Great Southern Wood Preserving

Jimmy Rane founded Great Southern Wood Preserving in Alabama in 1970 and opened the Abbeville plant the following year. The company treats and distributes pressure-treated pine under the YellaWood brand, supplying decking, fencing, sill plate and landscape products to dealers across 27 states and the District of Columbia, alongside a custom packaging manufacturing line and an import and export business. Sister company Greenbush Logistics handles freight, and the combined operation runs roughly 1,200 people across 15 locations. In August 2026 North Carolina announced that the company will invest $40 million in a lumber treatment facility at Laurinburg-Maxton Airport in Scotland County, its 17th treating plant, adding 43 jobs and rail-served capacity for the Carolinas market.

The company’s own account of the start is a two-man crew loading a first order of lumber into the back of a pickup truck. Jimmy Rane founded Great Southern Wood in 1970; Lawson Curry was the first employee; the Abbeville, Alabama plant began operating in 1971 and made its first delivery to Ozark Building Supply in Ozark, Alabama. A second treating plant opened at Mobile in 1976.

Fifty years on, the business has grown well past treatment. Alongside full-service treating plants it now runs custom packaging manufacturing, material import and export, building product distribution, and a sister logistics company, Greenbush Logistics — plus, characteristically, a family-style restaurant.

The YellaWood product line is deep enough that specifiers should read the tag rather than assume. Decking runs from standard pressure treated through MasterDeck, RainWood, YellaWood Select KDAT and SuperSelect. Kiln-dried-after-treatment products include architectural trim and tongue-and-groove porch flooring. There are fence products from dog-ear and gothic-top pickets to split rail and corral boards, dimensional lumber and timbers, plywood and plywood siding, log cabin and T1-11 pattern stock siding, mailbox, gothic and deck posts, handrails, spindles, balusters, step stringers and treads, lattice, and FlameFreez fire retardant treated wood. YellaWood Protector is the company’s own stain and water repellent line.

Distributed brands broaden that further: TimberTech, AZEK and AZEK Exteriors, Starborn and other fastener systems, Owens Corning deck framing, MoistureShield composite decking and RDI railing.

For anyone specifying or installing, the resource library is the useful part — the wood treatment process, micronized copper azole, preservative retention, lumber grades, how to read an end tag, ground contact lumber, KDAT installation tips, fastener information, building in fresh water, deck safety checklists, AWPA and building code compliance, warranties and SDS. AIA continuing education credits and YellaWood University sit alongside it.

General enquiries go to P.O. Box 610, Abbeville, Alabama 36310 on 334-585-2291. A dealer locator on the site searches by ZIP within a 25 to 100 mile radius.