We are OPEN for business! Your #1 Wood Siding & Lumber Supplier in USA.
All Buffalo Lumber orders are delivered MILL DIRECT to your JOB SITE. Our orders are custom milled and factory finished. All communication is handled personally - by phone and email.
Our normal lead time from order to door is 2 - 8 weeks.
Once your order is placed, we stay in email and phone contact with you throughout the course of your order. Your salesman will be available to answer any questions you may have along the way. Delays, though unlikely, do happen and you'll be the first to know if that's the case. Buffalo Lumber takes pride in our products and customer service and we are committed to making sure your wood and experience with Buffalo Lumber is the best in the industry...from forest to front door.
In these uncertain times we can help you plan. We will get your order in the queue so it is ready when you are.
It all started with Elsworth “Buck” Buffaloe, my Grandfather. (There is an “E” on the end of our name which I dropped for business reasons).
My first memory of the lumber industry was my Grandfathers retail lumberyard in Reno NV (Buffaloe Building Supply- 1970) because I got to play in sand piles and ride forklifts with the yard guys.
I was 5 years old when I loaded my first truck (my dad had me on his lap so he could work the foot pedals while I worked the forks).
I learned how to grade wood going through truckloads of reject molding and turning it into a sell-able product line.
I have splinters in my blood.
At one time or another my dad and grandfather dragged me to every mill on the West Coast (and not always willingly).
In 2003 I started a little nickel and dime business with my dad (Dave Buffaloe).
We bought reject wood siding from a large mill, graded it, and re-sold it through classified ads in Northern California. It was a fun little business.
In 2004 before we really knew what we were doing we decided we wanted to get found on the internet for wood siding.
“Bring the buyer to the seller with that thing” my dad said as he pointed at a computer which he, himself, did not know how to use at that time.
Enter Janylyn Marks. A tech dynamo who was doing SEO before anyone knew what it meant. A systems analyst by nature her tech background and business acumen provided an opportunity for us and we jumped on it.
We convinced her to join the team, invested into getting found on the internet and the phones lit up. From that day to this it has been non-stop.
People contact us from all over the world with questions about wood. There are a LOT of wood lovers in the world and they have a LOT of questions.
We started out doing discount cedar. From 2005 to 2008 we went from my dad’s back yard to # 585 on INC magazine's 5000 fastest growing companies in America list.
We had 6 dealers across the country, trucks, trailers, equipment, the whole shebang.
I was ready to take over the world!
Then 2008 happened.
When the smoke cleared, we assessed our position, no dealers, no trucks, no yards, no inventory and no clue. We decided to quit.
My dad cried.
BUT You kept calling.
People kept calling us the whole time. Some not ready to buy but just wanting to dream a little. Some who did want to buy but couldn’t and there were some that could. There were enough that we survived.
Janylyn oversaw the development of the website as we converted from discount cedar to the entire spectrum of wood siding products. She designed the program that we use to this day for quoting and systems.
We changed from buying truckloads and selling job lots to milling job lot quantities and shipping directly to the customer from the production plant.
It was a HUGE challenge.
In what I can only describe as “The Vulcan Mind Meld” Janylyn grilled me with questions about milling and grading and finish, all the while madly producing excel spreadsheets (which would later become our software).
With me as what they call a “Super User” we designed our software from the ground up to suit our new business model. It converts mill speak to human speak, handles the shipping, invoicing, everything. It is quite a piece of work and I am very proud to have been a part of it.
Janylyn and her partner (Larry Hollister) did an amazing job of creating it under fire. Anyone with programming background will tell you this is not the optimal way to design and write software but the result is a HELL of a program!
It allows us to speak in layman terms yet maintain pinpoint accuracy regarding milling detail.
Her technology talents and business acumen, my wood knowledge and you guys (our customers) are what makes Buffalo Lumber tick.
We wrote the website in response to the questions we were being asked. We designed our systems to help people avoid problems. We learned about potential problems from the people calling in with their problems.
The great thing about getting found as well as we do is that it keeps us on the cutting edge. We find out what is working and what is not by the people calling in.
That is the fun part. Our customers and all the cool and crazy things they do and want to do. We have seen and heard about thousands of interesting projects.
Now we are reaching out to as many customers as we can (which is a challenge because we have over 2000) and asking them for pictures and feedback on what they are experiencing with their wood. It has been a blast to talk to them and see the different projects.
Our purpose is to share what we learn from our customers with new customers and guide as many people as we can to long term wood project success.
Wood Dreams, that is what it’s all about.
Buffalo Lumber
