Big company, small town: 84 Lumber, Eighty Four, Pennsylvania

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, is such a tiny town -- really unincorporated area in Washington County -- that it barely got a name. Instead, it is charmingly known by a number: 84. (Differing historical theories say it was named after its #84 railway mailbox or the 1884 election of Grover Cleveland.) Joe Hardy III liked the name so much that when he opened a lumber yard here in 1956 with his brothers, he named it after the town, 84 Lumber. (Not that he was that picky with names; his previous venture was Green Hills Lumber in nearby Green Hills.)

Even though Eighty Four is only 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, it is a decidedly rural, mountain town. Just off Route 70, Eighty Four, the town, was chosen so 84, the lumber company, could serve its particular tri-state area: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Eighty Four itself is too small for anybody to keep track of, but in Washington County in 2006 the average per capita income was $37,000.

Hardy's hardscrabble, blunt management style fit in well with the area and the lumber trade. The stores were notorious for lacking heat (which some now have). The Wall Street Journal described how Hardy fired his son, the would-be heir, when he slowed down with multiple sclerosis. He went with his daughter, Maggie Hardy-Magerko, instead. Battling big-box retailers, she pushed the company successfully toward specializing in pros instead of do-it-yourselfers.