Nearly 70-year-old lumber company sold

ST. PETERSBURG —Tibbetts Lumber Co. has bought a 67-year-old Largo roof and floor truss manufacturer, expanding its footprint in the state to seven locations.

The company, which traces its roots to Cox Lumber Co., picked up all the assets of Florida Forest for an undisclosed amount. A company spokeswoman says in an email that the sale will be completed next month. She could not disclose whether Florida Forest would rebrand.

The sale of Florida Forest brings to an end a company that’s been in business since 1954.

According to a company history on its website, Florida Forest Products got its start as a wood pulp brokerage in Tallahassee then moved into the building material supply business in 1969. Three years later, the company had locations in Tampa, Port Richey and Jacksonville. 

In 1976, it began working in lumber and soon after saw an increased demand for engineered trusses. Given that demand, the company bought property across from its lumber yard and opened a truss plant in 1980.

By 1988, according to the history, Florida Forest was a lumber, millwork and truss manufacturer working in Hillsborough and Pinellas County.

It sold the millwork and lumber divisions of the company in 1996 to focus on truss design, manufacturing and delivery of floor and roof trusses.

The two companies, in a statement, aimed to reassure customers that the sale would not disrupt operations and that the transition would be seamless.

Rick Cashman, owner of Florida Forest, says in the statement that Tibbetts “shares our business philosophy and will continue the high level of product quality and customer service that we have provided to our customers for many years.”

Kyle Hooker, executive chairman and owner of Tibbetts Lumber, says in the statement that his company found Florida Forest attractive because its “team and facility are highly complementary to our existing metro Tampa/St. Petersburg operations and we have many overlapping customers within various product segments.”

When the deal is complete, Tibbetts will have locations in St. Petersburg, Largo, Land O’Lakes, Ocala, Palm Bay, Crystal River and Fort Myers.

In the release, Tibbets says it is “essentially a rebirth of the former Cox Lumber Co.” Hooker is the grandson of Linton N. Tibbetts who bought Cox in 1949 and owned it until 2006 when he sold it to a Home Depot subsidiary. The company had 28 locations in Florida at the time.

Hooker and his family started Tibbetts in 2009.