The Madison Flooring Company was started in 1946 by my father and a few partners.  Our family bought out the partners in the early 70’s.  I started working there in the summers when I was 14 years old, and continued the summer time employment all the way through college.  My brother and I ended up running the place after we got out of college and continued there until we finally sold the place to Mountain Lumber Company several years ago.  They have now moved all of their operations back to Ruckersville due to the economy, and the land and buildings are up for sale.  I stopped by and took a few photos one day a couple of weeks ago.

Sawdust bin and trailer loading system for the excess sawdust that we produced.

This building housed the lumber stacker. It was old and worn out when I got there but we continued to use it. A good crew of four people could stack about three tractor trailer loads of lumber in a day. Which is nothing compared to a modern day stacker, but it was enough for us.

Cat 944 loader. We bought it used and it was used to put up logs on the sawmill when I started there around 1974. The engine finally gave out a year or so ago. That piece of machinery did an incredible amount of work over the years. I’m not sure how we would have gotten along without it.
Water treatment and makeup water tank for the old Cole boiler. The boiler was made in 1925 and we used it up until the day the plant closed. The boiler supplied heat for the dry kilns and also space heat for the manufacturing plant. The boiler’s fuel was the sawdust and waste wood produced in the flooring manufacturing process.
Two dry kilns, each capable of drying approximately 60,000 board feet of lumber.

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