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Bird Corporation Business Information, Profile, and History

1077 Pleasant Street
Norwood, Massachusetts 02062
U.S.A.

Company Perspectives:

"Over the long term we have found that we prosper when we insist on the highest quality products, produced in the most cost effective, modern facilities, designed and delivered to our customers with their needs in mind, by people totally dedicated to these simple principles."

History of Bird Corporation

Bird Corporation (Bird), which began its third century of business in 1995, is best known for making asphalt roofing shingles and vinyl siding, popular items in the American construction market. After expanding into window fabrication and environmental services, Bird refocused itself in the mid-1990s and sold these operations. Its remaining business unit was devoted totally to the production of commercial and residential asphalt and roll roofing materials, which were marketed through independent wholesalers and retail building materials outlets. Bird's main geographic market was the northeastern United States; its base of operations remained near the site of its original paper plant in Massachusetts.

Early History

In 1995 Bird celebrated its 200th anniversary, proudly announcing that it was one of the ten oldest existing companies in the United States. The company opened for business during George Washington's second term as president, when George Bird obtained a license to build waterwheels on the Charles River in Needham and Dover (only a few miles from Boston) and set up a small paper mill. At first production was limited to five reams of handmade paper per day. However, by 1812 Bird had established his reputation as a maker of quality paper, and his company was chosen to produce the rag paper on which currency for the new nation was printed. Bird opened a second plant on the Neponset River in East Walpole, Massachusetts, in 1817. Bird's son, Francis, joined the company in 1833 and the business continued to expand steadily, aided by the introduction of new products made with newly developed machinery.

The late 1800s brought great changes for the growing company. When Charles Sumner Bird graduated from Harvard and joined the company in 1877, the company took the name "Bird and Son," which it would keep for the next 100 years. Charles Bird remained the guiding force at the company for the next 50 years. An eccentric character filled with energy and enthusiasm, he would spend half of his day dressed in overalls and working in the mill, and the other half in his starched shirt learning the details of running the business. He also spent many evenings at home, performing experiments in his kitchen.

These experiments proved a lifesaver when the main Bird mill was destroyed by a terrible fire in 1880, closely followed by the worst flood in Massachusetts history. The only equipment still usable could produce only coarse paper, rather than the fine writing paper on which Bird's reputation had been built. Charles Bird retreated to his kitchen table, and within months three new Bird products were on the market. "Neponset Black Waterproof Building Paper" was a tarred paper that quickly became popular for building New England barns. "Neponset Red Rope Roofing Paper" and "Neponset Paroid Roofing Paper" soon followed. In one of the original American recycling activities, Bird salvaged wood resins and discarded rope from ships in the Boston harbor to produce these papers.

As a result, the company emerged from this crisis even stronger than before as it celebrated the beginning of its second century. Having been driven by disaster to manufacture the first felt-based asphalt roofing product on the market, Bird then made this product a mainstay of the company. Asphalt shingles as introduced in 1895 remained virtually unchanged and in widespread use for almost a century. The company also began to expand outside of the rural areas of New England into the Midwest, South, and Canada, and to market more new products, such as corrugated boxes.

A new plant was built in East Walpole in 1904 for production of roofing materials and served as the company's headquarters for more than 75 years. A highlight of the building was a machine invented by Charles Bird himself to heat and dry rag material more quickly. Bird also imported a German papermaking screen and began to manufacture it at his plant, giving birth to the now-defunct Bird Industrial Group.

Along with the technological innovations he instituted during his half century in charge of the family business, Charles Bird was also a pioneer in the area of employee relations. Between 1900 and 1925, Bird became one of the first American companies to offer an eight-hour workday (as opposed to the standard twelve-hour day of that time), an employee suggestion box, an employee credit union, paid employee vacations, and a benefit association to provide income for sick or disabled employees.

Prosperity and a Rude Awakening in the 1930s-1970s

The great guiding figure of the company, Charles Sumner Bird, ended his fifty years of management in 1927 on the brink of the Great Depression in which his creative approach to crisis would have been welcome. Nevertheless, the company managed to stay financially sound through the 1930s, even acquiring several faltering companies along the way. When World War II began, Bird once again was flexible enough to adapt its roofing and paper technology and create new products. It began to manufacture shell casings and waterproof shipping cartons for sale to the government. Following World War II, Bird was buoyed by the postwar housing boom and continued to expand its line of building materials. In 1964, it introduced a new product at the New York World's Fair: vinyl siding. This product quickly became extremely popular and Bird earned record profits year after year into the 1970s.

However, the economic expansion of the previous thirty years came to a crashing halt with one unforeseen event: the Arab oil embargo of the mid-1970s. Suddenly the price of asphalt--the essential ingredient of Bird's shingle production--rose dramatically, and soon afterward the national housing boom stopped short. As the decade ended, Bird had to report that it earned no profit in 1980, an occurrence unheard of in its 186-year history. To add to its difficulties, Bird also began to face competition from foreign manufacturers, and the first of 550 asbestos-related liability cases was filed against it.

In order to survive, Bird had to reexamine its entire approach to business. It was time to move from production that was so dependent on asphalt and felt-based products. At the same time, the plant built in 1904 had become outdated, as had much of the machinery in general use by the roofing industry.

Back to Basics in the 1980s

As it entered the 1980s, Bird experimented with a number of new business operations and invested $15 million in a state-of-the-art computerized facility, designed to produce shingles with refinements such as fiberglass matting and improved coatings. In the Bird tradition, the plant was built around an existing facility near the site of the original paper mill. But, at the same time, the company changed its name from "Bird and Son" to "Bird Inc." in 1983 to show it had become a modernized company.

New operations included an environmental services company based in Texas and vinyl building products and window fabrication manufacturing based in Kentucky. Initially these operations were promising, with the environmental services business quadrupling between 1989 and 1992. Bird was chosen to clean up a dumping area behind a Texas refinery and Bird celebrated in 1990 by once again changing its name, this time to its current name, Bird Corporation.

However, Bird entered the 1990s with serious financial difficulties brewing. Although its sales continued to grow, its earnings dropped each year, from $5.18 million in 1991 to the company's low point, a net loss of over $28 million in 1993. George Haufler, CEO at the time, sold peripheral operations such as Bird's municipal sludge disposal business in order to focus on more promising operations such as the industrial resource recovery business. However, Haufler was forced to step aside in late 1993 after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Joseph Vecchiolla, who had joined Bird earlier that year as vice-president and chief financial officer, was named president and chief operating officer. With a background in finance and operations management, Vecchiolla had been brought into the company in a conscious strategy of succession planning.

Vecchiolla inherited the company's management just as the worst financial year in Bird's history was almost over. The joint venture to fabricate vinyl replacement windows, just formed the previous year, was blamed for the bulk of 1993's $28 million in losses. Bird was forced to enter into a $65 million refinancing agreement and the company was restructured to concentrate on its housing products operations.

In 1994 Bird began to jettison major operations in order to regain its financial footing. It sold its distribution businesses (located in New England, New York, Kentucky, Texas, Louisiana, and Arizona) to Cameron Ashley Inc., allowing it to pay off $23 million of its debt. The company ended 1994 with a net loss of $3.68 million, a major improvement over the previous year.

In March of 1995 Bird sold its vinyl building products manufacturing operation (including the ill-fated vinyl replacement window venture) to Jannock, Inc. for $47.5 million, again using the sale proceeds to reduce its debt. That November, Bird also sold all of its holdings in its Texas hydrocarbon waste recycling center, effecting its total withdrawal from the environmental services industry. Nevertheless, Bird still sustained a net loss for 1995, slightly over $12 million.

As a result of these divestitures, Bird's manufacturing operations were reduced to one primary unit by the end of 1995: the Housing Group, which manufactured and sold asphalt roofing products from the home base in Norwell, Massachusetts. Facilities at this location included a roofing manufacturing facility, a granule plant, a quarry, an asphalt plant, and a private landfill. Vecchiolla retained a position as chairman of the board of directors, and Richard Maloof, former president of the Roofing Division, began to serve as president and chief operating officer in May 1995.

Bird's board of directors soon decided the best course of action would be for the company to merge with another corporation and it entered into an agreement to be acquired by CertainTeed Corporation, another manufacturer of roofing materials and a subsidiary of the French company, Saint-Gobain Corporation (Compagnie de Saint Gobain). Vecchiolla explained the reasoning behind the merger: "Bird has enjoyed a rich and innovative history since its founding over 200 years ago. However, during the past year it became apparent that greater progress could be made if Bird became part of a larger, financially strong organization with similar goals and philosophies." It was hoped that the merger would strengthen Bird's remaining core operations.

The announcement of the planned merger in March 1996 set an unexpected chain of events in motion. Bird was one of three companies which already controlled over half of the national market for asphalt shingles. The U.S. Justice Department viewed the planned merger as having potential anti-competitive results and immediately launched an investigation of the industry's leading companies, including Bird. By May 1996 CertainTeed had terminated its agreement with Bird. No reason was given by CertainTeed for dropping the $50 million transaction, but a spokeswoman implied that the investigation "could have influenced the decision," according to the Wall Street Journal. Bird's stock value fell 32 percent as soon as the termination was announced. Shortly afterward, the Justice Department dropped the investigation without taking action against anyone in the roofing industry. However, the merger with CertainTeed was not revived.

Surprisingly, Bird weathered this rather chaotic episode by reporting its first profitable year since 1992 with net earnings of $2.3 million in 1996. Bird's management was encouraged by the return to profitability in 1996 and believed that the company had completed its financial and operational turnaround and reemerged with a strong position in the industry.

Related information about Bird

A vertebrate animal assignable to the class Aves; any animal in which the adult bears feathers (only birds have feathers, and all adult birds have feathers). The fore-limbs of birds are modified as wings; teeth are absent; and the projecting jaws are covered by horny sheaths to produce a bill or ‘beak’. The female lays eggs with hard chalky shells. Other characters shared by most living birds are the pronounced vertical blade, or ‘keel’, on the breastbone, and the joining of the collar bones to form a ‘wishbone’. The keel acts as an attachment for the large muscles moving the wings (the breast muscles), and the wishbone acts as a strut to support the wings in flight.

Flight has dominated the evolution of the birds, and their bodies are adapted accordingly. The bones of most birds are hollow, reducing weight; much of the wing and all of the tail is composed entirely of long feathers, these being strong but very light. The body is streamlined with a smooth covering of short overlapping feathers. Flight has also controlled size. Most birds are small. No bird capable of horizontal flight in still air weighs more than 13 kg/30 lb. Even flying birds close to this weight, such as the condor or the albatross, spend much time gliding in air currents. This weight level is very light compared to large mammals or reptiles.

That flight is the factor limiting size is indicated by the largest known birds, living or extinct: these are flightless forms, such as the modern ostrich (up to 150 kg/330 lb) or the extinct elephant bird (457 kg/1000 lb). Such flightless running birds, or ratites, evolved from flying ancestors, but with the loss of flight the keel has disappeared from the breastbone, and the wishbone has become two separate bones again. The wings of ratites may be very reduced (as in the kiwi), and the feathers may become fluffy, rather than streamlined, and may even be absent from large areas of the body (as in the ostrich). The power of flight has also been lost by the penguins, whose wing feathers have become small and scale-like. However, penguins have kept the keel on the breastbone and now use their wings for ‘flying’ under water.

Whether capable of flight or flightless, birds have spread to cover almost the entire globe. They are absent today only from the true polar wastes (in common with most other animals) and the deep-sea. They have adapted to fill virtually every habitat and lifestyle, and their shapes, sizes, colours, and behaviours reflect this diversity. There are approximately 8600 living species of birds, and specialists indicate their relationships by grouping them into 29 orders and 181 families. Birds evolved from reptiles approximately 150 million years ago, and the birds' closest living relatives are the crocodiles. The exact reptile ancestor of the birds is not known, but it has been suggested that they evolved from a group of small dinosaurs. If that is true, then not all dinosaurs became extinct: some merely changed their shape, and are flying around our gardens today.

otheruses

Birds are bipedal, warm-blooded, oviparous vertebrate animals characterized primarily by feathers, forelimbs modified as wings, and (in most) hollow bones.

Birds range in size from the tiny hummingbirds to the huge Ostrich and Emu. Depending on the taxonomic viewpoint, there are about 8,800?10,200 living bird species (and about 120?130 that have become extinct in the span of human history) in the world, making them the most diverse class of terrestrial vertebrates.

Birds feed on nectar, plants, seeds, insects, fish, mammals, carrion, or other birds.

Most birds are diurnal, or active during the day, but some birds, such as the owls and nightjars, are nocturnal or crepuscular (active during twilight hours), and many coastal waders feed when the tides are appropriate, by day or night. Some, such as Common Swifts, stay aloft for days at a time, even sleeping on the wing.

Common characteristics of birds include a bony beak with no teeth, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, high metabolic rate, a 4-chambered heart, and a light but strong skeleton. Flightless birds include the penguins, ostrich, kiwi, and the extinct Dodo. The Great Auk, flightless rails, and the moa of New Zealand, for example, all became extinct due to human influence.

Birds are among the most extensively studied of all animal groups. According to the most recent consensus, Aves and a sister group, the order Crocodilia, together form a group of unnamed rank, the Archosauria.

Phylogenetically, Aves is usually defined as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds (or of a specific modern bird species like Passer domesticus), and Archaeopteryx. Modern phylogenies place birds in the dinosaur clade Theropoda.

Modern birds are divided into two superorders, the Paleognathae (mostly flightless birds like ostriches), and the wildly diverse Neognathae, containing all other birds. The list of birds gives a more detailed summary, including families.

Paleognathae:

Struthioniformes, Ostrich, emus, kiwis, and allies
Tinamiformes, tinamous

Neognathae:

Anseriformes, waterfowl
Galliformes, fowl
Gaviiformes, loons
Podicipediformes, grebes
Procellariiformes, albatrosses, petrels, and allies
Sphenisciformes, penguins
Pelecaniformes, pelicans and allies
Ciconiiformes, storks and allies
Phoenicopteriformes, flamingos
Accipitriformes, eagles, hawks and allies
Falconiformes, falcons
Turniciformes, button-quail
Gruiformes, cranes and allies
Charadriiformes, plovers and allies
Pteroclidiformes, sandgrouse
Columbiformes, doves and pigeons
Psittaciformes, parrots and allies
Cuculiformes, cuckoos, turacos, hoatzin
Strigiformes, owls
Caprimulgiformes, nightjars and allies
Apodiformes, swifts
Trochiliformes, hummingbirds
Coraciiformes, kingfishers
Piciformes, woodpeckers and allies
Trogoniformes, trogons
Coliiformes, mousebirds
Passeriformes, passerines

Note: This is the traditional classification (the so-called Clements order). Charadriiformes or Caprimulgiformes.

Extinct bird orders

A wide variety of bird groups became extinct during the Mesozoic era and left no modern descendants. These include the Order Archaeopterygiformes, Order Confuciusornithiformes, toothed seabirds like the Hesperornithiformes and Ichthyornithes, and the diverse Subclass Enantiornithes ("opposite birds").

For a complete listing of prehistoric bird groups, see Fossil birds.

Evolution

There is significant evidence that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, specifically, that birds are members of Maniraptora, a group of theropods which includes dromaeosaurs and oviraptorids, among others. As more non-avian theropods that are closely related to birds are discovered, the formerly clear distinction between non-birds and birds becomes less so. Recent discoveries in northeast China (Liaoning Province) demonstrating that many small theropod dinosaurs had feathers contribute to this ambiguity.

The basal bird Archaeopteryx, from the Jurassic, is well-known as one of the first "missing links" to be found in support of evolution in the late 19th century, though it is not considered a direct ancestor of modern birds. Other Mesozoic birds include the Enantiornithes, Yanornis, Ichthyornis, Gansus and the Hesperornithiformes, a group of flightless divers resembling grebes and loons.

The recently discovered dromaeosaur Cryptovolans was capable of powered flight, possessed a sternal keel and had ribs with uncinate processes. At any rate, it is fairly certain that avian flight existed in the mid-Jurassic and was "tried out" in several lineages and variants by the mid-Cretaceous.

Although ornithischian (bird-hipped) dinosaurs share the same hip structure as birds, birds actually originated from the saurischian (lizard-hipped) dinosaurs (if the dinosaurian origin theory is correct), and thus arrived at their hip structure condition independently. In fact, the bird-like hip structure also developed a third time among a peculiar group of theropods, the Therizinosauridae.

An alternate theory to the dinosaurian origin of birds, espoused by a few scientists (most notably Lary Martin and Alan Feduccia), states that birds (including maniraptoran "dinosaurs") evolved from early archosaurs like Longisquama, a theory which is contested by most other scientists in paleontology, and by experts in feather development and evolution such as R.O. The basal divergence from the remaining Neognathes was that of the Galloanseri, the superorder containing the Anseriformes (ducks, geese and swans), and the Galliformes (the pheasants, grouse, and their allies). See also: Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy.

Bird anatomy

Birds have a body plan that shows so many unusual adaptations (mostly aiding flight) that birds have earned their own unique class in the vertebrate phylum. Non-passerines typically have white eggs, except in some ground-nesting groups such as the Charadriiformes, sandgrouse and nightjars, where camouflage is necessary, and some parasitic cuckoos which have to match the passerine host's egg. The colour of individual eggs is genetically influenced, and appears to be inherited through the mother only, suggesting that the gene responsible for pigmentation is on the sex determining W chromosome (female birds are WZ, males ZZ).

The eggs are laid in a nest, which may be anything from a bare cliff ledge or ground scrape to elaboratey decorated structures such as those of the oropendolas. The most commonly eaten species is the domestic chicken and its eggs, although geese, pheasants, turkeys, and ducks are also widely eaten. Other birds that have been utilized for food include emus, ostriches, pigeons, grouse, quails, doves, woodcocks, songbirds, and others, including small passerines such as finches. Birds grown for human consumption are referred to as poultry.

At one time swans and flamingos were delicacies of the rich and powerful, although these are generally protected now.

Besides meat and eggs, birds provide other items useful to humans, including feathers for bedding and decoration, guano-derived phosphorus and nitrogen used in fertilizer and gunpowder, and the central ingredient of bird's nest soup.

Many species have become extinct through over-hunting, such as the Passenger Pigeon, and many others have become endangered or extinct through habitat destruction, deforestation and intensive agriculture being common causes for declines.

Numerous species have come to depend on human activities for food and are widespread to the point of being pests. In North America, introduced House Sparrows, European Starlings, and House Finches are similarly widespread.

Other birds have long been used by humans to perform tasks. Chickens and pigeons are popular as experimental subjects, and are often used in biology and comparative psychology research. parrots, and mynas) are often kept as pets although this practice has led to the illegal trafficking of some endangered species; CITES, an international agreement adopted in 1963, has considerably reduced trafficking in the bird species it protects.

Bird diseases that can be contracted by humans include psittacosis, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, Newcastle's disease, mycobacteriosis (avian tuberculosis), avian influenza, giardiasis, and cryptosporidiosis. Tubenoses can eject an unpleasant oil against an aggressor, and some species of pitohui, found in New Guinea, secrete a powerful neurotoxin in their skin and feathers.

The Latin word for bird is avis.

References

Additional topics

Company HistoryOil & Natural Gas - Support Industries

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