Magbee Brothers Lumber was founded in 1954 by brothers James and Charles Magbee in Decatur, GA. The Atlanta area was emerging as a booming metropolis full of opportunity and growth that has continued to this very day. In 1989 Robert Magbee, son of Charles Magbee, became president and continues in that role today.  That same year, the company name was changed to Magbee Contractors Supply to reflect the company’s vision of being the supplier of choice for builders and contractors in the Metro Atlanta area.
Magbee supplies Millwork, Trusses, Lumber and Building Materials to contractors and builders in the Atlanta area.
Q. What type of volume do you run through the door shop?
In total, Magbee currently pre-hangs between 450-550 doors per day. In January 2022, additional equipment is being added at the facility which will increase our overall door production capacity to approximately 800+ doors per day.
In addition to standard door production, Magbee manufactures custom doors, custom transom units, custom moulding, and wood windows.
Q. Do you hang everything through your shop, or do you rely on wholesale distribution to fill in gaps?
Magbee pre-hangs all interior, exterior and custom door units in-house. Custom manufactured doors and mouldings are made from rough lumber with all components made on-site and built from CAD drawings. On rare occasion, some items may be outsourced to local wholesale distribution if total production capacity is exceeded.
Q. Can you give us a sense of the product mix?
Interior door units account for approximately 75% of our total production capacity each day. Exterior door units are generally about 20% of the total volume with custom and specialty doors making up the remaining 5%.
6-8 and 8-0 hollow-core, moulded panel doors account for the bulk of our interior door production but many solid core and stile and rail doors flow through the lines each day. Fire-rated moulded panel, steel and fiberglass doors dominate our exterior door schedule.
In terms of unit type, though single door units are, by far, the most common, Magbee builds many double door units, sidelite units, and transom units every day for both interior and exterior use.
Q. Can you explain your door line with regards to machinery, etc.?
As of Jan 2022, Magbee will have 3 full KVAL 990 lines operating. Two lines dedicated to building primarily interior door units and the 3rd line primarily dedicated to building exterior door units. Two of the three door lines can run both interior and exterior doors when additional capacity is needed.
In addition to the KVAL lines, Magbee operates two Norfield Signature Series machines primarily used to run custom doors, specialty doors, cut-down doors, and all special hinge and bore locations. These machines are also used as back-ups to the KVAL lines and can add additional capacity when needed. Two double-end trim saws and three back-nailers are used to assemble casing and brickmould hoops to help increase the capacity of all our door lines.
Q. Can you talk about how you staff your millwork operation?
We are very happy to speak about our millwork staff. They are among our most valuable assets. Magbee currently employees a total of 43 people dedicated to the management, supervision and production of doors, windows, and custom millwork. The shop operates under two production managers: Ricky Steele oversees all custom door, moulding and window production; John Quintero recently joined the team to oversee all standard interior and exterior door production. All scheduling and additional supervisory responsibilities are managed by Derle Smith, Charlie Occhipinti, Danny Turk, and Donald Hardie. Our management and supervisory group are some of the best in the industry, and we are proud to have them as part of our team.
Q. What is Magbee’s customer base? Are you doing multi-family work?
Our customer base, for all products, is primarily comprised of single-family, detached, new residential home builders and contractors. Magbee has very strong long-term relationships with many local builders producing all types of homes ranging from large custom builds to smaller entry-level homes. Magbee additionally provides material to many large regional and national builders in the Atlanta market.
As the cost of construction and land continue to rise rapidly, we have also seen an increase in the number of attached townhomes and condominiums being supplied by our customer base. The attached, new residential construction segment has grown significantly for us over the past few years.
We are presented the opportunity to supply multi-family projects on a regular basis but select a very limited amount to bid and accept. Extremely strong demand for single family homes coupled with limited product availability and production capacity prevent us from pursuing a regular flow of multi-family projects
Q. What are your biggest challenges in this area of your business?
Our most significant challenges are finding enough people and products to keep pace with our current customer demand. We have seen some product lead-times improve and have been successful securing enough of most products to support our existing customer base. A few products have continued to be a challenge and appears that will continue through 2022 based on communications from our supply chain and others.
Q. Are you looking to grow your door shop business?
We are investing several different resources to help grow our millwork business. We are adding key personnel, new equipment, expanding facilities, and optimizing all ancillary processes to support increased millwork sales in the future. Ideally, as more material becomes available in the coming months and years, we will be fully prepared to take advantage of the strong demand in our industry. Magbee is very focused on supporting the growth of all value-add activities in both truss and millwork. At Magbee, we often define ourselves to our customers as a “millwork first company” and we are excited about the positive impacts that has on our overall operations.