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Carter Lumber: The unique use of takeoff and estimating products by one of America’s biggest suppliers

Industry

Building Product Manufacturer and Supplier

Year Founded

1932

Area of Operations

United States

Products

On-Screen Takeoff® and Quick Bid®

MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY

Carter Lumber is a building product manufacturer and distributor with several billion dollars in sales annually. The company serves large-scale developers, construction professionals, and do-it-yourselfers alike. Carter offers solutions for builder services, manufacturing and engineering, custom millwork, kitchen and bath design, and general hardware sales across its 170+ retail locations and seven brands. Founded in 1932, the company remains family owned.

Problem

  • The need to organize project costs and information for thousands of customers simultaneously
  • With the wild fluctuations in material costs, they must be able to provide accurate price quotes to customers
  • As customers’ budgets often change during a project, Carter needed to be able to recommend substitutions quickly
  • Provide a consistent experience for each step of the customer journey

Solution

  • On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid save every takeoff and estimate in a consistent format that is easy to read
  • Quick Bid allows for easy updating and cataloging of material pricing, enabling Carter to provide accurate estimates to their customers
  • Quick Bid can easily show price differentials using different grades of hardware
  • On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid's intuitive interface made it easy for Carter Lumber's salespeople to do quick, complete quotes as a value-add service

OUTCOME

When talking about how other building suppliers and manufacturers operate, Woodie Bryan, Carter Lumber’s Regional Director of Commercial and Multifamily Sales, says, “If they’re not using (On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid), I don’t know how they’re keeping track of everything. I really don’t. It’s really a time-saving tool.”

His team now saves up to five hours on each takeoff they perform for their customers, versus their earlier procedure of manually updating spreadsheets. What’s more, with On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid they can also pull numbers from one project to another, instead of having to do new calculations each time. Referencing the time savings from these front-end steps, and how they allow his team members to deliver for customers more quickly, Bryan said, “How you finish is best determined by how you start.”

Bryan noticed cost savings for Carter Lumber, as well. “The waste feature in Quick Bid on products that are calculated in linear footage is a very useful tool,” he tells ConstructConnect. “It allows us to account for waste in the raw cost of the product without inflating the quantity. This tool prevents project managers from over ordering material and wasting product in the field.”

Moving forward, every new employee that joins Carter Lumber’s Commercial and Multifamily Sales division will be trained in using On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid.

(On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid have) been invaluable to us. There’s only so much you can put in a spreadsheet and have good quality descriptions on the items that you quoted or are using in a product.

Woodie Bryan, Regional Director of Commercial and Multifamily Sales

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