National lumber company moves manufacturing facility from Henrico to Powhatan

84 Lumber has a new 48,000-square-foot facility in Powhatan. (Courtesy Roxanne Salerno)

A national lumber company has moved its previous Henrico County location to Powhatan County. 

84 Lumber opened the doors on its new, 48,000-square-foot truss manufacturing facility at 1895 South Creek One in South Creek Industrial Park last month. The facility is located in the former Ferguson Water Works building, and is near the Food Lion-anchored South Creek Shopping Center. 

Pennsylvania-based 84 Lumber operates 320 locations across 34 states, including stores, component manufacturing plants, custom door shops and engineered wood product centers. It has 17 Virginia locations. 

The Powhatan facility moved from a 20,000-square-foot plant at 8801 Landmark Road in Henrico County. 84 Lumber converted the Landmark Road location from a former door shop facility into a truss manufacturing plant in 2021. 

84 Lumber area manager Steve Benko said a growing need from customers for roof and floor trusses led the company to search for a bigger spot to accommodate its needs. 

After the company’s first year using the Landmark Road location as a truss manufacturing facility, it began discussing a move, he added. 

“It was a modest facility to enter the market. Business has grown so rapidly that we needed to relocate to a much larger location, and that’s where we came up with the location in Powhatan,” Benko said. 

Benko said 84 Lumber will be able to triple the volume of roof and floor trusses and wood panels it produced at the Landmark Road location in the new Powhatan facility. The growing housing market in Powhatan also led 84 Lumber to take a look at the spot, Benko said. 

Renovations on the new 84 Lumber facility began about nine months ago. The former Ferguson building has remained largely unchanged on the outside, while the inside has gone through a total upfit for an automated truss manufacturing facility. The facility manufactures roof and floor trusses and wall panels for homes, and uses computerized saws and specialized jigging equipment. 

Benko declined to share costs to get the facility up and running, but noted that equipment to create the trusses alone is “several million dollars.” 

84 Lumber sources its equipment from Missouri-headquartered engineering product supplier MiTek.

There are currently 30 employees at the Powhatan facility and the company is looking to add another 25 onto the staff in the next 30 days. By next spring, 84 Lumber hopes to have around 85 employees in the facility, Benko said. 

84 Lumber also operates a 92,000-square-foot store at 2510 Bellwood Road in Chesterfield County. That location opened in late 2019, having consolidated two smaller operations the company had in the area at the time.

The lumber company has one other Virginia truss manufacturing facility in the Winchester area. 

An 84 Lumber spokesperson confirmed there are no plans for further Richmond-area locations at this time. 

84 Lumber was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania. It is the U.S.’s largest privately held supplier of building materials for commercial buildings and single- and multi-family residences. 

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