STRONG -- On Friday, workers at the J. D. Irving Limited sawmill left a parking lot that 15 years ago was filled with 75 employee vehicles and a fleet of trucks that delivered lumber across the United States and Canada.

The vehicles left behind clouds of dust, a bright green two-story sawmill and a dozen neat stacks of hardwood logs spread over three acres.

After lunch, a few of the remaining 36 employees stood outside the mill building, which has been a fixture of the town since 1972. The eight who will be able to keep their jobs will drive 45 minutes south to another Irving sawmill in Dixfield.

"Our human resources department advises that we have found jobs for eight people at Dixfield," spokeswoman Mary Keith confirmed Friday afternoon from the company's headquarters in St. John, New Brunswick.

A handful of employees spoke about the decline of the timber industry. Several said the plant was just a place to process wood that went to other countries.

"Most of the wood goes straight back to Canada," Robert Brooks said. "A lot of this stuff is just ground up into wood chips they glue together to make stuff in China and sell back to us."

He explained that one board of pulverized hardwood would produce four boards of MDF (multiple density fiberboard) material. This fiberboard has become an acceptable low-cost alternative for making home, office, and school furniture. Wood fibers are compressed and injected with a special glue and then painted or laminated.

Consumers buy plastic rather than wood products because of the cost savings, another employee suggested.

"When I first started working in this business, people were buying products made from steel and wood and things we produced here in the United States," Darren Friend said.

"Go to any store to buy a piece of plywood, and you'll see that it's made in Brazil," Friend added. "Logs are sold through brokers to the highest bidder, so they can send the wood somewhere where employers don't have to pay people anything."

Across the street, Richard Chandler watched the events as he tinkered on his red garden tractor in his front yard.

Chandler started the sawmill business, doing much of the construction himself. He later added two partners, Kenneth Ames and Gilbert Taylor. They called the business CAT Lumber.

"I built the place from the ground up, and we sawed just about everything people wanted to buy," Chandler said. "We could sell firewood, but I also had a truckload of 11,000 board feet going down every day to Boston for their big (Big Dig) tunnel project."

The mill operated two shifts and employed 75 people at that time. The owners sold the business to Begin Lumber in New Brunswick in 1994. Begin sold the operation to J. D. Irving Limited in 1999.

Irving has several sawmills in Canada and one in Dixfield and another in Ashland. Their mills process hardwood by first sawing the most valuable veneer material. The remainder of the log is sawed into different grades of hardwood, which can be used for flooring, pallets, and lower grade wood products.

At the other end of Strong's Main Street, Complete Hydraulics, Inc. also has had to adapt to the change in the wood industry's decline. They are a service center for manufacturers of hydraulic, lubrication, mechanical, tire and electrical equipment.

"We cater to automotive, industrial, construction, farming, railroad, mining, and shipping (companies)," general manager Dennis Blake said. "We just can't depend on the wood industry to keep our own business afloat."

Blake expressed sympathy for the displaced Irving workers and noted that his own cost of doing business also has changed dramatically.

"Ten years ago, the price of a 5-gallon pail of hydraulic fluid cost $18. Four years ago, it was $26, and two years ago, it cost $32," Blake said. "Today, it's $38."

The former mill workers lamented what they perceive as a casual attitude toward the health of the local economy and the widespread use of cheap fiberboard materials. "People just throw that stuff away," Brooks said. "But people in China will work for practically nothing, and how can we compete with that?"