There also was not a shortage of toilet tissue, but there was.
During the 80's here the USDA's "Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) paid landowners to plant Pine trees. Now we have thousands of acres of mature harvestable trees so there is a log glut. Landowners are being paid virtually nothing for their harvest so one would think that the lumber prices would follow.
I have no answers, only questions which is why I said above that we the lumber buying public were being held hostage.
On the flip side, I as a part time portable sawmill operator am benefiting because landowners with logs that they can not sell are having them sawn into their usable lumber. Now at 77+ years old, I am too flipping old to still be doing this sort of thing.