Brewton Mills

r. Miller was one of the earliest mill owners to recognize that if the company was to grow and survive for future generations it must adopt a more conservative operation. Therefore, he initiated selective cutting and a program of replanting young pines on cutover that were almost bare. This foresight enabled the company to become one of the largest mills in the southeast and to have a record 134 years of continuous operation, white other mills have closed for lack of timber. The company owns many thousands of acres of timberland in south Alabama and northwest Florida.

Annie C. Waters / History of Escambia County

he T. R. Miller story is still very much a railroad story. The firm long depended on its own railroad, built in 1904, to bring logs from the forests into Brewton. While the logging railroad was discontinued in 1940 and replaced by a truck-tractor operation, T. R. Miller's own diesel switcher continues to shuttle back and forth over some five or six miles of track that connect the various Miller plants. Last year, over 1300 carloads of timber products moved out of T. R. Miller for markets over much of the nation, while some 950 cars of unfinished products, principally untreated poles and creosote oils, were switched into the plant.

Much of Miller's lumber is prepackaged for fast loading and unloading. On a visit to the plant, this writer watched a fork-lift neatly stack palletized lumber aboard one of the L & N's big 100-ton bulkhead flat cars. Irene Murray, T. R. Miller's traffic manager, has long advocated use of bulkhead flatcars, and so that the L&N could better serve her and other lumber shippers, the railroad has acquired a fleet of over 200 chain-binder-equipped bulkhead flats just since 1962. More new flats are on the way this year.

Charles B. Castner / "The T. R. Miller Story" / L&N Magazine / May 1965