Millcraft drivers like Michael Smith deliver MagLiteracy magazines to area communities with literacy needs.
Nearly 2 million children across the United States are reading magazines from MagLiteracy thanks in part to a monumental offering of delivery services by Cleveland-based Millcraft, one of the nation’s largest independently owned distributors of paper, packaging, graphic arts and industrial solutions.
The company serves customers throughout the Midwest and beyond while maintaining a strong commitment to community engagement, education, sustainability and the industries that depend on print and paper-based communications.
A longstanding supporter of literacy and education initiatives, Millcraft helps MagLiteracy ensure that these educational magazines reach schools, libraries, food banks, summer reading programs and community organizations throughout the region.
“Millcraft’s fleet and regional network help move vital magazine supplies across Ohio and beyond, connecting children and families with the power of reading,” said MagLiteracy Executive Director John Mennell.
This summer, Millcraft played a key role in accomplishing MagLiteracy’s single largest distribution initiative in the organization’s history by mapping magazine deliveries to the company’s delivery routes to serve children and families in the high needs community along the way.
“The summer distributions — with the help of Millcraft, student interns from Denison University and Christian Appalachian Project, delivered 60 pallets of magazines to more than 1,500 community partners in 13 Appalachian states — will place high-quality reading materials into the hands and homes of more than 1.4 million readers, based on our estimate that each magazine is read by two to three people,” Mennell said.
As part of that effort, Millcraft distributed 20 pallets of magazines to literacy and community partners in Lexington, Kentucky; Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Cleveland, and Southern Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Madison, Wisconsin; and more.
One of those partners is Cleveland Kids’ Food Bank, which fosters literacy and a love of reading by distributing free books to children in collaboration with community partners including the Cleveland Metro School District as well as other schools, daycare centers, doctor’s offices, rec centers, churches, food pantries, libraries and many other social service organizations.
“Millcraft is so helpful and friendly!” said Colleen Watt, operations director at Cleveland Kids’ Book Bank. “They’re super nice and communicative.”
We know that ultimately Millcraft has our back. — John Mennell, Executive Director, MagLiteracy
“They ended up delivering pallets to places not directly on their routes, which is really going above and beyond in terms of this vital partnership,” Mennell said. “Also remarkable is that Millcraft has expanded into Wisconsin and has delivered two pallets to our Madison team for food pantries and schools there.”
“Millcraft is proud to partner with MagLiteracy because this initiative brings together so much of what matters to us as a company: supporting literacy, strengthening the communities we serve and using our expertise to make a meaningful difference,” said Greg Lovensheimer, Millcraft president. “Our employees across the region understand logistics and what it takes to get materials where they need to go, and they’ve embraced the opportunity to put that knowledge to work helping MagLiteracy reach children, families, teachers, schools and community organizations.”
We’ve always believed that being part of a community means more than simply doing business there. It means finding ways to contribute, give back and help create opportunities for the people who call those communities home. — Greg Lovensheimer, President, Millcraft
“We’re incredibly proud to play a role in helping MagLiteracy expand its reach and put valuable reading materials into more hands,” Lovensheimer said.
The Millcraft partnership was initiated by Chuck Gherman on the MagLiteracy board and his wife Rhonda, who are retired after running a multigenerational print shop in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and serving in leadership positions at tri-state printing industry associations.
“Millcraft has committed to being deep, long-term logistics partners,” Mennell said, “not only across and beyond their footprint that spans from Kentucky to Wisconsin — a key region for our Ohio and Wisconsin teams — but also as that most critical first example for our entire print magazine supply chain campaign, where we need to engage every person in every sector, from the mail room to the boardroom, in order to get to our next level of sustainable literacy service.”
Millcraft’s support started in 2024, when Owens Corning offered temporary warehouse space after MagLiteracy received 131 pallets of magazines — 90 pallets from across the entire Highlights for Children archive, including 30 pallets (300,000 copies) of their Internet Awesome issue — and 41 pallets of National Geographic.
In an extraordinarily generous distribution effort, Millcraft started bringing magazines between October 2024 and April 2026 from the Owens Corning warehouse in Heath to MagLiteracy’s magazine literacy bank in Johnstown.
“Receiving that very large supply of magazines ultimately allowed us to grow into supermarket-size food pantries and other large distribution locations, establish a local team for Zanesville and surrounding counties, and make the summer push possible,” Mennell said.
“Millcraft’s involvement with MagLiteracy helps underscore a mission-critical supply chain goal to engage not just the magazine publishing industry,” Mennell said, “but the entire print magazine supply chain to join together to promote and to grow our special print magazine literacy mission, because we know that print magazines have literacy superpowers.”
Joan Slattery Wall, a MagLiteracy volunteer, is a local writer and editor with more than 35 years of experience in journalism and higher education communications. She currently works at The Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs.