84 Lumber is a nationwide lumber company and distributor of building products that works with contractors and builders every day. Across hundreds of job sites and thousands of deliveries, their ability to build reliable partnerships with contractors depends on one thing: knowing exactly what was delivered, where, and when.
For years, that information lived on digital cameras, desktop computers, and end-of-week upload schedules. By the time anyone could access it, the moment had usually passed.
The Problem: A Process That Couldn’t Keep Up
Before CompanyCam, 84 Lumber had already made photo documentation a standard part of their delivery process. The execution, however, was anything but streamlined. Deliveries were photographed with digital cameras that had to be physically brought back to the main office. Photos were uploaded to a desktop at the end of the week, then manually organized.
“It was a real big pain,” said Adam Kettelhake, sales coordinator at 84 Lumber’s Lincoln, Nebraska location. “Since we got CompanyCam, things have been going a lot better.”
By the time a photo was accessible, days had passed. For a business where delivery documentation is the backbone of contractor relationships, a week-old photo isn’t much of a safety net.
One Wrong Address, One Angry Sub
It took a single dispute for Shawn Berry, replacement windows salesman at 84 Lumber, to understand what CompanyCam made possible.
A wrong address triggered a domino effect: missed deliveries, missing materials, and a subcontractor who wasn’t interested in hearing explanations. Shawn went back into CompanyCam, pulled up the delivery record, and found exactly what had happened. The subcontractor had provided the incorrect address. The materials had been delivered to a house down the street. The documentation settled it immediately.
“One of our missions and goals at 84 Lumber is to build a partnership with contractors,” said Berry. “An integral part of that has been CompanyCam, which helps to grow and solve problems on the fly.”
Without a timestamped photo record tied to that delivery, the dispute would have had no clean resolution. With it, there was nothing to argue.
Finding Any Photo in Seconds
Beyond dispute resolution, the day-to-day value of CompanyCam at 84 Lumber comes down to search. Before, finding a specific delivery photo meant knowing which camera it was on, which upload batch it landed in, and which folder someone had sorted it into — assuming it was sorted at all.
Now, Kettelhake types a word into the search bar and finds what he needs immediately.
“I use CompanyCam every day. My favorite feature is being able to type in pretty much any word in the search bar and find what I’m looking for. It’s really easy to track.”
For Berry, the value is in the complete delivery history tied to each address. “My favorite feature of CompanyCam is the job site tracking. You can pull up an address and see the seven or eight different deliveries that have been made over the course of a few months. You can track exactly when those deliveries were made and pair them with the invoice and know what’s going on on your job sites.”
That kind of job site visibility — every delivery, every date, every photo, tied to a single address — is what turns a photo library into an operational record.
How CompanyCam Helps Run 84 Lumber’s Operation
With CompanyCam in place, delivery documentation that once required cameras, cables, and end-of-week uploads now happens instantly. Photos are accessible the moment they’re taken, searchable from any device, and tied directly to the job site and invoice they belong to.
“It really does streamline a lot of things that used to take a lot of time out of the day-to-day operations,” said Berry. “Something that would take five to ten minutes takes seconds.”
For a business interacting with contractors daily, the speed matters as much as the record. When a contractor calls with a question about a delivery, 84 Lumber has the photo documentation ready before the conversation is over.
The Case for CompanyCam
84 Lumber’s partnership with contractors is built on reliability. CompanyCam makes that reliability visible — every delivery documented, every dispute resolvable, every photo accessible in seconds from anywhere.
“An app like CompanyCam has really helped us,” said Kettelhake. “We have access to those pictures immediately when needed.”
For a nationwide distributor managing deliveries across hundreds of job sites, immediately is the only timeline that works.
