1) Register as a forum member of SEMIWW.org

2) Figure out what you want to order. Pricelist available at http://www.theworkbench.com. We buy lumber at price level 4 (1000 BF level) and we buy plywood at the "10+PCS" category. So we don't place undue hassle upon Johnson's, it is preferable to order in larger quantities. I usually make my orders a minimum of $75, so it is worth their time to deal with us. Remember, that they are VERY generous giving us a group discount, so we need to make sure we are not burdening them with a lot of small labor intensive orders. Pre-ordering is prefereable, see notes below.

3) Call Johnson's Lumber, 800-292-5937, and when prompted transfer to our sales rep, Earl (I think he is at extension #305)

4) Place your order. Johnson's can deliver for a fee. All orders are cash and carry only. You can also pre-pay your order if you want someone else to pick it up for you. If you are patient, you can gropu a lot of order together and make one run, post on the main forums to arrange a group lumber run. Usually about once a month somebody is making a run across the state for lumber.

5) Send a PrivateMessage to bolson (Brad Olson) with your order total. He is in charge of the account and likes to keep track of who each order belongs to.

As a bonus, we also get 15% off of "store boards" which are milled lumber items in the store.

You can get lumber from the Block Warehouse but usually the quality isn't as good. It usually takes Johson's 24-48h to get an order ready so pre-ordering is advisable. If you pre-order they usually select better lumber than is available in the Block Warehouse. Also if you give them time they are generally willing to pull sizes of lumber, i.e. if you need 8/4 maple, but want greater than 8" wide, if they have a pile handy they pull from that pile. If you need highly specific sizes of lumber, they do charge a nominal sorting charge, or if they have to sort through a bunk of wood to find your 8" wide boards, then a sorting charge will apply. Earl is up to date with what they can do for you on lengths and widths.

If you go to Johnson's during the week you can go to the actual lumber houses out in the yard and pull boards from their stock. Unfortunatley you can't do this on Saturday. I highly recommend that you do this if possible as you make sure you get the boards that you want for your project. If you plan on driving down to Charlotte to do this, call ahead to make sure they have what you want in stock.

When you go to pick up your order, inspect your lumber before you load it. The yard staff may not pull boards that are good enough or they may forget to load a board if they aren't paying attention. It takes 5 minutes to look over your order before you go trucking off in the wind

We do not get machinery discounts yet. Someday, maybe Johnson's will give us an incentive to buy machinery from them, but that day hasn't arrived yet

If there are any questions, PrivateMessage bolson on the forum. He is in charge of the account and can usually answer most questions.