MISSION STATEMENT

Ivan Malnar started Rapid River Rustic in 1970 on his parents hay field/cedar swamp. This is where where he had built his first home and started collecting cedar posts and railing cedar as a fence manufacturing company.


he would harvest himself in his densely populated Cedar trees on the property. His dad Matt Malnar help would cut down the small trees by hand drag them out of the woods w horses like he did since was as a boy. Hand peel those logs with drawknives and dowel the end of the rails with a tendon maker. Then travel to farms across the Midwest selling these materials to farmers and ranchers.

Over the years years, Ivan and his wife Jodi assembled a couple sawmills and a skilled work force to manufacture log home parts using the same Northern white Cedar. He then built a Model log home on Hwy 2 in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Advertise that model home in every log home magazine in the country. Ivan then developed a sales team along w a strong builder/dealer net work that covered the whole Midwest and beyond. Design, manufacted and shipped these log homes across the country to most of the lower 48 states including Hawaii. Averaging 30 homes a year while employing near 40 workers.
After the ‘08-‘09 housing market crash, the company was handed down to his son Ben Malnar who worked as a sales agent for the company. Ben starting focusing on maintaining and refurbishing the existing log homes they have delivered over the years along the manufacturing the same log home parts his dad did.

Now Rapid river Rustic satisfies both the new and old log home markets.

We do not manufacture as many homes as we once did in the past. However we are rekindling the relationship of our past customers or 2nd hand log home owners by giving them the best maintenance service to these older homes to make them like new.