliance of Marlborough.

Brightman Lumber, Ed Jr. explained, is very efficient with its lumber, which is 95% eastern white pine. Nothing, he says, is wasted.

The stripped bark becomes bark mulch. Chopped wood that is not useful for even the smallest planks is cut into chips, popular for animal bedding.

Ed Jr. said he was finally seeing a modest downturn in business after more than two years of extraordinarily busy sales at the height of the COVID pandemic.

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