Kruse Lumber was founded in 1915 by Henry Johannes(H. J.) Kruse and originally was called Kruse Lumber and Coal. Henry and his wife had visited Rochester the prior year from their home in Iowa on visits to the Mayo facility and felt the area was, as Mrs. Kruse said, "an attractive place in comparison to almost any other".   H. J. felt, on a simple premise, was that if our service and products offered were a fair deal to the customer, that he could succeed. 

One of his first homes he sold in the spring of 1916, less plaster, cement and hardware, was for $525.00.  In the next nine days, he sold a total of ten new houses.  As he would say, "the jamb was broken".  H. J. took Kruse through the great depression and to the middle of WWII.

Feeling the company was needing direction from younger and stronger men, he sold the company to Joe Gores, Ed Daleiden and Oscar Allerton. 

These gentlemen carried on H. J.'s vision of offering fair deals to the customer when they then sold their shares in 1963 to Harold Hodge and Harold Payne.  That partnership continued until 1983 when the two Harold's split the company, with Harold Hodge taking over and ultimately his son Brian, with which the company is now owned within the Hodge family. 

Kruse Lumber has been involved through the many years in land development, new home construction, remodeling and manufacturing.  Today, Kruse Lumber, as Rochester's largest and oldest independent building materials supplier, best serves these markets by providing quality building materials to building contractors, remodelors and the home improvement market.  We belong to LMC, a national buying group, that purchases over 2 billion dollars from lumber mills and manufacturers.  This purchasing power provides us with very competitive pricing.  Or as H. J. would say, "a fair deal".        

We are very proud that we have an average staff tenure of over 15 years, which provides us with the knowledge and expertise to help you, our customer, with most any building project.  With this experience and our long history, our customers can be assured that Kruse Lumber will be here long after the sale.