Hankins Lumber 

Grenada, headquarters for Hankins Lumber Co. Inc. is a town of about 12,500. It is the seat of Grenada County in north central Mississippi. Conveniently located along Interstate 55, Grenada is 94 miles southeast of Memphis, Tenn. Elliott, the site of the planer mill , is fewer than five miles southeast of Grenada. Hankins Lumber has its roots in Hankins Lumber Sales, a company that Burton and his brother, Bewel, formed in 1950 to truck lumber. A few years later, the brothers bought a planer mill in Winona, and in 1957 they built the planer mill at Elliott. By the early 1960’s, they had added the sawmill and dry kilns. Bewel died in 1971 and Burton continued to provide the leadership for the company, which was incorporated in 1972 as Hankins Lumber Co. Inc. It was under Burton Hankins leadership that the company constructed the new planermill in 1997 and a major sawmill renovation in 1999 (both included Newnes equipment). In early 2001, on a return trip from inspecting headrig and sorter equipment in Texas, Burton suffered an untimely death in Glenwood Springs, Arkansas. His two sons, Al and Lee, are continuing with Burtons ideas of operating a state of the art operation. In addition to making the recent upgrades to the sawmill (Inovec Stereo Scan headrig carriage), Hankins Lumber has been adding storage space for finished lumber inventory. During the last two years, new storage sheds totaling more than 63,000 square feet have been built. The expansion of covered space gives Hankins Lumber better control over its inventory. For all the improvements that Hankins Lumber has made in recent years, there will be more to come-as solid business strategy demands, said Al Hankins. “To remain competitive in this industry, we must continue to improve our operational efficiencies as we do with keeping up with state of the art technology’s”