Yella Wood / Great Southern Wood Preserving
reviews & complaints

9 year old deck is starting to rot. Even stringer is going bad. I Used a high end stain to protect the deck.

I have similar problem with Yella wood at our lake house deck. I have patched every year as boards went bad. It has got to be a safety issue and have to inspect on a regular basis. I have heard other people talk about poor performance of Yella Wood treated lumber.

Our deck is rotting out. After one year we complained about the wood seeping sap but Scott Shepherd said that it was normal. We went ahead and stained the deck per instructions. Now two years later, the deck is rotten, split and warped. Scott came out again after several months of trying to get a response and agreed that the wood is bad and would take care of the deck. After months of delays and deflection, we are nowhere. We were told that he had contacted the contractor, but that was not true. We called the contractor and both Scott and a rep from F&S came to inspect the deck again. We are all in agreement that the wood is defective, but now there is no response from Scott either to us or F&S. It looks like the only thing we can do now is seek legal advice.

I built my fence with Yella Wood brand lumber 13 years ago and already it had rotted through and fallen over.
I used 4×6 posts for strength and longevity but bought a headache and sorrow instead.
I am currently replacing/ rebuilding the fence at a great cost of labor and money. At that time I paid about 1200 dollars for materials and 1200 for labor. My total cast was approximately 2, 400 dollars.
I'm saving the rotted timbers for chemical analysis and the YELLAWOOD tags I find hidden within the cement at the bottom of the posts.

My deckman told me he'd use the best wood for my new deck. The tag on the wood said "End use: Above Ground" and that's where it is. It has 39 boards on top and two years later, one (of the 39) warped at the most conspicuous place. I wasn't too concerned as I thought it was the best product on the market. I called their offices in Abbeville, Alabama, and got shuffled around. A lady finally came on told me there was no warranty for warping.

I am at a loss as to what the warranty does cover — disappearance! I did not expect them to send someone out to redo my deck, but you would think they could send me a coupon for one board. The lady was unconcerned.

Do not pay extra for this wood. We built a deck and asked our contractor to use YellaWood thinking it would be better than standard lumber. The supplier hand picked the boards. Not even a month later our wood was weeping sap, cupping and when you walked across it in bare feet it hurt. This deck was worse than the 20+ year old deck we removed. We had a small gap between boards that shrunk up to 1" apart. We had the building materials supplier come and check out our deck. Just so happened a YellaWood rep was coming down soon. The rep came out a took a board back to their lab. To make a long short YellaWood doesn't cover this in their warranty so we paid more for substandard wood. And, to top it off the YellaWood rep said he had seen worse. So if you still think that kiln dried wood is the way to go I don't recommend it as they do not stand behind their product and apparently don't care. If you'd like to see pictures PM me.