About King Forest Industries, Inc.

In the Past 40+ Years Our Business Went From a Primitive Operation to One of the Largest Eastern White Pine Wood Product Manufacturers in the Country.

John King Jr. graduated high school in1972 and shortly thereafter bought a Timberjack 404 skidder and went into the logging business. This was a natural event as John King Sr. was in the business and Jr. grew up learning the trade.
Things went well until the Arab Oil Embargo in 1974. Business slowed to a crawl as gas and diesel fuel became very expensive and hard to get. 
Having always been interest in sawmills, John Jr. made use of this slack time to visit Haywood Tech Institute in Clyde, NC. They were one of the very few schools that had a full modern sawmill, dry kilns, saw filing shop and all the training needed to operate all of them.
John Jr. enrolled and started learning all that he coiuld as fast as he could. After five months he returned to New Hampshire and within a couple of months bought Woods Bros. sawmill in Newberry, VT. The Lane #2 mill was modern in 1960 but not in 1975, it was a start.
John Jrs. Dad, John Sr., allowed John Jr. to set up the mill on land he owned in Wentworth, NH. Over the next 6 months, the Woods Bros. mill was torn down and moved to the new site. This work was mostly done nights and weekends as logging was the main business.
In late 1975 John Jr. and John Sr. combined operations and King Lumber Company was formed. John Sr. mostly oversaw the logging and log buying. John Jr. ran the sawmill operations and sold the lumber. The first hard work and little profit. Something had to change. A debarker and chipper were installed. This increased productivity by a large amount. Next came the installation of a HMC automatic carriage. Now King Lumber Company was taking off. A planer mill and dry kilns were then added in 1978. A cutup shop was added in 1982.
In 1984 King Lumber Co. and an additional sawmill located in Newport, NH which would increase the total production to about 14 million feet.
In 1990 King Lumber Co. sold its sawmill operation and John Sr. retired. King Lumber Co. became King Forest Industries.
John Jr. set up a screagg mill at the old Allen Rogers site in Wentworth to saw small diameter logs. This operation grew to be quite large in the next 10 years, reaching about 30 million feet a year and at one time employing more than 100 people.
In early 2021 John Jr. sold this sawmill and planer mill operation wanting to slow down a bit.
A new operation was started on another site in Wentworth that now produces a large volume of firewood, rents heavy equipment and sells lumber products.

Contact Us

Call us at (603) 764-6111 or come by today and experience our superior service and selection! We look forward to serving you!