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1921–PRESENT · THE TOWNSHIP NETWORKS AT FULL DOMESTIC SIZE; ABROAD, NONE
Distribution is an export trade where the network itself is the product that travels, so the township networks are counted here at their full size before their borders are drawn. Big C Lumber’s yard network is the largest: from the 1921 founding (Hass & Bales, North Liberty; the Westville yard first) and the roughly ten yards that followed quickly — Roseland, Indiana, and Three Oaks, Michigan, among the yards still held — the company’s own about page counts fifteen retail lumberyards: the originals plus nine other Indiana locations (Granger, Mishawaka, Elkhart, Cromwell, LaPorte, Shipshewana, Kendallville, Auburn, Fort Wayne), four other Michigan locations (Eau Claire, Schoolcraft, Coloma, Adrian), and the first Ohio yard at Edgerton (February 2012) — while a 2023 trade profile counts sixteen retail locations and three manufacturing facilities, and the banked businesses leg, on the Retail Review account, prints sixteen locations at the Delton, Michigan acquisition. The counts conflict by one yard between the company’s own page and the trade account; both print, unreconciled. Headquarters and the contractor-and-corporate-sales hub sit at Granger (50860 Princess Way), with the Granger millwork shop making the hub a small manufacturer as well as a distributor. Drive and Shine’s wash network: twenty-plus locations across Indiana, Michigan and (on the company’s current listing) Ohio, run from 16915 Cleveland Road, Granger — Fort Wayne entered in 2024 with three groundbreakings, Stevensville, Michigan, opened in November 2025, a Grand Rapids (Alpine Township) site in development on the township’s own project narrative, which gives the applicant’s address as the Granger headquarters. The grocery succession is distribution arriving rather than departing: Martin’s Super Markets, founded in South Bend in 1947, passed to SpartanNash (sale closed 31 December 2018) and then to C&S Wholesale Grocers (acquisition completed 22 September 2025) — a wholesale-distribution chain whose ownership now sits in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, supplying two Granger supermarkets from outside; the direction of that trade is inbound, and it is printed as inbound.
Where the networks stop is the export question, and it has one answer for all three: the northern border. Every location in every network above is inside the United States — Indiana, Michigan and Ohio exhaust the map. The searches run for a foreign warehouse, dealer, franchise or yard: the companies’ own location lists and histories read whole; the trade-press acquisition record for Big C (its Michigan purchases are of Michigan family yards); Drive and Shine’s own FAQ (no franchising, at home or abroad); and the general trade record for any Canadian establishment under any of the three names. None returned one. One honest qualification: Big C’s Michigan yards sit within a short drive of the border and undoubtedly sell to the occasional Canadian customer who crosses it, as every borderlands retailer does — but a cross-border customer is not a distribution network abroad, and the record names no Canadian dealer, warehouse or yard for any Granger firm. Distribution as an export trade, for this ground, is counted at its true size: three-state, and no farther.
Sources: Big C Lumber, “About Us / Our History” and locations pages (the fifteen-yard count and its geography; the 1921 founding and first yards); Tri-City Record, 2 November 2023 (sixteen retail locations, three manufacturing facilities — the conflict with the company count printed whole); the banked businesses leg (the Retail Review Delton account; the Granger hub and millwork shop); Drive and Shine company publications and the July 2024 Fort Wayne groundbreaking release (footprint over twenty, Indiana and Michigan), Moody on the Market, 24 November 2025 (Stevensville opening), and Alpine Township project narrative (Granger headquarters address); the banked businesses leg for the Martin’s–SpartanNash–C&S succession dates.