When shopping at all of the Home Depot stores in Palm Beach County netted us zero pine boards, something was wrong.  I contacted Ben Hill (Home Depot's 1-800 customer service number) which resulted in a phone call from Home Depot's lumber buyer, Steve Conwell, a letter from Bruce Berg, Home Depot's President, southeast division, and a phone call to Home Depot's lumber supplier Ted Ellis, Vice President at Idaho Timber.  Obviously I hit a nerve.  I had accused Home Depot of deliberately sending below grade lumber to their stores in Palm Beach County.  On several occasions I watched employees put lumber into the racks and it had the appearance of old, dirty lumber.  A meeting with lumber buyer Steve Conwell at store #225 in West Palm Beach confirmed there was a "problem" with the lumber.
  There was a lot of problems getting this Thomas Grade lumber to me during the 2½ years this program was in existence.  A lot of lumber was off grade due to milling imperfections, high moisture content, and sometimes our lumber just disappeared in transit from Idaho to Florida.  This led to many phone calls to Home Depot and Idaho Timber, which eventually gave us full knowledge of Home Depot's lumber operation.  We learned that Home Depot does in fact separate their lumber and assigns different numbers and names to direct the shipments to certain stores across the United States.  For example a #2 Ponderosa Pine board is separated according to quality into 1 of 4 bins at Idaho Timber's Mill. (I was told by an employee that it was now up to 10 bins).  Idaho Timber called their best #2 pine "metro" and that went to high competitive market areas and Atlanta.  The other lumber was shipped across the United States accordingly.  Along with Florida, they called New Mexico and Texas their dumping grounds for bad lumber.