Ross and Oris, brothers-in-law, according to The Jacksonville Journal, built a sawmill near Timpson in 1946. The small mill cut ties and lumber at first. By the later 1960s, as the J. L. Ross Lumber Company, the firm added a chipper and produced roof decking and upper grades of lumber, chips, and manufactured fence material and siding.
As early as 1947, the company was logging almost 500,000 standing feet of timber and employed eighteen to twenty men. By the 1970s, the company contracted out its logging.
The firm works with loblolly, slash pine, and shortleaf pine.