Michigan

Cutting it: Shrinking Michigan market favors big, modern sawmills over small operators

Published

3 months ago

October 11, 2025

Cutting it: Shrinking Michigan market favors big, modern sawmills over small operators

Onaway— As general manager of a mid-Michigan sawmill for more than 25 years, Todd Smith has seen the state’s industry shrink, battered by foreign competition, inflation and a shortage of skilled workers.

Now there’s a new worry for him and 110 other employees at Devereaux Sawmill in Ionia County: tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump in an effort to force manufacturing of all kinds back into the United States.

“A lot of lumber gets exported to China and, even though we don’t export a lot to China, all the lumber that was going there has to go somewhere else,” Smith said. “So when trade into China gets cut back or cut off … it can flood the market. My hope is that the tariffs in the end will be more of a benefit than they are of a hardship right now.”

In the meantime, the levies add to the headwinds for Devereaux and other Michigan sawmills that turn lumber into cabinets, furniture and trim pieces as part of the state’s $26.5 billion forest products industry. According to research from Michigan State University’s Department of Forestry, the number of sawmills in Michigan declined to 237 from 257 between 2018 and 2023, while the number of small operators plunged 43% from 1990 to 2023. Overall, the state’s industry lost more than $211 million in output and 1,100 jobs between 2019 and 2023.

That consolidation has ripple effects for local economies. The report cited the closure of two Besse Forest Products Group mills in the Upper Peninsula last year that resulted in more than 100 layoffs as highlighting the fragility of rural communities dependent on mill infrastructure.

“In one area, there is investment happening in the sawmill, which created a job, and another area where the mill is closed, people lose logging as a particular rule of economics,” said Jagdish Poudel, an assistant professor of forest economics and policy at MSU.

To Smith, it’s a simple but challenging calculus: Get bigger or get gone.

“You have to grow in order to stay profitable, and the smaller places seem to be struggling and getting squeezed out, which is too bad in a way, but that’s kind of the way it is,” he said. “Farming seems to be going that way, and some of big-box stores squeeze out the little hardware (stores), and our industry is quite similar. There’s still some operators who can get it done, but if you’re not growing and getting bigger, then it’s harder to keep the doors open.”

Up north in Cheboygan County, Precision Hardwoods is among the Michigan sawmills getting bigger.

This year, the business, which employs more than 80 people, completed a $20 million expansion that includes a new 45,000-square-foot facility that uses artificial intelligence and other technology to cut lumber in seconds — allowing the company to process up to five times the amount of chopped wood for industrialized crates, boxes and pallets as before.

The project, which included the hiring of 18 more employees, was aided by a $130,000 Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant from the Michigan Strategic Fund.

Owner Mike Sturgill said he’s seen small sawmills close, which is why his facility on M-68 just west of Onaway not only processes lumber but handles logging, too. That, he said, makes Precision less dependent on outside forces than some competitors.

“We can have control of our future and control of what we do; we’re not relying on someone else to help us,” Sturgill said. “(Whereas) they’re at the mercy of competing against everybody else for logs and trucking capacity.”

Sturgill spends his days in a control room overseeing the new AI system that quickly measures hardwood and softwoods like maple, oak, beech, birch, aspen and pine logs, decides how to cut them, and also kicks out logs that have metal inside or are too bulky to cut. It can send more than 5,000 logs per day through the machine compared to less than 750 per day with the old industrial sawmill.

“This mill operation was $20 million,” he said. “It’s a lot of investment. You have to be sure you want to do this … you got to be in it for a long time before you can recoup your investment.”

He went ahead with the expansion despite being in a market he says has been oversupplied since 2022, in expectation that the housing market will rebound. He’s optimistic that Trump’s tariffs will help, too.

“The market’s been pretty saturated and kind of slow for the last few years, but you can’t keep adding more people to the country and not use more houses, supplies,” Sturgill said. “I think the tariffs are helping us. The more we have to buy here and build here, it will help the industry in general. It’ll be some tough times to get there, some inflation, but ultimately it’ll be better.”

Like the owner, employees such as Joe Burrows, a maintenance worker who joined Precision Hardwoods in April as part of the expansion, are keenly aware of the shakeout among Michigan mills with 50 or fewer employees.

“I know there’s some small mills around here that have closed over the years,” said Burrows, who helped set up parts of the new mill and paint its floors.

Fluctuations in timber prices and increased operational costs contribute to the closures. Larger sawmills benefit from advanced machinery and automation, which enhance productivity and reduce labor costs. Small mills frequently lack access to such technologies, making it difficult to compete.

Smith, the Devereaux general manager, said other challenges include finding qualified loggers and handling customer orders that have grown more specialized over the past two decades.

“The logging profession seems to be dwindling. Finding good quality loggers that still harvest the way that we do … with a chainsaw, it is becoming kind of a dying profession,” he said. “Finding loggers has become a bit of a concern in our industry in Michigan.”

On the customer side, Smith said, “Orders have become a lot more technical. Twenty years ago, we could sell full loads of one common hard maple. Now it’s like 1,000 feet of this, 2,000 feet of that, sprinkle on a little bit of this … everybody wants just enough,” he said. “The markets are unpredictable (and) nobody has a real positive long-term outlook. It’s not like doom and gloom either, but nobody wants to get too carried away. Everybody’s operating with caution.”

mjohnson@detroitnews.com

@_myeshajohnson

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Michigan

Michigan football signs former No. 1-ranked running back

Published

5 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Michigan football signs former No. 1-ranked running back

Michigan football moved quickly to help fill its running back room on Thursday, adding the No. 1-ranked rusher in the 2024 recruiting class to the roster.

Taylor Tatum, who spent the last two seasons at Oklahoma, signed with the Wolverines for the 2026 season, The Ann Arbor News/MLive confirmed.

Tatum, listed at 5-foot-10 and 212 pounds, has three seasons of college eligibility remaining.

He appeared in 12 games for the Sooners, most of it during his true-freshman season in 2024. That first season, Tatum rushed for 278 yards and three touchdowns, highlighted by a five-carry, 69-yard game in Oklahoma’s season opener against Temple.

Tatum was hampered by injuries in 2025, appearing in just one game against South Carolina, where he rushed once for negative-1 yard.

A former four-star recruit, Tatum was considered the nation’s No. 1 running back in 2024 out of Longview High School in Texas, where he set the school record for career rushing touchdowns (53). He picked Oklahoma over Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon, USC, among others.

Tatum was also a member of the Oklahoma baseball team, though he didn’t appear in a game in 2025.

The signing comes just a day after Michigan’s leading rusher in 2025, Jordan Marshall, announced his return to the Wolverines. Since the transfer portal opened last Friday, reserve running backs Bryson Kuzdzal and Jasper Parker have entered. Parker has since signed to play at Arkansas next season.

Meanwhile, Michigan awaits a decision from its other star back, Justice Haynes, who’s left the door open to a return to college. A pair of freshmen backs, Savion Hiter and Jonathan Brown, also joined the team this week.

Tony Alford, Michigan’s running backs coach, was one of three assistants retained by new head coach Kyle Whittingham.

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Michigan

Kyle Whittingham knows what Michigan football needs

Published

17 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Kyle Whittingham knows what Michigan football needs

Michigan football is primed to win now, new coach Kyle Whittingham said this week on “The Dan Patrick Show.”

The Wolverines have made far too many headlines off the field, which is why Whittingham told Patrick the organization needs to simply get back to focusing on the reason they’re all together as a team − football.

“The place doesn’t need a rebuild, it needs a reboot of trust and getting rid of the drama and just get back to playing Michigan football without all the distractions,” Whittingham said. “It didn’t come from the players. The players were not involved. It was not some player issue – it was just the peripheral.

“Guys here have a great attitude, I met with everyone of them last week at the bowl site. Quality young men, care about academics, excited to be at Michigan, but they’ve dealt with a lot over the last few years.”

Whittingham, 66, takes over as the 22nd head coach in program history after a pair of scandals rocked the previous two men who held his job.

Jim Harbaugh led the Wolverines from 2015-23 − and left on top by winning a national championship − but also was found to have a lack of institutional control in his program by NCAA investigators after two separate NCAA violations occurred under his watch: impermissible recruiting and illegal sign-stealing.

More recently, Sherrone Moore was fired in scandal after he was found to have had a relationship with a subordinate and was subsequently arrested after he allegedly went to her house and threatened his own life − he was jailed for two nights and charged with felony home invasion, misdemeanor stalking and misdemeanor breaking and entering.

Patrick asked if there was any selling point Whittingham needed to hear specifically from Michigan. Whittingham said when he stepped away from Utah in mid-December there were only a handful of program’s he would have even entertained. He called Michigan “a special place.”

“Needed to hear that Michigan was what I thought it was,” he said. “Hey’re committed to winning here, we do have some challenges with entrance requirements, there is a little bit of a hurdle there, but talk about athletes, resources, tradition − it’s all here at Michigan.”

Whittingham also quipped about the irony of previously being a team that wore red (Utah) whose primary rival wore blue (BYU) to flipping that. It’s also not lost on him that his mentor, Urban Meyer, went 7-0 against Michigan in his tenure in Columbus − Whittingham joked at his opening press conference that Meyer’s name alone might be considered a “four-letter word” in Ann Arbor.

“Blue was our rival at Utah for years,” he said. “Now I’ve got to get used to saying, ‘Go Blue.’”

Whittingham is in the throes of one of the busiest times on the college football calendar. The transfer portal opened for a 15-day window Jan. 2-16, setting off a scramble to both retain players, scout the database and find appropriate fits for the team.

Whittingham has only known his roster and coaches for approximately 10 days – he said while down in Florida he was going to “lock himself” in a room at Schembechler Hall in Ann Arbor to watch film on the players on his roster. He has been able to keep Bryce Underwood, Andrew Marsh, Andrew Babalola, Blake Frazier, Evan Link, Jake Guarnera and Zeke Berry − the last two of whom had put their names in the transfer portal before indicating their return to U-M for 2026.

With money flowing, back-channeling frequent and poaching at an all-time high, Whittingham doesn’t see college football’s current model as something that will last as currently constructed for more than a handful of years.

“It is not sustainable, there’s no question about that,” Whittingham said. “Something’s gotta give. Within a 2- to 4-, 5-year window, you’re going to see a major overhaul of Division I football. I think it’s going to become more of a minor league NFL model. I think you’re gonna see a salary cap, collective bargaining, players as employees.

“I think all that’s coming because we cannot maintain this pace.”

Tony Garcia is the Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.

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Michigan

Michigan Lottery contributions over $1B to K-12 schools for 7th year in a row, state says

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Michigan Lottery contributions over B to K-12 schools for 7th year in a row, state says

LANSING, MI – The Michigan Lottery’s annual contribution to K-12 education reached more than $1 billion for the seventh time in a row in 2025, according to the state.

The amount at $1.16 billion makes up roughly 5-6% of the state’s School Aid Fund, which has exceeded $20 billion in recent years.

It peaked in 2021 at $1.4 billion, according to the state budget office, marking a 78.4% increase in six years at the time. The reported portion for 2025 marks a slight decrease when compared to the previous five years.

In a release on Wednesday, Jan. 7, the state reported the total Lottery contribution had reached more than $30 billion since it began in 1972 and $8.7 billion within a seven-year span.

“In (2025), Lottery retailers earned more than $300 million in commissions for the sixth straight year,” Acting Lottery Commissioner Joe Froehlich said in a statement. “The support the Lottery provides to public education and to businesses throughout the state is critical and far-reaching.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office utilized Wednesday’s announcement to recap the current state investment in K-12 schools based on the budget deal lawmakers green-lit in October three months after the current fiscal year was already underway.

That includes a 4.6% hike to $10,050 per student, $201.6 million to maintain a free universal meals program that Whitmer said saves “parents almost $1,000 a year per kid,” and a series of investments geared toward boosting literacy skills.

“This year’s lottery contributions will help build on that progress and make a difference for students, educators and schools across Michigan,” the governor said in a statement.

Other budget highlights included hundreds of millions in grants to reduce class sizes and school infrastructure, as well as for career-technical education and English-language learners.

Additionally, there was another $258.7 million boost to $1.3 billion for at-risk student supports and $321 million to support mental health and school safety initiatives ― the latter including a waiver requirement that spurred litigation from schools against the state in late 2025.

According to the Michigan Lottery, participating retailers earned more than $330 million in commissions for the 2025 fiscal year. Since 2019, when the Lottery’s streak of billion-dollar contributions to the School Aid Fund began, the state reported more than $2.3 billion in commissions.

Lottery products are sold at more than 10,000 locations across the state, and over 700 retailers sold $1 million or more last year in Lottery games.

Michigan residents took home more than $2.8 billion in prizes in 2025 and over $58 billion since the Lottery began.

According to the state, roughly 25 cents went to the School Aid Fund from every dollar spent on a Michigan Lottery Ticket, while 63 cents went to players as prizes, 9 cents to vendor commissions and 3 cents to the Lottery’s operations.

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