Plant The Trees
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Plant The Trees
Rot-Resistant Lumber and The Market for Black Locust — with Zach Rike
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Black locust is a fast growing hardwood, native to the Allegheny Plateau and surrounding bioregions in the eastern half of the United States. The wood is highly durable, and rot resistant, and lasts 2-3x as pressure treated wood in contact with the soil. Robi Decking is a company that mills, processes, markets, and distributes black locust decking to all 50 US states and throughout Canada.
Today, Robi’s founder Zach Rike joined us to dive into the uses of black locust, the downsides of tropical hardwoods, why pressure treated pine means planned obsolescence, the nuances of building with black locust, how much creativity you want in architecture, and more.
A huge thanks to Zach Rike for joining us on Plant The Trees. Zach closed a lot of loops with this podcast, and it’s great to hear from one of the foremost users of black locust in the United States. Like he said, check them out at RobiDecking.com — both Jeremy and I have built with and experienced their products and we are extremely satisfied.
If you’d like to plant trees on non-forested land that you own or manage in the United States, don’t hesitate drop us a line at propagateag.com.
If you have questions for us or a guest, about agroforestry, send us a message on social media or comment on this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, is a fast-growing hardwood native to the Allegheny Plateau and surrounding bioregions in the eastern half of the United States. The wood, the lumber, is highly durable. It's rot resistant and lasts two to three times as long as pressure-treated pine in contact with the soil. Roby Decking is a company that mills, processes, markets, and distributes black locust decking to all 50 US states and throughout Canada. Today, Roby's founder Zack Reich joined us to dive into the uses of black locust, the downsides of tropical hardwoods, why pressure-treated pine means planned obsolescence, the nuances of building with black locust, how much creativity you actually want in architecture, and more. Please welcome Zach Reich, founder of RobyDeck. Zach, welcome to the Plant the Trees podcast. Our audience has heard about Black Locust, but not everyone is so familiar. I would guess that you're one of the most experienced among us at describing Black Locust and what you do at Roby. Could you give us a general overview?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I founded the company in uh 2015. My wife and I were putting a screened in porch on our house in Atlanta at the time. And I started to look at the decking market and the different decking options. And I knew that pressure-treated pine was was not something I wanted to use. I've had a lot of experience with wood. My dad was in a demolition business, and I've been around wood since I was a little kid reclaiming lumber, and I've seen the degradation of pressure-treated pine over the last 20 years or so. And I knew I didn't want that because it's a very low-end product that doesn't last. And so I looked at the soft woods like cedar and red wood and cypress, and they're just a little bit soft for decking applications. I didn't like the composite decking, all the plastics and whatnot. I I think those are I'm not a fan of those at all, although a lot of people are. And then I started looking at the tropical hardwoods like Ype, and I was like, well, these are these are great woods. And so I just would be very interested in them and read up on them quite a bit and and really went deep with them into a lot of research that's been done on the different wood species. And I started thinking to myself, there has got to be some type of wood species right here in the United States that grow that are that are naturally rot resistant. And so because we've built boats out of out of wood for hundreds of years here, and so I was just thinking, you know, there have got to be some species of wood. So I stumbled upon black locust, and then I stumbled upon a couple other species, but I focused on black locust. And I was like, wow, this this is uh this is an interesting wood. Why has nobody used this for decking? And why has nobody used this for outdoor wood products? And so I just I spent hundreds of hours just reading about it. My wife thought I was crazy, and then I was like, you know, it looks like there's enough of this lumber available in the United States to to buy some and mill it down and start a website, get a website going and see if I could sell it for for outdoor wood decking. There were a couple other people that were doing it at the time, but they didn't really have inventory and and and they they were nice folks, but they they really had not productized it that much and really wrapped a a company around it with customer service and marketing and logistics and all the things that you have to have to have a company that that operates in in the world today. And so I got some, and this is back 2015-16. I got some, I built a deck out of it, it was wonderful. I got some more, and my dad, who was in the demolition business, sort of reconditioned his junkyard or what we now call a warehouse, uh to store the lumber. And that was 2016, and so we got enough to mill some up and wrap some marketing and logistics and all the things. We talked sales around it. And I I just started as sort of a hobby to see if see if I could get it going. And I sold the first load pretty quickly and was about two-thirds of the way selling through it. I was like, wow, this is this is not just a hobby, this is a legitimate business because the the potential customers and customers I would talk to were extremely interested in the wood. They were the same in the same position as me. They wanted a wood deck, they did not want pressure-treated, they did not want a softwood, they did not want the tropical hardwoods, they did not want a plastic deck, they wanted an American hardwood, but there there were no options on the market. So we started with black locusts and we quickly added sassafras, and it it's it's just really taken off. And we keep adding uh products, trying to utilize the tree uh as much as possible. So our primary product is decking, outdoor wood decking, but we do outdoor siding posts, uh fence posts, split rails, pavers, deck tiles, outdoor wood trim. We even dabble a little bit in interior wood as well, if folks want tongue and groove or want an accent wall to black locust. So uh basically what we say is that if you have an outdoor product and you want to use wood, uh, I think we have the best product on the market.
SPEAKER_00And people have heard of black locust fence posts. That's the classic use of of Robinia pseudoacacia. And you're taking these trees, the larger diameter trees, say 16 plus inches, maybe 11 inches, 10 inches a minimum, and then milling them into this high-end decking. And the decking, it's not just one by lumber. You're you plane and edge all of it, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. I mean, we we typically we don't mill lumber that's less than 12 inches. Occasionally, if we get some some 10 inch and 11-inch diameter uh material in or the mills that we work with, we'll we'll we'll work with that. But it's it's typically 12 inches and and greater diameter. And yeah, we it's not one-off. I mean, when we we mill, we mill tens of thousands of of board feet at a time. And um yeah, it's it works out great.
SPEAKER_00And the I saw the deck tiles on your website. Those are really eye-catching. Could you explain those just for anyone that's just listening and and not on your website right now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Harry. So, so with black locusts the the tree does not get that big. And and that's the the the number one thing we have to explain to customers is that they're so used to getting eight, 10, 12, 16, 20 foot boards of of composite decking or tropical hardwood like epay or or pressure treated pine, that the tree just does not yield that. So we primarily sell our decking product three feet to 12 feet random length. And the major, the vast majority of that is is three feet to 10 feet, just because the tree does not yield much lumber at all longer than longer than 10 feet. Occasionally we'll get get a patch or we'll get a some 12s and maybe even a 13 or an occasional 16 in, but those are very rare. And so what we're doing is we're always trying to maximize the material and what most people would think is waste material, we try to productize. And so we get a lot of narrow strips and rips from production that can't make a decking board. And what we do is we re-mill those, chop them, and assemble them into uh deck tiles. And we do mostly two by two deck tiles, two foot by two foot deck tiles. Uh, and occasionally we get requests in to do two foot by four foot deck tiles. And it's a great way for a customer that has a legacy rooftop that maybe is asphalt or concrete or just a flat roof of some sort to quickly transform that area into an outdoor living space. So we do a lot of it in New York, Chicago, places like that. And and a lot of a lot of more modern buildings are having outdoor spaces on different levels of the building. And just today we we took a call from somebody in the northeast that um that's looking to do a building with multiple levels on it that would have significant amounts of of outdoor living space on multiple levels and was interested in the deck tiles. So they're a they're a fantastic application for black locust.
SPEAKER_00I feel like I've encountered them in the wild at some point where I was just going out onto onto someone's deck, and there were these roby deck tiles made of black locusts and I was just absolutely elated. Beyond the deck tiles, are there any say unexpected products that you've been surprised by or really pleased with?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, we started doing outdoor um wood pavers maybe seven or eight years ago. We we got a couple of requests in from one was from the city of Cleveland and the other one was from the city of Philadelphia, where they needed to have replaced cobblestone streets from the late 1800s that were built with black locust in-grain pavers. And they dated one of the streets back to 1888, I believe. So at this time it's 120-ish, 30 years old. And they believed that those were the original black locust pavers, old cobblestone streets. And I started doing a little bit of research, and and basically before the the advent of concrete in the early ages of the industrial revolution, this is going back to the mid-1800s, old factories and warehouses they would use in the construction, ash, black locust, white oak, whatever, whatever hardwood they could get their hands on, and they would they would turn the the wood up on the ingrain, and that would be the the floor of the of the factory. And the wood would basically be self-treated with dirt and grime and oil and lubricants from from machines that that would actually help to help to preserve the wood. And uh some of those factories are not in in use anymore, but they they've been preserved for historical preservation. So we productize those as our ruby ingrained flow pavers, and though those have really taken off. They allow us to use the the lower quality wood that we can't really mill for lumber or decane or siding. And we're able to use those and and they're fantastic. And we've had folks use them from the Bahamas all the way to the Pacific Northwest, all the way to Buffalo and Toronto. They do great in in all climates, and um they're really great because they they allow for two things. The first is they allow for the water to flow through the pavers, so it gets the water back into the ground. Because what a lot of cities are having trouble with are when you get when you get a large rain event or a flood, there's nowhere for the water to go. And so this allows the water to go back into the ground almost immediately. And then because it's wood and because it's a lighter color, uh, when you walk on them, they're a lot cooler than than concrete or asphalt or traditional uh brick pavers. Uh they don't absorb as much heat. It's called the heat island effect. So those two things uh have really made them take off and and they look really cool and and customers love them.
SPEAKER_00So that's stormwater management and urban ecosystem services while the tree is living and after you mill it. That's I feel like that's pretty unique.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I I think it is because if you if you if you look at um Vancouver had a a moderate rain a couple years ago. It wasn't even a a torrential downpour. And they they they the whole city was shut down for like five years. And over the last hundred years or so, Vancouver and and many other municipalities, they've put so much asphalt and concrete down that there's no place for the water to go. Especially if you're on the coast. And so the the water's got no place to go. It's sitting on concrete, it's sitting on asphalt, and and it is just waiting for the waiting for the sun to come out and waiting for the tide to go down so the so the water can leave. But with a product that's permeable, and there are other, there are plenty of other permeable products on the on the market as well, and and there's a lot in residential building and commercial building that's starting to focus on this, is trying to trying to use things that are more permeable to get the to get the water back into the ground. It really just it helps a lot.
SPEAKER_00So I'm I'm thinking about substitutes for black locust. And earlier you mentioned epay and maybe mahogany and tropical rot-resistant hardwoods. You could say that there's some supply chain issues there, to put it lightly. Is that the case? What's what's going on with uh with these tropical hardwoods?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's what that's one of the first things that got me really interested in in black locusts is understanding the and I I did a ton of reading it and research. And Harry, I'm I'm no way as educated as you are in the in the botany of trees and and whatnot, but but I have come to under understand them quite well. Uh one of the things that really popped out to me was when I was first learning about black locust and and and there are other hardwoods in the United States, is that they grow relatively fast compared to other places in the world. So black locust, it can reach a log generating tree uh as early as 15 years, but it is really, as far as I know, the shortest-lived hardwood tree in the in the forest in the United States. Uh, the optimal time to cut down a black locust tree is about 20 to 40 years, maybe 60 on the high end. But what we find a lot of times is is once the trees hit 60, they start to die from the inside out. And rarely, if ever, do they get to be 120 years old, which is what what most folks consider old growth. Rarely. I mean, we're talking maybe like one out of a hundred thousand logs you you'll you'll see. Um, you'll just kind of look at it and be like, oh wow, that's that's got a lot of growth rings to it. Maybe that was a 120-year-old tree. But um and all the all the research that's ever been done on black locust sort of backs this up that rarely does a tree even get to be a hundred years, not no, not to 120 years. So you're talking about a very fast-growing tree, 20 to 40 to 60 years is kind of the optimal time to harvest it. And that there's there are a few other hardwoods like that in the United States as well. Now, when I was doing my initial research on the tropical hardwoods, it just blew me away understanding the history of some of these these things, and and I was fascinated by it. But the the the tree that Brazil was named after, I believe was called the Pernambuco tree. And it was heavily uh exported by the Portuguese. And for whatever reason, that tree no longer, no one can ever get that tree to grow. They've they've been trying for hundreds of years now. I can't get that tree to grow. If you look at teak, and and I'm talking about not the plantation grown teak, but the the the forested teak that's really rot resistant, that that's pretty much gone. The big leaf mahogany is pretty much gone. And and these trees are being substituted by plantation-grown trees that have nowhere near the rot resistance that the originally non-plantation grown stuff did. And then uh I started I found a research report that some some Brits did back in maybe it was about 15 years ago now. They they went into the Amazon and they actually carbon dated trees because no one uh no one had gone into the rainforest in Brazil and actually carbonidated to see how old these trees were because it they don't have growth rings because they don't have seasons, so you can't just count the count the rings. What they found in the report was astonishing that they the average diet four-inch diameter tree was on average 350 years old. And when you consider that we are cutting down some of these epay trees and some of these other trees that are six, eight feet in diameter, these trees are thousands of years old. And epei in particular uh is yes, having supply chain issues and will continue to because number one, apparently there's only one epe tree that's grown, that grows per every 10 or so acres. It's the only tree in the in the rainforest that has a has yellow leaves, so you can identify it via drone, and then you have to cut a swath out of the rainforest just to get to this one massive tree. And the tree does not regrow into a lumber-producing tree. That's one of the things that that I've talked to some folks about is that there's this myth that there are plantations that Ipe being grown, and there's only one tree that goes for about every 10 acres in the in the Amazon. And when they're regrowing the tree, uh it basically grows as a shrub, and it doesn't, it's nowhere near a a lumber producing log. And so it it's just a matter of time before the before there's no no more of that material left. Um, and that's one of the reasons it got put on the sites level two a couple of years ago, and that you're seeing issues with the supply chain and the prices. It's just supply and demand. And for some reason, it befuddles me every time because we go to a lot of the conferences, the ASLA conferences and whatnot, it it's still amazing to me how many people still use ePay in the tropical hardwoods, even with all this knowledge that we have have today. And we've got we've got great alternatives with trees that grow right here in the United States that that that we're not using nearly as much of as ePay and the other tropical hardwoods. So that that's kind of a long-winded answer to your question, but that that's really the core of of what I think makes black locust and sassafras, and and there are some other American hardwoods that are fantastic, great outdoor wood products. Um, and one of the things that it's just gonna have to have to happen because the the replenishment rates on these tropical hardwoods is either non-existent or so slow that that they just can't be replaced in a in any time frame.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it seems like cutting old growth forest on the other side of the world via illegal logging operations is a bit suboptimal compared to early successional species here in the United States. Folks often mention how dense and hard black locust wood is. It's not as dense and hard as, say, uh some of the eucalypts in Australia, but it's more like hickory in comparison to other later successional trees in the U.S. It's say twice as dense and twice as hard as pine, but it's also twice as strong on the upside. What are kind of the nuances of building with black locusts that you that you walk walk folks through?
SPEAKER_01A lot of folks are not used to building with hardwoods like they were uh a few generations ago. Most folks, when they think of wood, think of of pine or they think of Doug fir that are that are probably the two most common construction woods in in the United States. And black locust is harder, it's it's more dense, it doesn't work like those woods. Um the biggest thing you have to explain to the folks is is really two things. Number one, you have to pre-drill the wood, which I think you should do with with pretty much any wood anyway, especially for uh a a non-framing application. But um but that's probably the biggest thing, and that that that is time consuming to pre-drill the wood. But if you want to do something and spend the amount of money that you're spending on um outdoor wood with black locust or tropical hardwood, you want to do it right, and that's what you've got to do. And the second thing is is is being creative uh with working with the shorter links because it's they're all not uniform eight-foot, ten-foot, twelve-foot, twenty-foot lengths. And so working with uh shorter links and coming up with designs that that that showcase that are a mental challenge for some architects and contractors, but we have never had a customer complain that once they've installed their deck, uh, you just don't care once you once your deck is done, if it's got some three foot and four foot and it's random length, uh, it actually makes it look cool and it and showcases the natural wood and the and the and the differences in the in the in the wood grain from from board to board and the differences of color. And and for some folks that's um that want a wood deck, that that's what they want. They don't want all uh uniform colored composite boards. Um so but some folks do and and and some folks don't, but there's still a lot of people out there that want a a a wood deck that's gonna last and look beautiful for a long time.
SPEAKER_00And when you don't have to rebuild it after 15 to 20 years with PT Pine, that's all the better. Amelia Baxter, I feel like, phrased it really well, Amelia from Holtrees, their CEO. That wood products and the experience that goes with them is just so calming to the nervous system. Like when you're on a plastic deck, it kind of feels like a a cheap imitation. It's made to look like wood, but it it doesn't feel like wood. So I feel like there's a lot to be said for for wooden real wood decking.
SPEAKER_01There is, and and I mean, uh just using natural products in general. I I think is a is is a better way to build and it that's not the way the building industry is going right now. Using using stone and metal and glass and wood and and and brick and and using more natural building materials is is being replaced by synthetic products that are fast and easy and cheap to install. And uh there's a there's just a degradation in in the in the building of houses that that's going on now, especially for the less expensive houses. Uh they're being built as as cheap and fast as possible. And um I mean some some of that's due to other factors, but um for folks that want a a high-end deck or a high-end siding product, I mean, I think we've got a great product. And and to your point, I mean, we we we we find with pressure treat upon, we find that if it's a typical exposed deck that gets rain, that gets snow on it, that gets gets a lot of sunlight during the day, it's it's not a covered porch or something like that. We we see about five years is the is the lifespan on that. And uh it can be even shorter than that. And we also see the same thing. There going back to the conversation we had earlier, uh, a lot of folks are using the term mahogany in the decking. And you look at the species of wood that they're actually selling, and it's typically one of these these sharia species out of Africa that's a that's maybe I've read as many as 700 different species, and some of it's yellow, some of it's red, some of it's kind of uh it's all across the board, and they're throwing all those species together, or a lot of companies, and some of the material is rock resistant, some of it's not. And we've heard stories of we get a lot of calls on on that one where people put down um what's been being marketed as a mahogany, and it's a sharia species, or or um there's another one called red blue and yellow blue blue. Uh, they look great for a couple years, but if they're exposed to a lot of moisture, they don't do well with the moisture and they'll rot out within two to five years. So there's just a lot of of knowledge that that's that's being that has been lost and is continue to be lost with with different wood species. And some of these companies are really good with the marketing because I just throw uh throw the word out there mahogany, and it's not a mahogany tree, and the customer's kind of confused because the customer may be 60 years old and used to 30 years ago when mahogany was was the big leaf mahogany, it lasted a long time, and now the stuff they're getting doesn't last. So there's there's a there's a lot of that going on as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well I feel like there's a decent amount of of wood fraud that we want to avoid. Uh, but what what do you look for in a locust log when you're when you're getting logs in to the yard, to the mill, what are the characteristics of a log that are good for different uses or just uses of black locust in general?
SPEAKER_01Well, the biggest thing with black locust, it's it's and I'm not a forester and I'm not a logger by trade, but I've learned quite a bit. And a black locust is is unique. Most logs you grade based on uh the the branching of the log, the length of the log, the girth of the log. You get a veneer log that's clear of any um any knots or or defects, and then you you've got a a a one-phase and a two-face log and all that. We throw all that out the window with black locust. None of that matters a black locust. The only thing that matters a black locust is looking at the ends of the two logs, of the two sides of the log. And if the both sides of the log are sound and sturdy, and they don't have what's called a dotiness, which is the the that the log is too has been grown too long and not a good enough application and not enough good area, it starts dying from the inside out. And if you see even a a quarter size on either one of the ends of the log and you see that, the chances are that that log could be a complete firewood log. And the more, the bigger that dotiness is, the the the worse the log is is is likely going to be, and you're you're probably not gonna want to want to mill one. Um sometimes you can kind of work around that, sometimes you can't. And when you when you mill that log and you and you open it up, the the whole thing is hollow. So that is what unlike any other when I talk to loggers and and folks that work at these these big sawmills, when when when we get locust in, that's the key that you that you have to look at. It's not so much the size or the branching of the of the log that that really doesn't matter with black locusts where what matters is the those two ends of the log.
SPEAKER_00And in terms of sawing that wood, we recently had Rowan Reed on the podcast. He's an Australian agroforester. And quarter sawing is one of the things he's really keen on. Do you all quarter saw a black locust? Is there any advantage there, or do you prefer flat sawing, or what does that look like?
SPEAKER_01I think different wood species are different. That is probably important for some wood wood species, especially in the looks of it. A lot of folks like a a quarter saw on a riffssawn white oak or a quarter saw on a riffs on sycamore. Some wood species are much stronger if you quarter saw in them versus flat saw them. With with black locust, in my opinion, it does not matter. It's merely appearance, and the tree's not big enough to usually yield a lot of a quarter sawn wider material. And what I tell folks, if they want uh a quarter sawn look and they want that uniform vertical grain, what I tell them is that um it go with the narrower boards because 60 to 80 percent of the narrower boards, uh the one by four, the five quarter by four, are gonna be quarter sawn. 70 to 90 percent of the one by six boards are gonna be flat sawn. And and most all the fascia boards are gonna be flat saw as well. So that's that's my take on quarter sawing versus rift sawing versus flat sawing. For black locust, I I don't I don't think it matters. There's there's no difference in the strength, and there's really at the end of the day not much, not much difference in the the the appearance as well, once you mix all the boards in.
SPEAKER_00And to further improve the quality of the wood beyond its innate qualities, do you all kiln dry? Is that necessary? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01If uh for for decking and siding products, it is absolutely omnipotent that the wood be kiln dried. This goes to the physics of wood, uh, this goes to hundreds of years, thousands of years of usage of wood. There's something called the the EMC or the equilibrium moisture content. And basically every every region, every city in the United States has this published by the USDA. Uh it varies uh by month, and the EMC in the United States ranges from about 6% up to about 19%. And we can dry our wood, our decking and siding facial board products um down to 12%, which covers about 95 to probably 98% of the United States. Miami, places Miami and the tropics uh have a higher A EMC. They're gonna be more in the 12 to 19%. And then when you go to very dry and arid places, arid places like Las Vegas or Palm Springs or Phoenix, uh, you're gonna you're gonna be in more of the the 6 to 12 range for for outdoor wood. And so what we what we have those folks do, and that's not that big of a market, those outliers, is is what we have those folks do is just have the have the wood acclimate for for a week or two and draw in some of that moisture or lose some of the moisture in the in the design in the area. But we've had competitors who do not kiln dry the wood. They just air dry it. Now, if you 150 years ago, everybody air dried the wood, but you air dried the wood for for typically the the rule of thumb was was an inch, a year per inch. So if you have a if you have a four-quarter border, you cut that log to to one inch, you're gonna need to let that air dry for for a uh 12 months or a year. And um we're folks are just too impatient these days to to do that, and the the time to hold that to air dry it is is too long. So kiln drying is the way to go. It it it's a much more consistent uh drying process, and it just it yields a much, much better product.
SPEAKER_00I get Facebook ads for this product called a vacuum kiln. Have you guys experimented with that just out of curiosity?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I I'm not a big fan. I'm I'm really old school, and a lot of the the philosophies that I follow with with with construction, I I think we're we're losing those quite a bit in the in the education of of architects and landscape architects and and uh contractors and and builders. The the vacuum kiln um speeds up the process. When we get wood, I can tell when we get wood that has been vacuum kilned versus air-dried and traditional, uh traditional kiln, it mills much better. It does not have as many drying defects, it's a more uniform dry. And by air drying the wood, especially a black locust, that's a that's a very dense wood with a grain structure, it to me it allows the the tension in the wood to release during that air drying process, which can be anywhere from one to three months and makes the kiln drying process much, much smoother. So yeah, I I'm not as much of a fan of the of the dry vac kilns uh as some people are. Now, what I think the dry vac kilns are really good for are specialty pieces. So if you've got a four-inch walnut slab that you want to to kiln dry, um the the vacuum kiln does does great on that. If you're in a crunch and you've for whatever you've got some wood, weird wood species, you've got beach flooring in your house and you can't find beach and you you've got to have it dried because you you just had a flood and in your house, yeah, maybe the vacuum kiln works, but for for high-end production, I I I don't think it it does that great. And I think it's uh a lot of folks in the indoor flooring space are using them. And when you have indoor flooring, oak, maple, hickory, flooring, you're seeing a lot of issues with in places that that have these big humidity uh changes with their their indoor flooring. It's it's it's starting to move around a lot. And I I think I attribute a lot of that to the to the dry vacilling kilning process instead of the traditional uh air drying and and then traditional combing process. I I think it just yields a much better, more stable, more stable wood. And um when we're talking about pressure to the pond, um that I wanted to bring up. Six years ago, we were at a a conference in in Atlanta. It was the uh Green Build Conference in 2019. And we got really lucky with our booth space. And we're a small company, we're bigger than we were now then, but I mean we're we're we're still a pretty small company. Well, we were diagonally across from Home Depot. So we've got a 10 by 10 booth, and there's there's two or three of us in our 10 by 10 booth, and and Home Depot has this gargantuan 40 by 40 booth with 40 people working there, and they're serving cocktails and bacon wrap scallops and all sorts of stuff over there. And they've got a ton of people coming over there, but and they they but they keep on wandering over to little Roby Deckings deck. And the first conversation I have, the guy, the guy's in Atlanta, he's their decking specialist, and he's like, Yeah, I really like this black locust. We get we get requests for it from time to time, and it's just too niche for us to do. And I don't understand how you guys are able to sell three foot links, it's crazy. I have a conversation with him, then the regional sales manager for decking comes by, and um the we have the same conversation. It's like, yeah, great product, but we're selling a ton of the composites and pressure-treated pine and blah, blah, blah. The great product, and glad you guys are here, blah, blah, blah. Now it's about six o'clock, and they've had their their big shin dig going, and they're they're about out of bacon wraps scalps, and and the guy comes over and he's he's had a few drinks, and now the national head of decking for Home Depot comes over, and I'm chatting with him. He's like, Yeah, some of my guys have been telling me about this black locust, really interesting. Like, we love it, looks like great, but I've checked out your website, man. You you've got some great projects, and or you're doing some big projects for a little company, blah, blah, blah. And I I forget what the guy's name was. I said, Hey, can I ask you one question? He's like, Yeah, ask me anything you want. I said, We get a lot of calls weekly from folks that put in a pressure-treated deck five years ago, ten years ago, and they gotta replace it. And man, they spent all this money on the deck, and the biggest expense in the deck is not the wood, it's the it's the labor and the tools and the screws and all that, and all that's wasted when you're when your deck is is rotted out after five years. I said, Why do you still sell this pressure-treated pine decking? And he had a big smile on his face with a big glass of red wine, and he said two words. I said, What's that? Repeat customer. And I was like, that's just that's not the way I ever want to operate a company. I want to sell a product that I use myself, that I stand behind, that I'd be happy to have my kids stand on the deck, my wife stand on the deck, my dog running on the deck, and never in my life would I sell a product like that. And uh I just think that is a synopsis of where a lot of the construction and the and the building materials have gone in the United States is they've gone fast, they've gone cheap, they've gone to where the economic viability of those makes the customer have to repeat buying those on a five to 10 to 15 year cycle instead of just doing it right the first time, buying a high-end product and and we're specifically talking about decking, or buying it's uh uh an outdoor wood product or um a space, because we see a lot of folks that spend a lot of money on construction. They have a high-end builder, they use bad building products, and they they just don't last. But if you go with the the the products that we sell, folks are going to enjoy their their outdoor living space for a very long time with really minimal maintenance.
SPEAKER_00That's a wild story about PT decking, but with planned obsolescence just worked right in. Running shoes are actually the same way, where when you have a company put out the first generation of a new type of shoe, it'll last a lot longer than their subsequent iterations of that same shoe. I know this because I have like the the V1 uh from a few different companies of these shoes that came out in 2012, and I still have them. And I bought the same, it looks the same, but I can put less mileage on the new shoes and they will wear down faster than the original pair. So yeah, planned obsolescence is a is a bear.
SPEAKER_01Well well look at look at what look at what Tesla has done with the with the car. I mean, most folks get rid of their cars at a at 100,000 miles. Some people let them go to 150,000 miles. The these Teslas, now that they're starting to get some age on them, they've had folks running those for three, four hundred thousand miles with with minimal maintenance on those. And the only thing that goes is really the um the only maintenance that you that you've got to do is your tires and your brakes and your windshield wipers. But the the rest of the car, because they took out so many of the things that that that break more often, they're lasting a lot longer with with minimal maintenance. So they've found that the first generations of the hessels are lasting three to four hundred thousand miles. And when when you consider, yeah, the car might be a little bit more of an upfront purchase price comparatively, but um but when you when you look at it over the economic lifetime value of that car, I mean it's it's it's gonna cost you a fraction of what another car is gonna cost you. And and it's kind of the same concept with with a black locust deck, or you could you could say the same thing about a a high-end um a high-end refrigerator. Um, there's a lot of things that you could say um the the same thing. Or your running shoes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh it seems like Black Locust is the classic Mercedes Diesel 300D from 1980 that has 800,000 miles on it and is still going. Right, right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, we've been in business for this is our our 12th year. Uh we've got we've got decks installed in all 50 states now, uh including Alaska and Hawaii, quite a few in Hawaii, actually. Washington, DC, I think five of the provinces of Canada, uh, Sprinkwind of the Islands and the Bahamas, Bahamas and the Caribbean. And yes, we have had to replace a few boards here and there from from customers, but there have been no issues with the decking or siding product uh outside of replacing a few boards here or there on a on a couple of projects. So the the product lasts. I knew it was going to last based on all the research I did and all the people I talked to that have been using it for fence posts and firewood for for as long as we've got recorded history in the United States, and it's just a great outdoor building product.
SPEAKER_00And I think just if we play devil's advocate for a second on the durability of black locust, there are some projects out there made of locusts that have, I don't know to what extent or to or why they are said to have failed. Uh perhaps it was the supply, but there's some architects that are hesitant out there around the material. I think there was an article that I found where you actually you didn't even build the deck, but you called in or just contacted them and said, this is why, this is what happened. What what's the scoop there? What's the what what went down?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'll tell you with with and and this goes back to our prior conversation where the educational system I think is is is not what it was for for for building. Uh there's a lot of things that that builders try to do today that they would have never tried to do. Uh and but before we give into get into that specifically, I I'll give you the the one that gives us the biggest problem. Uh and we've done everything we we we can to it. Anytime you build a deck or a a walkway, um the the decking has to breathe. Uh you have to have airflow up under that deck. And if you if you trap in moisture up under the deck, you're typically going to have problems. So we've put put this in our in our install guidelines. We've done a blog about it when we're talking to customers via email or text or phone and they're they're talking to us about their project. And we typically always ask how far off the ground is your deck. Because if you if you put wood in an in an outdoor decking environment and it's right on top of the the dirt, you have a lot of moisture coming up from the underside of the deck, and that that side of the deck is is is not in the sunlight. And so it's going to be constantly wet and cooler on the bottom, and it's going to be constantly drier and hotter on the top. And the that difference in temperature and humidity causes an energy variation where it causes wood or composite decking and composite decking actually does this worse to cup. And that's just the physics of outdoor decking. And if you look at our website, we recommend 24 inches of airflow under the decking. Uh, most everybody on the market is 12 to 36 inches of airflow under the decking. It befuddles me that this is a very basic building thing. If you talk to an old school deck builder, they would laugh at you and would not even do a project if you're going to be a foot off the ground with a deck, uh, and unless you take some serious precautions. You can architect and build your way around it, but but for the most part, it's very difficult to do. And we'll all the time get get customers say, hey, we've got a huge problem with our deck. You know, we built it and it looked great, and then it rained a lot, and then it got hot, and and we got problems with the boards. And and we explained to them what went on, and some of them don't believe us, others are like, okay, yeah, I I can see that happening. But it's it's the architect designs it, the landscape architect designs it, the the contractor signs off on it, and the the builder who many times does know they're not doing the right thing, are are told, hey, that this is gonna work. And if the builder pushes back on them, the architect or the contractor, the head builder may just say, hey, you don't you don't know what you're talking about, and then something like this happens. So so this is how in construction, when you have design flaws, when you use the wrong material, you can have bad projects. And and we see it on the we see it on the decking from time to time, although we've done everything we can to mitigate this. And and there are just to go on a little bit of tangent, there are ways that you can avoid you can use a narrow decking board, you can have more of a gap spacing, you can do things underneath the deck to try to move make sure the water's not standing under the deck so that you can build on grade or or less than 24 inches. There are things that you can do, but if you use a wider deck board and you butt those boards up against each other and the the the air's got nowhere to go and it's stagnant and moist, you're gonna Have issues. There's really no way about it. It's it's simple physics. And so these things happen from time to time in the in the decking space and and multiple other spaces as well. Specifically, that Brooklyn project, I believe, predates to when I maybe 2010 or so. I'd never even heard of Black Locust then. And I I was getting news articles about this project. And so I really got into the weeds of it. And at a conference, I actually met the guy that that was on the construction team that that did it. And what they did was they used um black locust logs that they peeled. And they basically put them in these the architect and the and the bridge designer designed these think of like a cigar and a cigar holder, uh, where that those they basically encapsulated the ends of the cigar or the ends of the black locust log as connectors. And they were they were metal, I believe. And what happened was as the the wood expanded and contracted in in Brooklyn through the seasons, it basically pulled these these holders out. And what what I related to is it's like it's like the ring on your finger when you if you're if you're married, I think you're getting married soon, so maybe you'll understand this. But when it's really dry outside, my my my wedding ring sometimes can almost feel like it's falling off because it's very dry outside and your body's holding less water. But in the summer, my my ring fits nice and firm on my finger uh because it's more humid and my body's holding more water. Well, what happened there was that black locust is not a ring and it's not your your finger, it's not soft tissue. It's it's a extremely hard, dense wood. And when it expands, it's got to expand into something and it expanded into these metal holders and it basically broke them apart and the and the and the bridge basically failed. And there were all these lawsuits on it, and um I think at the end of the day, they they reconstructed it, and the I believe the architect and the bridge designer were the were the folks at fault. I sent it to other people who who are in the wood business, and and one guy who builds wood bridges and pilings, and I I showed it to him, and he he was just like, what what were these what were these people thinking? Uh they were they were going for a design look. They did not understand the means and methods of the material, they didn't understand how how wood wood operates. Wood wood bridges have been all around a long, long time, and as long as there's recorded history, because that was how how bridges were were basically built up until the last hundred, hundred and fifty years or so. So so wood bridges are were the only thing that was available. And and I I I've read articles where in in the Midwest, where big black locust trees were used for the for the bridge, and some of those bridges are still standing today, maybe over 100 years old. So this is why this is why projects fail. This is why you've got to have you've got to have a coordinated team that is, you've got to have an owner who's on top of things, who who understands enough to know they're not being fooled or tricked and to bring the right people around. You've got to have an architect who understands the means and methods of the materials that they're using and understands construction enough. Uh, you've got to have an experienced builder who who understands who understands the physics of the of the material. And you've got to choose the right building products from the right building suppliers. And and if if one or multiple things in that chain fail, then then you're gonna have a you're gonna have a problem with your your project. And um you you can pretty much say that about about anything, but in particular, you you you see it with in in construction with um with outdoor wood projects.
SPEAKER_00I feel like we have to moderate how creative the artists and the architects get sometimes. You want something to be beautiful, but you also want a reasonable amount of creativity such that the project doesn't fail. One more question on the quality of of black locust wood. There's an insect called the locust borer. It's megaciline rabbinier, and it's native to the eastern United States, North America. And I sometimes see borer holes almost like emerald ash borer and number two common locust lumber, just the the off cuts. And it's not a huge issue. Do you do you guys just grade out borer damage in general?
SPEAKER_01I'll tell you what, Harry, we rarely see the impact of the locust bore. I think it's been extremely overblown. Rarely do we see a board that has um locust bore defects. And when you see the locust bore defects, you it's very obvious. There there's been a a bore that has has bored a hole uh about the size of your your pinky into into the wood. And when you when you mill it, you can you can obviously obviously see it. From what I can tell, that borer attacks very poorly growing trees, trees that maybe were used in um land reclamation project projects where like you've got an old coal mine that's where all the coal is gone, you want to rehabilitate the soil, you plant black locust trees because they'll pretty much grow anywhere. And yes, that those areas will will, from what I've read, will have lots of lots of issues. I don't see that in the lumber that we get at all, rarely. And if you do, you know, we said we simply chop that out so that the so that that that piece is not going to get to get to the customer. Probably the bigger issue that I see, especially in the southeast. I I live in North Carolina, is starting in July and August, you'll see uh groves of of black locusts, especially on the interstates and highways, that get hit with the uh locust leaf miner. And you you'll see that they per those leaves will premature prematurely in July or August turn brown. From what I've read, it doesn't really impact the tree. It's just sort of that that bug. And I do do you know the scientific name of that that bug off the top of your head? Odontata Dorsalis. There, there you go. Yeah, that that bug. But that that that that typically doesn't cause cause any any issues from what I see, other than cosmetics on the on the leaf. They're eating something in the leaf that's that's tasty to them, and you see that in in in growths of it. But yeah, I mean I mean, I think what you what you uh uh are doing at Propagate is is fantastic, and over the years is going to do nothing but help black locust grow as a uh wonderful outdoor product for a multitude of uses. Um, whether it's decking or siding or fascia board, I would say 95% of the houses being built these days have zero wood on the outside of them. Uh they're using uh some types of composite or vinyl siding. Uh they're not even using wood for the uh for the fascia boards, those are composites. Uh the outdoor decks are maybe they're pressure-treated pine, but but primarily they're they're some type of composite. So the amount of wood that's that's being used on the exterior of the house is is nearly nothing. But the more and more customers that find the joy of having an outdoor wood deck, um, I mean, our our customers are flat out flabbergasted sometimes. Uh the contractors are sometimes flabbergasted because they've they've only been installing um pressure treated, or maybe they've dabbled in some ePay and and they've pretty much gone all composite and they've got a crazy homeowner uh who wants to use this black locus product and they've never heard of it, and they give us a call and we walk them through it, and they're like, well, you know, I'm not comfortable with this, but I'm gonna do it. And, you know, they'll call us back and be like, I can't tell you how beautiful this project turned out and how happy the homeowner is. And I'm going to start offering this as an alternative now. Uh, and look, not everybody can afford our products. We we do keep some products on sale from time to time, but our products are on the higher end of the of the market, so that they're not for everybody. But folks are more and more making a commitment to their outdoor living space, making it super nice, and we think we've got a great product, and and it's just I I think what you folks are gonna doing for the future than growing as much of this as possible in in a very smart way is just gonna do nothing but but increase the awareness of of black locust and other other American hardwoods that we have.
SPEAKER_00Zach, one more question, and then I'll let you go. Black locust, it's obviously known as an outdoor wood, and they say that using black locust lumber indoors is kind of like driving a lifted Jeep Wrangler in Manhattan, in that it's totally unnecessary, but looks really cool if you're wearing Oakley sunglasses. Have you found any good uses for black locust inside?
SPEAKER_01I'm not sure what that what that car is, but um but we we have done well, we've done four or five uh interior car uh refurbishments of old trucks from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, where they were lined on the inside with trucks and uh the interior cab of the truck. So we've done quite a few projects like that. We we do some indoor flooring from time to time. It's a it's a unique-looking indoor flooring product. Um, it's difficult to stain. So if folks don't like the color of it and they try to apply stain, sometimes that that can be a challenge for interior flooring. Uh, it's more expensive for interior flooring than the alternatives of oak and red oak and maple and hickory and and everything else. But some folks want it, especially if they've got a lot of water in their house or they're they're near a a lake or the coast. We get customers where you know they've got a lot of kids coming in from the beach or from the lake, and they're the floor is always getting wet, and they don't want to use a another hardwood, they want to use something that's it can repel the the the the water like black locust. So we get a lot of those. So the answer to your question is yes. Uh not many, but quite a few, more than you probably think out there that are that are interested in indoor flooring for it, indoor um wood wall applications. Those are getting to be more and more popular where folks have an an accent wall inside their house that's that's that's wood, and it's it's a unique look for that. So there are quite a few applications for for interior use. Um but the but the vast majority of it is is is outdoor use.
SPEAKER_00I have so much of it on the hand just in uh from scrap lumber from building a deck and whatnot that I built a coat rack out of it, not because I have wet coats, but just because it's really strong and I can use uh less wood, and then I have a black Lucas cutting board and a few other things. But Zach, thank you so much for joining us on the Plant the Trees podcast. Where can folks find you at Robydecking?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh they can they can um go to the website www.robidecking r-o-b-i-decking.com. We keep all of our contact information there. We're not a huge company, so when you when you when you call in, you you don't get an IVR system or or an AI agent. You get a you get a live talking human being. We're happy to talk to you about any project that you might have coming up, big ones and small ones. We we do everything in from in between. Probably the the biggest project that we did was the um was the SoFi Stadium uh boardwalk out in uh California that connects the um the stadium to an to an outdoor living space. That was I think two tractor trailer loads of of two by sixes that they used for the decking. And then uh we sold a guy in um Iowa at Old Dog Guitars. We sold him one board because he wanted to make a make a uh a black locust um piece for his guitar, uh, and then everything in between. So we love it. We love seeing happy customers that that enjoy their their outdoor wood product or their indoor wood product. It's just fantastic. And and again, I I appreciate everything that that that you and your folks are doing, getting the word out there and trying to get folks to um to plant more of it because I think it's a I think it's a great tree with a lot of a lot of benefits and and helps the other trees as well.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. Zach, thanks so much, and we'll talk again soon. Harry, have a great rest of the day. You too. Okay, bye-bye. A huge thanks to Zach Reich for joining us on Plant the Trees. Zach closed a lot of loops with this podcast, and it's great to hear from one of the foremost users of Black Locust in the United States. Like he said, check them out at Robidecking.com. Both Jeremy and I have built with and experienced their products, and we're extremely satisfied. And as usual, if you'd like to plant trees on non-forested land that you own or manage in the eastern half of the United States, don't hesitate to drop us a line at propagateag.com. That's P O P-A-G-A-T-E-A-G.com. If you have questions for us or a guest about agroforestry, send us a message on social media or comment on this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Until next time, plant the trees and make it count.