Brandon's Story
Many experiences have led to owning and growing Berdoll Sawmill to the operation it is today. I feel blessed to have found my passion and to turn it into my profession.
I was born and raised on a pecan farm that my parents started in 1980. The farm consisted of an orchard of 5,000 pecan trees, a retail store, a pecan nursery, and a candy-making factory. I watched my parents work side by side for decades and saw how much could be accomplished with an intense work ethic. Looking back, this gave me a solid foundation for starting Berdoll Sawmill since I was exposed to a wide range of skills such as sales, marketing, irrigation, electrical, welding, framing, machinery, mechanics, and many others that would prove very helpful in becoming a sawmill owner.
In my teens, I focused heavily on becoming a professional baseball player. I naturally threw left-handed, but with thousands of hours of practice, I taught myself to throw right-handed equally as well to become an ambidextrous pitcher. While rehabbing from a baseball injury, I was fortunate to have met Kevin Krueger. At that time, he was completing the interior woodworking of his home that he had been building from the ground up for 12 years. This was the first time I had seen rough lumber turned into custom flooring, crown moulding, cabinet doors, and trim all with basic woodworking machinery. I was so fascinated by what he had done, and I visited his house often to learn more from him.
After years of nagging baseball injuries, I decided to hang up my glove and attend Texas A&M University. I majored in construction science and the coursework came naturally to me. While there, I discovered a woodshop in the architecture building, and I spent as much of my free time there as possible. I loved how well-tuned woodworking machinery could produce precise cuts that resulted in high-quality wood projects. After graduation I returned to the pecan farm to help my family. I enjoyed the work, but I wasn’t passionate about being a farmer for the rest of my life.
One day while driving down the orchard rows in 2009, I noticed a very large pecan tree at the neighbor's place that had died. It seemed like a waste to let this tree that had grown for over 150 years go to waste. I began compiling a crude business plan in my head, and after a short while, I started milling large diameter logs into live edge slabs and learning to build furniture. I was inexperienced in business ownership, but the passion for what I was doing and the work ethic I had learned from my parents helped me overcome my inexperience.
The past 15 years has been a time of constant improvement for myself and Berdoll Sawmill. We have worked tirelessly at honing our skills for sawing, drying, flattening, planing, and moulding wood. We have put together a neat, clean, and organized facility, with buildings, machinery, equipment, and most importantly, a team of talented and hardworking people who share our high moral standards.
I am thankful that I get to do honest and ethical work alongside my wife and our talented employees in a family-friendly environment I can share with my kids. I feel privileged to repurpose incredibly beautiful resources from nature and see them turned into something that could last for many generations to come.
