Boss Hog. I few days ago you ask that I tell about my prefab experience so here goes. First let me say that it may prove a little disappointing. We were a poorboy operation and pretty primitive. First the company’s name was Holiday House Mfrs. Corp. and existed from 1956 through 1966. We were located in Ft. Worth, Texas and shipped houses locally and into New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. As I’m sure you are aware, the houses being built then were very simple and basic. Mostly FHA and VA, 900 to 1200 sq. ft., two and three bedroom, one bath with a single carport or garage. (You couldn’t give one away today) Our package consisted of exterior wall sections with window and siding installed, interior partitions(framed only), roof trusses and other necessary lumber, roof deck etc. If the unit was a pier and beam, we would furnish a lumber subfloor package.

Our manufacturing process as I stated was pretty primitive. We build our own wall and truss jigs out of lumber. We manhandled most things like moving and stacking the wall and partition sections and flipping our trusses. We bought precut and drilled studs and cut all others parts on a couple big dewalt cutoff saws. We had one fork lift to move materials and load the trucks.

Toward the end, we were doing some pretty neat things with standard nailed and glued stress skin roof and floor panels. We were playing around with honeycomb, foam, and combination honeycomb/foam core panels. Back then this was pretty new stuff.  I could go on and on about the rise and fall of the prefab industry, but enough  is enough. It was getting harder and harder to compete with the stick builders. As a whole, the lumber portion of a house is a very small percentage of the totlal cost.

Anyway, this a little blip in my design/construction career you ask about. It’s hard to believe that was over 40 years ago. This has brought back a lot of good memories. Thanks for asking.