in the early 1950's. Upon consolidating their Moscow and Troy, Idaho mill holdings
Guy Bennett and his sons bought the Boone's mill and upgraded the antiquated
operation with modern technology.
as "visionary". The new sawmill was designed to mill
smaller dimension logs, with much of the milling
process being automated. Guy Bennett's son, Frank
(now President of Bennett Lumber Products), has
brought on board innovations such as the all-new
indexing bin sorter which has since become standard
in modern lumber mills.
Frank had seen a similar sorter while on a tour of mills
in Finland and Sweden but he knew much needed to
be done to adapt it for use in the States.
He collaborated with fabricators in Portland on
development of the three-bin sorter, initially devising
an experimental model. Fine-tuned, the revolutionary
unit made its debut at the Princeton mill in 1972.
