Payson Mayor Recognizes Western Timber Frame’s SBA Manufacturing Award and New Facility
Key Takeaways:
- Payson Mayor Bill Wright visited Western Timber Frame’s 20,000 sq ft manufacturing facility following the
company’s recognition as SBA’s 2026 Utah Manufacturing Small Business of the Year - The facility was acquired through an SBA 504 loan with Mountain America Credit Union and Mountain
West Small Business Finance - Western Timber Frame has delivered 7,000+ custom timber structures to all 50 states from its Payson
shop floor - The visit highlighted CNC precision joinery, shop-applied finishing, and proprietary systems including the
patented Dovetail Difference, TimberVolt power posts, and EarthAnchor structural knife plates
When the Mayor Walks the Shop Floor
Shortly after the announcement, Payson Mayor Bill Wright walked through Western Timber Frame’s 20,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. It wasn’t a ribbon-cutting. It wasn’t a photo op. Western Timber Frame had just received the SBA manufacturing award for Utah’s 2026 Manufacturing Small Business of the Year — and Mayor Wright wanted to see, firsthand, what that looks like on a working shop floor.
The award was announced on April 17, 2026. The visit followed — a chance to put eyes on the facility, the team, and the manufacturing process that the SBA had evaluated from a distance.
There’s something worth noting about that sequence. The award tells you a company met criteria. A mayor walking the floor tells you the community is paying attention.
Why This Visit Matters
Three things converged to put Mayor Wright on that shop floor. The Award. The SBA’s Manufacturing Small Business of the Year isn’t a popularity contest. The Small Business Administration evaluates growth trajectory, community impact, and business resilience.
When they named Western Timber Frame the 2026 Utah winner, they were recognizing a 16-year arc — from Hyrum Thompson’s first structures in 2009 to a company that has delivered 7,000+ custom timber pergolas, pavilions, and gazebos to clients in all 50 states.
The Facility. The 20,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Payson didn’t happen through conventional financing. Western Timber Frame™ acquired it through an SBA 504 loan with Mountain America Credit Union and Mountain West Small Business Finance. Before that, the company was leasing.
Hyrum Thompson put it plainly: the SBA loan “truly is what made it possible to do this, because you didn’t have to put down as much to make it happen.” The company evaluated three different banks before going all in with Mountain America. “They painted a picture for us of what it would look like,” Hyrum said. “They were phenomenal throughout the entire process, even weathering the government shutdown, keeping us up to date with what happened.”
He also credited Jason White at the SBA office: “He was phenomenal as well. They worked hand in hand to help us know what our best options would be.”
The Manufacturing Story. This is heavy timber manufacturing in Utah — not outsourced overseas, not automated to the point of invisibility. What happens inside that facility is precision CNC cutting of compound-angle joinery, hand-fit assembly, and a finishing process that sends every structure out the door stained, sealed, and ready.
The counterintuitive part: a 20,000 sq ft shop in a town of about 21,000 people ships custom-designed timber structures to Park City, Scottsdale, Maui, and everywhere in between. You don’t need a coastal address to build at a national scale. You need the right process, the right team, and — as it turns out — the right SBA loan.
What the Mayor Saw
A manufacturing tour can be about machines. This one was about decisions. Every station Mayor Wright visited represented a choice Western Timber Frame made so the client wouldn’t have to.
CNC precision cutting. Compound-angle dovetail joinery — the patented Dovetail Difference technology (US Patent No. 9,797,149 B2) — gets cut on CNC equipment to tolerances that hand-cutting can’t replicate consistently at volume. Each joint is engineered to allow controlled micro-movement as wood responds to seasonal humidity changes, without degrading the connection. It’s the kind of detail you’d never notice in a
finished structure, which is exactly the point.
Shop-applied finish. Every structure leaves the facility with two backrolled coats of Sherwin-Williams stain. Not one coat, not a spray-and-ship job — two coats, backrolled, applied in a controlled shop environment before the structure goes on a truck. The client’s structure arrives ready to assemble, not ready to sand. EarthAnchor Structural Knife Plates. Custom-fabricated aluminum connection hardware — not brackets from a retail shelf. These are proprietary structural knife plates designed for the loads and spans of heavy timber construction.
TimberVolt Power Post System. Electrical wiring routed inside the timber posts themselves, so clients can add lighting, fans, or outlets to their structure without exposed conduit or surface-mounted wiring. It’s one of those features that sounds minor until you imagine the alternative.
Completed structures staged for freight. Pergolas, pavilions, and gazebos — each one custom-designed for a specific client, a specific property, a specific set of needs — staged on the shop floor and ready to ship anywhere in the country.
Mayor Wright’s response was direct: “We’re excited to see this family owned business that will add excellence to our city.”
What This Means for Payson
It’s easy to talk about small business in the abstract. The reality is more specific than that. Western Timber Frame™ is a manufacturing employer in Payson. That means jobs that stay in the community — positions on a shop floor, not remote roles that could relocate to any zip code. It means a tax base contribution tied to a physical facility and physical production. And it means structures shipping from a Payson address to destinations in all 50 states, which is a form of economic export that doesn’t always get counted in the usual metrics.
There’s also the growth question. The facility is new to Western Timber Frame — a permanent home after years of leasing elsewhere. Hyrum sees it as a long-term commitment. “We can probably utilize it for the next 5 to 10 years, as is,” he said. But the trajectory is clear: “We’re going to grow. We have to grow. But we want to bring the people the best quality businesses that we can possibly bring here.”
That last line is worth sitting with. He didn’t say “we want to get bigger.” He said he wants to bring quality to the city. For a company that started by building structures for backyards, that instinct — right-sizing growth to match values rather than just scaling for scale’s sake — runs all the way through.
The Bigger Picture
The thing about the SBA’s Manufacturing Small Business of the Year award is that it doesn’t go to the biggest manufacturer. It goes to a company that demonstrates what small manufacturing can look like when the conditions are right — the right loan structure, the right banking partner, the right community, and a product people actually want.
Western Timber Frame’s SBA journey is really a story about infrastructure becoming permanent. Before the 504 loan, the company was leasing. “We decided we knew we wanted to be able to own it and be able to fix the place up and make it us,” Hyrum said. The SBA loan and Mountain America didn’t just provide financing — they provided the stability that let the company invest in itself.
“The long process with SBA and with Mountain America was a game changer because it really made us understand us,” Hyrum reflected. “Never could have done it without them. And I’ve been super grateful to them and how much we learned from them and how much we got out of them.”
What’s Next
The SBA recognition opens a new chapter. Media coverage from the Salt Lake Business Journal, led by Rebecca Olds, is bringing the manufacturing story to a broader business audience. Desert Focus Productions produced a professional video feature — “Building More Than Structures | Western Timber Frame SBA Journey” — released April 21, 2026, that captures the arc from founding to recognition.
[VIDEO EMBED: https://youtu.be/gl6bDALYAwA]
And then there’s the line from Hyrum that stays with you. Asked about the award, he said: “I think as a company, this is the biggest award that we’ve ever won. So it’s humbling. And we have a lot of gratitude, a lot of credit to Mountain America for their part, and helping us work through it to get to this point.” Then he redirected: “And I give all credit to our team. Our team is what’s made this happen so that we could do it.”
A company that deflects credit to its team. A mayor who shows up to see the work. An SBA loan that turned a leased space into a permanent home. If there’s a theme running through all of it, maybe it’s this: the best investments aren’t always the ones you travel to find. Sometimes they’re already in your city, building something worth recognizing.
Western Timber Frame has been designing and building custom timber pergolas, pavilions, and outdoor structures for 16+ years from our shop in Payson, Utah. To learn more about our facility and process, visit our About page or schedule a design consultation.
