Building product brands are built on trust, and trust lives in a name, a logo, and a color scheme. When two companies in different industries end up with similar marks, the dispute rarely starts in court. A lumber and building products manufacturer that had used a green tree-in-a-circle logo since the 1960s filed suit in […]
A building material dealer can spend years defending a lawsuit over a house it never built. When a construction defect surfaces, plaintiffs name everyone connected to the project, and the yard that supplied the lumber, sheathing, or fasteners gets pulled into discovery along with the contractor. The documentation discipline that equipment dealers apply to ANSI
Construction employers track two sets of rules at once: the federal labor statutes that set a national floor and the state laws that move faster and pay more. When Washington stalls, the states fill the gap, and the result is a patchwork that a contractor working in two or three states has to manage line
New national formaldehyde emissions rules for composite wood products took effect June 1, and they apply across the entire country. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule is built on the California Air Resources Board requirements that have governed panel sales in California for years. Builders, dealers, and distributors now need to know which products carry
California’s Proposition 65 touches every link in the wood products supply chain, from the sawmill that ships dimensional lumber to the retail counter where a homeowner buys a deck board. Voters approved the law in 1986 as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, and it requires businesses to warn consumers about exposures to
Few building materials carry a legal paperwork burden like wood. Since 2008, every importer of timber and paper products into the United States has been required to know where the material came from, and Europe now runs a similar system with even higher fines. Compliance is not a marketing choice; it is a condition of
Every year, construction trade associations publish a policy agenda that tells lawmakers what the industry wants. The National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association (NLBMDA) released its 2025 agenda with a new Congress and White House in place, outlining positions on expiring tax provisions, housing affordability, and regulatory reform. The document is the framework for
Timber built the communities of the Pacific Northwest, and timber still anchors the economy of the Cascade region today. From the secluded towns in the Cascade Lakes region that draw property developers and remote workers to the mill towns of Oregon and California, the connection between healthy forests and stable property markets runs through one
Building codes exist for the same reason as seatbelts and airbags: they protect the public, and they get stronger as experience accumulates. A structure built to the current code has been checked for structural soundness, fire safety, and basic habitability, and a log home is no exception. Complying with the code is not difficult when
A customer bankruptcy filing can catch even an experienced rent-to-own operator off guard. Business is strong, payments arrive on time, and then a notice arrives in the mailbox that changes the rules of the relationship. Federal bankruptcy law, not the lease agreement, now governs what the business can and cannot do. Operators who understand how
