Cooper Machine Co. has been around for 60 years as of January 2025, and Frances Cooper has been around the business since she was a wee little child given her father started the company. While she’s officially been with Cooper Machine for about 15 years, she’s held her current role of CEO for the past 10 years.
Where does Cooper fit in the Southern Pine and forest products supply chain?
We kind of started with the hardwood side way back in the day. As our customers change, so do we. We now do everything from merchandising systems to … we’re best known for our scrags. We do a lot in the pallet space, and then we’ve got sorting systems, edgers, and gang saws – all kinds of equipment in the sawmill space.
You mentioned you have been involved with this industry for, basically, your entire life. What is it about working in this space? What is it about the forest products and the Southern Pine industry that you enjoy?
The people! You know, everybody’s just really nice and plays well together. We enjoy the relationships and the people.
What does it mean to be a female leader in the forest products and Southern Pine industry?
I’m not going to lie. When I first started, my father was here and a lot of people just wanted to talk to him. But we know what we’re doing, so people, we talk to everybody, and we don’t have any problems.
Without getting too technical into the species characteristics and whatnot, what do you want people to know about Southern Pine? And because you do touch a broad swath of forest products, what is it about wood in general?
Wood is used in so many different ways. It’s important to all of us in so many aspects, and we use it at our houses and work – everywhere, really. So we couldn’t do it without it.
Given the amount of time you’ve been in this industry, what still surprises you?
It seems like labor is a big issue with a lot of people lately. Over the past couple of years, we’ve tried to automate more and do what we can to have our customers be able to not have as many people in their sawmills to make it easier on them.
I’m gonna throw you a curveball: What would you tell students and young professionals getting ready to graduate about working in this industry? What are the opportunities?
If you like being in the forest, you could become a forester and be around the trees all day. Or you can get into the educational field and find new ways to be able to use wood. Or if you’re more mechanically inclined, you can go work at a sawmill. There are so many different areas you can work in, so it’s not just one type of person.
And it’s not, it’s all different education levels. You can come right out of high school and go to a sawmill, or like you were saying, with the machinery, you could be an engineer and, design the equipment Cooper actually puts out.
All of our members are always looking to improve the industry. What can we do better? Where can the industry improve in the coming year or so?
People, even some of the smaller mills, are starting to optimize more so you can get more yields out of the log because we want to use as much as we can of this raw material that’s very important to us all.
Where do you see the industry in the next 10 years? What will that look like? What are we going to be doing? How are things going to be working?
Over the past five years or so, a lot of our customers have put in larger pine mills. They have been using so much wood around here. Pine grows pretty quickly, but I think the log sizes are going to get smaller, so some of the mills are going to go a little smaller, like more mid-sized mills and maybe not so many larger mills.
The Southern Forest Products Association’s A Cut Above series highlights and introduces to the Southern Pine lumber community and the greater world the amazing people who are part of our community and help keep Southern Pine among the premier wood species domestically and internationally!