It’s been quite some time since I’ve had the opportunity to interview key people in the Offsite and Modular housing industries and I’m happy to say that the drought is over starting with Derek Huegel, owner of Wolf Industries in Battle Ground, WA.
I met Derek at the last live IBS in Vegas where he, his brother and I sat down over lunch and talked about all things modular. He impressed me then and even more so today. I’ve been keeping an eye on one of the future stars of our industry ever since.
I interviewed Derek about what has happened in Wolf Industries since that IBS lunch and also what the future holds for his company.
Gary Fleisher, the Modcoach: It’s been a while since your factory’s expansion. Are you looking at expanding it again or possibly opening a separate factory?
Derek Huegel: Great question and the answer is yes, when we bought this land, there was adjacent land next to it that would allow for us to add on or build a new one. As to how that looks, the specifics are yet to materialize. We’ll be looking at future demand and whether it makes sense to sell this building and operate out of one new one or have the two buildings operating in tandem. The future will tell on this one. We’re looking at 1-2 years out.
Modcoach: How has the reaction been to using your homes as ADUs?
Derek: Pre or post COVID? As for pre-COVID – it was steady uphill growth. Post-COVID, there’s been a crazy high spike in demand. I think it was all that time where folks were sitting at home and thinking about their family member snoring in the room next to them that caused them to start searching online for a solution in their backyards.
Modcoach: You are totally integrated from permits to completion. Will you continue to offer that service as you grow larger?
Derek: I think we will for the projects within 150 miles or less from our front door. For the units that are beyond that, it makes sense to partner with a local guy onsite. Maybe we’ll keep our permit dept going full steam…? We’ll see; seems like we have such a large demand just inside our geographic region that it’ll keep us busy for a while.
Modcoach: Are you struggling with the labor and material shortages affecting other modular home factories throughout the country?
Derek: You’re kidding! Yes, yes, yes… Labor has been decent for us but the material is like Whackamole… Purchasing sends out 100 orders and 30-50 of those will come back as incomplete or simply not fulfillable. Pretty amazing that our supply chain system has been this vulnerable. I’m sure there were people long ago that were calling out these issues but only now has it become glaring obvious.
I’ll give you an example. Our window supplier has been quoting us 4-6 weeks out under normal circumstances. Post COVID – moved to 6-8 weeks out. Lately it’s 10-12 weeks out; OK – fair enough, they have challenges and we’ll try to order earlier. We place the window order with them and then start the house the same day we expect to get the windows based on the confirmation from the window factory. The windows get delivered 3 weeks late, almost forcing us to push the house out of the shop with no windows… Lesson here – don’t start the house until you actually have the windows!
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Modcoach: For someone who is drawn to Modular Offsite Construction, what would you tell them?
Derek: Think of a machine with 47 legitimate critical levers that need attention every 3-5 minutes. Or said another way, think of 47 plates spinning in the air and every so often you have to keep spinning the plate so you can go to the next plate before one falls. This business takes a special someone that must love all aspects of construction and has a full grasp on each and every trade. I’ve seen plenty of folks that say they love building and construction but don’t have the bandwidth to handle the wide variety of required skill sets. Luckily for us, our leadership team each takes a certain portion of the needed specialties. I do the design, sales and high-level stuff, my brother does the electrical, plumbing, structural and site construction, and yet another guy takes on the HVAC, overall design and flow of the shop – there’s no I in TEAM; that’s for sure.
Modcoach: Any new services or products on the drawing board for 2022?
Derek: At this point, we’re trying to finish the projects we entered into contracts for. There’s always a shimmer of a new product in the back of my mind but at this point, keeping it to a simple 5 units has kept the decision making for our clients relatively simple. Tesla only has a few makes n models of their car. Ford when they were starting out only had one model of the car if I’m not mistaken… Why try and change what we know works?
Modcoach: Derek, thank you so much for talking with us about the challenges and accomplishments Wolf Industries has had since we last talked in Vegas. We all wish you a bright future in the modular industry!
Check out this video of Derek talking to his customer:
Gary Fleisher is Editor in Chief of Modular Home Source. Email at [email protected]
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