Hobart Finn, president

Hobart has sawdust in his blood. Like his great grandfather, an early 20th century sawmill entrepreneur who owned a schooner to ship product from his dock on the Keewanee Peninsula to the Chicago train yards, Hobart has a trucking company to move his raw materials and ship his product. He started his own sawmill in 1976, and, like his grandfather before him, developed a niche manufacturing white cedar shingles. In the early 1990s he sold his lumber interests to focus on a trucking company he still runs today. But his true love is cedar, and he couldn’t resist the opportunity to partner with Max Taubert to start True North Cedar. By the way, the 100-year-old white cedar shingles that Hobart’s great grandfather used when he built the family homestead are still adorning it today.

Max Taubert, co-owner

Max got his start in 1976, working with reclaimed materials on various salvage projects. In 1985, he founded Duluth Timber Co. after purchasing the rights to the timber salvage from the Arrowhead Bridge, a wooden trestle and steel drawbridge built in 1927 to connect Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin. Duluth Timber has since moved some 40 million board feet of wood, handling such large-scale salvage projects as the Long-Bell Sawmill in Longview, Washington, once the world’s largest douglas-fir mill. In 1998 when Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation built his home in Washington State, Duluth Timber supplied his contractors with reclaimed lumber framing.