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The Need for People Power, Not Powerful People

  • Our industry does not have any "Powerful People," but we can make a difference in our industry by meeting with our legislators locally. We do not need to be powerful to make a difference. 
  • Like the grassroots in your lawn, component manufacturers are many and mostly small, but in aggregate, our influence can be powerful.

Parting Shots

Keeping Your Plant Safe by Keeping It Tidy

  • Bob Becht, "Mr. Truss Photo," takes digital technology to plant safety. 
  • Showing safety and health issues in a PowerPoint® presentation helps the staff create innovative policies to improve workplace safety.

Tips for Homeowners: Removing Interior Walls

  • Three basic questions can help a homeowner determine whether or not a wall is load bearing.
  • A carpenter or engineer should be consulted before a homeowner proceeds with a partition wall removal.

Industry Leadership

  • WTCA meetings give you access to people with dozens of different ways of thinking about many of the exact same problems you face every day, at a very low cost, compared to consulting services.
  • Get your MCA using the excellent management development tools a WTCA meeting provides.
  • Gain the ability to better predict your future based on WTCA meeting discussions.

Parting Shots

Safety? Seguridad? No Matter How You Say It, It's the Law!

  • Many employers won’t hire ex-felons.
  • The industry has a chronic shortage of skilled truss technicians, so setting up a prison design department was the perfect solution for Stark Truss.
  • The truss industry has several success stories of helping former felons reintegrate into life.

Differential Deflection

  • Differential deflection is not a structural problem, but can be a significant appearance issue.
  • Designing the roof or floor system to account for dead and live load deflections of adjacent trusses is critical to providing sound solutions.
  • Strongback bridging can help distribute loads and reduce deflection issues.

Readers Respond

  • Heel Blocking

Continuing to Frame the American Dream with Wall Panels

  • Are you seeing the same objections to wall panels that you had with selling trusses?
  • Labor demographics today will drive wall panel sales much like labor savings drove truss sales in the 1950s.

Parting Shots

Forklift Safety - Common Sense from Behind the Wheel

  • Did you know that you should drive an empty forklift backward UP an incline and forward DOWN an incline?
  • The building components industry provides the ultimate fork lift truck lifting, driving and loading challenge due to the wide variety of load types.

The Building Inspector's Guide to Jobsite Truss Inspections

  • WTCA has a great deal of information that can help make the inspection of trusses easier to understand and perform.
  • Truss designers and truss manufacturers only provide individual truss inspection information.
  • The roof or floor truss system inspection information must come from the owner, builder/framer or building designer.

WTCA's Latest Milestone

Parting Shots

Avoiding Cold Weather Calamities

Swimming Pools & Trusses

The Aftermath of Charley: Picking up the Pieces