Truls and Mads traded in lumber and planks in Halden, a small port town in Norway, situated at the estuary of the river Glomma. The way this worked was that lumber and planks were transported downriver to Halden from the great inland forests. Merchants like Truls and Mads would then buy these products, and make a profit by exporting this to the rest of Europe.
Landowners could either dump lumber directly into the river, and have it float down to Halden, or they could produce planks, put the planks on barges, and have the planks delivered to the merchants. By far the cheapest mode of transportation was to float lumber. But customers in Europe demanded planks.
There was a great premium to be made by processing lumber before export. Landowners were therefore encouraged to produced planks. Everywhere along the river, there were small sawmills, powered by local creeks. These were primitive little things, with a single blade, all put together by local craftsmen using local materials.
The production of planks was inefficient, and the transportation cost was high. Yet the demand for plans was such that it nevertheless made sense. It was at the time the best arrangement possible. But that all changed when Truls and Mads came up with an idea of their own. Halden has a low and wide waterfall, and the two men could not help thinking it possible to have a sawmill powered by it. If so, they could produce planks themselves. They could buy cheap lumber and sell it with great profits as planks.
The problem with their idea was that the waterfall was way too powerful. Any sawmill would have to be put at a safe distance from the waterfall. A ditch would have to be cut to siphon off some water, and the net result would be a timid little production of a few planks. The profits from such an enterprise would be meager at best. However, the idea was so compelling that they decided to study it in more details.
The more they looked into it, the more awestruck they were by the sheer power of the waterfall. It was thousands of times more powerful than any creek. If they could only find a way to harness this energy, they could set up hundreds of blades, cutting more lumber into planks in a day than all the upstream sawmills did in weeks.
The two men gathered pamphlets and magazines from their German trading partners. They were particularly interested in the latest and greatest in saw and energy technology. Soon, it became clear that a giant sawmill might be possible, provided it was made in stone and brick, and powered with steal turbines rather than wheels of wood.
Finally, they made their big move. They bought the waterfall, and contracted German engineers to build their sawmill. In parallel, they talked to landowners upstream, asking them for lumber rather than planks. By offering a better price for lumber than any of their competitors, they cornered the market. They also put a halt to the upstream sawmills, because the higher price for lumber made cutting and transporting planks unprofitable.
The sawmill in Halden was nothing short of a revolution. Landowners were suddenly making more money at greatly reduced effort, and the merchants in Europe got cheaper planks from Truls and Mads than they could get anywhere else. European trade in planks was suddenly dominated by the father and son team. They become immensely rich.
It should be noted that their success was not due to any great physical effort on their side. Rather, it was all due to their understanding of natural forces, engineering, and the mechanisms of trade and commerce. They positioned themselves perfectly. Then, they acted out their plan in a manner that defines true Tao masters.
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