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Vol. 45, No. 4
(Founded in 1972—Our 523rd Consecutive Issue)
F E AT U R E S
April 2016 A Hatton-Brown Publication
Phone: 334-834-1170 Fax: 334-834-4525 www.southernloggintimes.com
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Greg King Logging Says Size Matters
Kason Lott Logging Son Steps Up
Co-Publisher Co-Publisher Chief Operating Officer Executive Editor Editor-in-Chief Western Editor Managing Editor Associate Editor Associate Editor Art Director Ad Production Coordinator Circulation Director Marketing/Media
David H. Ramsey David (DK) Knight Dianne C. Sullivan David (DK) Knight Rich Donnell Dan Shell David Abbott Jessica Johnson Jay Donnell Cindy Segrest Patti Campbell Rhonda Thomas Jordan Anderson
ADVERTISING CONTACTS DISPLAY SALES Eastern U.S. Kathy Sternenberg Tel: 251-928-4962 • Fax: 334-834-4525 219 Royal Lane Fairhope, AL 36532 E-mail: ksternenberg@bellsouth.net Midwest USA, Eastern Canada
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Carter Bros. Logging Family Overcomes Tragedy
out front: When Leonard Kirkland, left, learned he had cancer, his son Jason, right, knew he had to do whatever it took to get his dad the care he needed. The father and son team have worked together for 20 years, and the company today is stronger than ever. Story begins on Page 8. (David Abbott photo)
Drax Biomass Major Pellet Producer
D E PA RT M E N T S Southern Stumpin’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Big John Trailers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Bulletin Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Industry News Roundup . . . . . . . . . . 48 At The Margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Safety Focus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Machines-Supplies-Technology. . . . . 66 IronWorks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Coming Events/Ad Index . . . . . . . . . . 78
John Simmons Tel: 905-666-0258 • Fax: 905-666-0778 32 Foster Cres. Whitby, Ontario, Canada L1R 1W1 E-mail: jsimmons@idirect.com Western Canada, Western USA Tim Shaddick Tel: 604-910-1826 • Fax: 604-264-1367 4056 West 10th Ave. Vancouver, BC V6L 1Z1 E-mail: tootall1@shaw.ca International Murray Brett Tel: +34 96 640 4165 Fax: +34 96 640 4022 Aldea de las Cuevas 66 Buzon 60 • 03759 Benidoleig (Alicante), Spain E-mail: murray.brett@abasol.net CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING
Bridget DeVane
Tel: 1-800-669-5613 • Tel 334-699-7837 Email: bdevane7@hotmail.com
Southern Loggin’ Times (ISSN 0744-2106) is published monthly by Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc., 225 Hanrick St., Montgomery, AL 36104. Subscription Information—SLT is sent free to logging, pulpwood and chipping contractors and their supervisors; managers and supervisors of corporate-owned harvesting operations; wood suppliers; timber buyers; wood procurement and land management officials; industrial forestry purchasing agents; wholesale and retail forest equipment representatives and forest/logging association personnel in the U.S. South. See form elsewhere in this issue. All nonqualified U.S. subscriptions are $65 annually; $75 in Canada; $120 (Airmail) in all other countries (U.S. funds). Single copies, $5 each; special issues, $20 (U.S. funds). Subscription Inquiries—TOLLFREE 800-669-5613; Fax 888-611-4525. Go to www.southernloggintimes.com and click on the subscribe button to subscribe/renew via the web. All advertisements for Southern Loggin’ Times magazine are accepted and published by Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. with the understanding that the advertiser and/or advertising agency are authorized to publish the entire contents and subject matter thereof. The advertiser and/or advertising agency will defend, indemnify and hold Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. harmless from and against any loss, expenses, or other liability resulting from any claims or lawsuits for libel violations or right of privacy or publicity, plagiarism, copyright or trademark infringement and any other claims or lawsuits that may arise out of publication of such advertisement. Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. neither endorses nor makes any representation or guarantee as to the quality of goods and services advertised in Southern Loggin’ Times. Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. reserves the right to reject any advertisement which it deems inappropriate. Copyright ® 2016. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Periodicals postage paid at Montgomery, Ala. and at additional mailing offices. Printed In USA.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:Southern Loggin’ Times, P.O. Box 2419, Montgomery, AL 36102-2419 Member Verified Audit Circulation
Other Hatton-Brown publications: ★ Timber Processing ★ Timber Harvesting ★Panel World ★ Power Equipment Trade ★ Wood Bioenergy
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SOUTHERN STUMPIN’ By David Abbott • Managing Editor • Ph. 334-834-1170 • Fax: 334-834-4525 • E-mail: david@hattonbrown.com
Change Of Plans ne of the most important things a logger needs is a good woman to put up with you.” That’s according to Mitchell Carter, whose story begins on page 28 this issue. Marriage is hard, and running a small business as stressful and time-consuming as logging adds extra difficulty. Yet, some couples figure out how to integrate their marriage and business in such a way as to strengthen both. Well that’s the intro I had written to what I had planned to write about this month. I’ll let you in on a secret: I’ve never felt qualified to write this column. Like I tell my friend Tommy, who thinks I should write a blog—who cares what I think about anything? What do I know? I never feel like I have anything to say worth saying that hasn’t been said before, and better. So every month I dread trying to come up with a worthwhile topic to fill this page. I always find something. Sometimes it’s planned and researched in advance. Sometimes I pull it out of thin air at the last minute (if you read it regularly you can probably tell that). This month it was planned. I had contacted several logging power couples to get their thoughts on successful marriages merged with successful logging businesses. That’s what I thought I was going to write this month, what I started writing, and what I will write soon—if not next month then perhaps the month after. But even as I started writing it, I had this nagging sense that maybe there was something else. That’s the trick about writing, for me at least; sometimes you don’t know for sure what you’re writing about until you’ve written it. Quite unintentionally, we have something of a theme this month. Three of our four logging features have a common factor. In one, a father lost his son; in another, a son lost his father; in a third, another son takes the lead while his father battles cancer. In a further coincidence we have two Safety Focus pages this month—both involve a fatality. So as I was proofreading these stories, I started thinking about all the people I know who have lost a parent in the last two years, particularly to cancer. I thought about my good friends Brandy, who lost her father to esophageal cancer in 2014, and Shannon, whose dad died from liver cancer just a few months ago. A classmate with whom I graduated high school, Elizabeth, lost her husband to cancer last spring, leaving behind two young sons. And literally while I was writing this, my grade school playmate and high school football teammate, Billy, lost his father to cancer. In all four cases, the families knew it was coming months or years in advance. They watched someone precious to them die slowly. In other cases, death comes unexpectedly. Last April, my very dear friend Alena, who was only 42
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and healthy as far as anyone knew, just didn’t wake up one morning. Bad heart, I guess. She left behind a son who was barely out of high school. Then there was my Uncle Mark, who had just retired and was looking forward to travel plans with his grandkids and restoring the classic Corvette he’d just bought—but he died in his sleep just a few days before Christmas. His mother never expected to outlive her children.
The Hardest Thing When I was young, I think I feared dying before I could make my mark on the world—to do something significant that would be remembered after I was gone. It was later that I gained the maturity to understand that the only truly significant things I could accomplish, of real lasting value, would be not one big thing but lots of small things that only a few would ever know or remember. I’m talking, of course, about raising my kids. With kids, perspective changes. My new fear was leaving them to grow up without a dad, like my dad had to do. Worse, though, would be losing them. Losing a parent must be really hard. Losing a child? That’s the worst thing I can imagine. So when Alena and my Uncle Mark died last year, I was sad for their kids, but I was sadder for their mothers who survived them. They watched them come into the world and leave it. You should be there for one of those events—the beginning or the end—but not both. It’s a reversal of the natural order. Children are, eventually, supposed to bury their parents, not the other way around.
No Words So when I stop and think about it, I actually know quite a few people who lost a child or parent before their time. My dad lost his father when he was just 10 years old. My ex-wife’s brother was killed in a freak accident with a BB gun, of all things, when he was just 11. That’s why my older son is named after his uncle he never met. I have too many other examples to list here. I always sincerely wish I could find the right words to offer as comfort. That’s supposed to be what I do—words. But I can’t. I have nothing. I can’t insult these people by pretending that I understand what they’re going through. I don’t. Mercifully, my own personal immediate circle has thus far remained untouched by such tragedies (knock on wood). So—as with this column—I always feel unqualified to say anything. What do I know?
A Happier Note My good friend Casey learned recently that her sister-in-law Amber has leukemia. She’s only
29 and has a three-year-old son. Amber is evidently the world’s biggest Brodie Croyle fan. Just after the diagnosis, Casey learned that the former Alabama quarterback would be speaking at a church in Montgomery. She rushed down from Birmingham hoping she could get Croyle to sign an autograph or even Skype with Amber as a surprise to lift her spirits…but he left before she could talk to him. Because of her efforts, however, the church gave her the information so that Casey’s mother could contact Croyle’s agent; within minutes of her email asking for just a phone call, Brodie offered to come visit Amber in the hospital, a promise he made good on about a week later. Amber didn’t know he was coming; she had just had her head shaved that morning, so a visit from her favorite football player was a major encouragement. He sat on her hospital bed, talked and prayed with her, signed her #12 jersey and tossed the football with her son. He’s asked the family for updates on her status, and invited them all to have dinner with his family after she’s released from the hospital. After all that, I kind of had to forgive Brodie for all the times he got sacked in the 2005 Iron Bowl. There’s hope that Amber will recover. The kind of leukemia she has is treatable and so far her chemotherapy has been working. So, hopefully, this one story, at least, will have a happy ending.
Full Capacity? Young Georgia logger Kason Lott, whose story begins on page 22, points out that much of the South has been extremely wet lately, yet mills remain full. I’ve heard the same from loggers in several states. That runs contrary to conventional wisdom. A few years ago we all talked about the impending logging capacity shortfall. When markets improved, many predicted, there wouldn’t be enough loggers to meet demand. Well, the market seems to be better—most loggers I’ve interviewed recently tell me that 2015 was their best year in the past decade. The logging shortfall appears not to have materialized. During the recession, many did go out of business, but now many have come back. Others who survived have beefed up their crews, or added second and third and in some cases seventh or eighth crews, and they’ve increased productivity with newer, more efficient machines. So there may well be fewer logging business owners, but they’re fielding more crews and hauling more wood. Even with increased demand, even with rain…it’s looking like there’s more than enough SLT supply. That’s my guess, anyway.
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Not Giving Up ■ Cancer couldn’t keep a good man down or out of the woods at Kirkland’s Logging. By David Abbott BRYSON CITY, NC eonard Kirkland work- ★ ed the hills of western North Carolina for 40 years, healthy as an ox the entire time, according to his son Jason—or Jay, as nearly everyone calls him. The father and son duo have worked together in their company, Kirkland’s Logging, Inc., for the last twenty of those years. Like a lot of loggers, Leonard never went to the doctor and never even had health insurance—he never needed it. “When he got sick, it hit him like a ton of bricks,” Jay recalls. Leonard had known something was wrong but, for whatever reason, took his time in having it checked out. Maybe he thought it was nothing or hoped it would go away on its own. Maybe
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he just didn’t want to know. “It was almost too late by the time they discovered it,” his son says. Leonard was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in June 2014. Chemotherapy and radiation treatment followed. He underwent surgery in November that year. Bills had to be paid, so Jason kept working and didn’t slow down. “It was hard to juggle,” he says. “I would work all day, quit at six in the evening, go to the hospital and stay the night with him.” Doctors said recovery would take 7-10 days, but that’s, of course, for normal humans, not loggers. On the second day Leonard was on his feet, and by the fourth day they let him go home. “Strong as an ox,” his son reiterates. But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. More rounds of chemo and radiation followed the surgery. For
about a year, he couldn’t do much of anything. “That’s what bothered me so bad,” Leonard says. “Jay would come get the work truck out of my yard at 4:30 in the morning, and I was up, but I couldn’t go. That’s what hurt so bad.” After the first three months he knew he had to get out of the house, so on the days he felt strong enough, Jay’s wife Aleisha would pick him up and drive him to the woods, just so he could sit at the landing and watch the boys work. This had been his life, after all, for four decades. The physical and emotional pain weren’t all. There was also the financial side. Leonard had no insurance, so they had to pay for all of this out of pocket—surgery, treatments, everything. It was $10,000 a week for six weeks of chemo and radiation. How did they pull it off? “Well, we
John Ledford is the main timber cutter, felling on hillsides where feller-bunchers couldn’t go.
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about didn’t,” Jay admits. “It’ll break you.” He points out that many cancer patients have to declare bankruptcy and lose everything. To pay for it all, Jay admits, one idea did cross his mind: selling the business. So they discussed it. “I told him, we can pay off every bill you owe and you’ll have enough money for the rest of your life,” Jay recalls. “He asked what I would do. I said, don’t worry about me, I can get a job doing something.” Leonard was also concerned about his brothers and the rest of the crew finding jobs. “I told him it was up to him if he wanted to keep the business going or not,” Leonard says. “The last thing he said was, well what am I going to do if I get better?” Jay says that really gave him something to think about. Leonard insisted, “I’m not giving up.” Jay realized that his dad could beat this
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Dozers pull logs up when the incline is too steep for a grapple machine to reach, delivering to a ramp area down the hill.
The 120C sorts and merchandizes while the Kirklands use the 160C for road building and shovel logging.
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thing, he could survive, and if he did…he’d need something to live for, something he loved doing. Jay decided not to sell anything, and instead go to work. Somehow they’d make enough money to pay those medical bills. It’s been more than a year since the surgery and his treatments, and Leonard is doing much better. He is currently cancer-free. Though still not 100% back to his old self, he’s starting to get there. He comes to the woods more often, and he’s still able to walk those steep hills better than a lot of men half his age. He has insurance now, despite the pre-existing condition. “I still have to pay quite a bit, but it helps,” he says. Currently the doctors are in the process of determining if they can rebuild his colon from the surgery. Going through all this has put a different spin on the relationship between the son and his father. “He’s a drill sergeant,” Jay, 37, smiles. “He wants to work you daylight to dark. Through the years, we would holler at each other, but after he got sick, a lot of the small things don’t bother us anymore.” Something like that has a way putting things in perspective. Jay nods, “You better believe it.” Now 60, Leonard must feel pretty good knowing he’s built something here that will survive him, a company that will keep going after he is eventually gone. “There’s got to be a leader in every group,” Leonard believes. “I was the leader for years and years. Jay has grown up in this. If I left, he can be the leader today and I would have no worries.”
Methods Because they work in high elevations and steep inclines, the Kirkland crew typically cuts bigger wood.
From left: David Price, Richard Morgan, Adam Sherrill, Jerry Kirkland, John Ledford, Jason Kirkland, Leonard Kirkland, Michael Kirkland
They start by manually felling with Husqvarna 390XP chain saws. They build roads and shovel with a 2004 John Deere 160C track hoe. A ’99 Cat 517 tracked grapple delivers the logs to a Deere 120C with buck saw for merchandizing. Alternatively, in ground too steep for the grapple, two John Deere dozers, ’05 650J and ’14 650K, pull out with cables. After the logs are merchandized and sorted, ’05 John Deere 1110D forwarder picks up and brings the logs to the roadside to load onto one of the company’s two trucks. Everything hauls out on two T800 Kenworth straight quad axle trucks with pup trailers, 1994 and ’98 models. “Typically we don’t skid more than 100 yards with the track machine and the forwarder takes it down the road
from there,” Jay says. “We move deeper into the woods and let the forwarder come to them. It’s faster.” One key for the Kirklands has been keeping debt to a minimum. “Over time we have just bought a piece, paid for it, bought another one, and just gradually got to where we are today, without going into massive debt,” Jay explains. “I know what my limitation is on what I can owe, so I don’t exceed that.” When purchasing, they always use John Deere’s financing. Jay says every piece of equipment Kirkland’s has ever owned was purchased from James River Equipment in Ashville, NC. Mark Raymor and Gene May are the salesmen. Jay bought the forwarder there in 2005, although his request
John Deere 1110D forwarder delivers logs from the ramp to trucks at the roadside.
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took the salesman somewhat by surprise. “I said I want to look at a forwarder,” Jay recalls. “He said, ‘Are you sure? We’ve never sold one out of this district before.’” But Jay had done his homework, and based on his past experience, he was confident the machine would work for what he needed. “I know it’s a lot of money and it was a hard pill to swallow, but I did it.” It proved a worthwhile investment. “I get a lot of jobs because of that forwarder. I keep bridge mats with me—we carry them in the forwarder and lay them down—so when we cross creeks, we don’t skid across, we haul it instead.” The purchase cost was high, but Jay says the math works out because the forwarder allows him to
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work in conditions that might be prohibitive without it. “If it gains you 25 days a year, and you’re cutting 10,000 ft. a day, that’s 250,000 more feet of logs. Multiply that by what you make per thousand, and it pays for itself.” Jay handles all the routine maintenance and small repairs, and what he can’t handle, James River does, usually sending a man to the Kirkland’s job site. “When I call John Deere they send one mechanic and one mechanic only— Joel Price. He knows my equipment.” When Jay bought the forwarder, James River sent Price for training in how to work on it.
Crew The Kirklands haul everything on two Kenworth T800 trucks with pup trailers. The crew is John Ledford, timber cutter; Adam Sherrill, dozer; Michael Kirkland, his sister. Sherrill is first cousin to Jay calls himself a “fill-in” wherforwarder; David Price and Richard Jay’s wife. Another of Leonard’s ever he’s needed—whether it’s runMorgan, truck drivers. The two siblings, Jerry Kirkland, also comes ning the track hoes or helping Ledtruck drivers are the only ones who out to the job sometimes, and used ford fell timber. “If he can’t keep up, aren’t family. Michael Kirkland is to work on the crew. He, Leonard I grab a chain saw,” he says. “If a Leonard’s brother. Ledford is Jay’s and Michael have been at this thing truck driver is sick I am the only first cousin, Leonard’s nephew by together for 40 years. other one with a CDL so I drive a
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truck. I can do it all.” Jay’s brother, Matthew Kirkland, is a trained accountant who handles all the bookwork and payroll for the company. “We have no turnover on our crew,” Jay notes, stating that it will be the same crew out there years from now as it has been for years before. He points out Ledford, the chain saw operator. “He’s 35 and I’m 37. We’ve been working together since we were 16. We have no turnover. It’s family, and we treat them well and pay them well. They know what we expect.” The Kirklands pay the in-woods crew by the day, and truck drivers by the hour. The entire crew rides to and from work together— two hours a day in the same truck—so that is typically when they address safety issues. Jay and Ledford are both Pro Logger certified and the whole crew has been CPR and first aid certified—although some of their certifications have fallen out of date. Columbia Forest Products requires workers’ comp, which the Kirklands
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have been getting through AmeriSafe. A major key to success, father and son agree, is keeping work lined up. “That’s the name of the game,” Leonard says. Jay concurs, “A lot of people log one job and don’t know where they are going next. I know where I am going all the way almost till next summer.” That stability and consistency, he says, is one reason they keep workers. “They know we are going to have work.”
Columbia Keeping work lined up a year in advance has a lot to do with the longstanding relationship Kirkland’s Logging has built with Columbia Forest Products, the plywood company based in Old Fort, NC. The week Southern Loggin’ Times visited, forestry students from Haywood Community College had visited the job site, including one young man doing his internship with Columbia procurement forester Phil Elliot, who buys 100% of the timber cut by the Kirklands. The typical tract size Elliot finds for the Kirkland crew is about 50 acres, with 5-10,000 ft. per acre. “This crew is geared more toward logging than pulpwood,” the
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forester explains. “I don’t like to get under 3,500 ft. per acre, as far as buying anything for these fellows to work. Getting into pulpwood isn’t helping our cause or theirs either. With Jay, they have everything planned out in advance. Normally I have them about a year ahead targeted.” Asked how long he’s known the Kirklands, Elliot doesn’t miss a beat in replying, “Abraham Lincoln was President.” In reality it hasn’t been quite that long, but they have worked together for many years. “It was one of the better days of my life when they came to work for me,” Elliot asserts, adding that his job got a lot easier when Jay and Leonard came along. “I no longer have to wake up at 3 in the morning wondering if everything will go ok that day because I know they’ll take care of it.” The appreciation is mutual. Leonard, who bought his own timber for years, now says, “I couldn’t ask for better people to work for.” Jay adds, “Phil Elliot is one of the finest in the timber cruising industry. He expects perfection and we try our best to deliver perfection. I felt it was right to team up with them. I’ve got to have work, and they’ve got to have wood.”
The relationship isn’t strictly business. Leonard appreciates that Elliot came to visit him in the hospital, and that the rest of the Columbia team regularly inquire about his health. “They ask me how he’s doing,” Elliot nods. “I tell them he’s doing great because he’s out there in the woods growling at everybody,” the jovial forester laughs. Elliot is planning to retire when he turns 65 later this year, but Leonard objects. “He can’t retire, because I’m not retiring. That was our deal, so he’s not allowed.”
Markets Peeler logs go to Columbia, and hardwood goes to T&S Hardwoods in Sylva, NC. Pulpwood goes to the wood yard at Suncrest in Maggie Valley, NC. The crew typically works within a 100-mile radius of home, with mill destinations 60-100 miles one way. They average 5-6 loads a day, 20-25 loads a week. On the week SLT visited, the crew had pulled out 27 loads by Friday morning. Jay says they are not on quota because they are not working in high production timber. “The plywood market is totally different than lumber,” he points out. “Markets depend on what people are putting in their
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cabinets. Red oak may be hot for six months, and then you may not can give it away. Poplar and plywood, it doesn’t matter what you build or where you build it, you have to have plywood for it. So it stays pretty consistent. Hardwood markets fluctuate up and down all the time.” Is it profitable? “Oh yeah,” Jay answers without hesitation. “I can’t complain. You’re not going to get rich but it’s a good living. You can make a very good living.” Jay is the fourth generation of the family in this business. Leonard grew up working with his grandfather, who logged with a horse. “Once it’s in your blood, that’s it,” according to the younger Kirkland, who started working for Leonard when he was still in high school. “This is all I’ve ever known,” he asserts. In the 20 years since, he’s learned a few things. “The biggest thing I have learned is be honest,” Jay says. “If you tell someone you are going to do something, do it—whether it’s landowners or mill companies—it doesn’t matter who it is.” Leonard agrees. “You have to go with your word,” he teaches. “If your word’s not there, your work’s SLT not there.” Contact the Kirklands by email: justlogit78@yahoo.com
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Bigger Is Better ■ Tennessee’s Greg King, cutting on 450 acres, needs a bigger skidder for a bigger tract.
Greg King, daughter Allie, son Tristan and wife Amy
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A Cat man through and through, King opted for the big 555 skidder, which he says can pull almost enough wood to load a truck in just two drags.
By Jessica Johnson SELMER, Tenn. itting on 450 acres, Greg ★ King is currently cutting his biggest tract ever. So it seems like a natural fit that he would have a brand new ginormous 555D Caterpillar skidder. King says that he used to stick with smaller skidders, but once he got into the bigger one, it was clear which one he needed to buy. “Bigger is better, that’s what I always thought,” he says. Illustrating the reason for this mentality, King adds that two good drags of wood from the 555D will load a truck, upping skidder production tremendously. King has a magnetic personality that shoots straight with a big dose of humor— he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Maintaining a positive outlook and a happy go lucky personality isn’t always easy when you’re a logger, but somehow King makes it work. “When I first started I was working construction and would get laid off in the winter time. So I had a chain saw and a little old bobtail truck, I would go around to people’s yards and ask to cut their trees. I made more money then than I do now,” he says with a big laugh. Now, while rates might not be exactly where King would prefer, he keeps going, having grown from one rusted saw to two feller-bunchers. When he first started 24 years ago, King says you were responsible for cutting it, dragging it and loading it, getting $16 per ton; now mills only want to pay $19. “How do they figure that?” he asks with a wry laugh, gesturing towards his $3.5 million investment in logging equipment. “It’s hard work with little pay. But I am so deep into it and my son loves it. I’d be lost if I wasn’t able to come out here every day.” King’s son Tristan is a young man who has been bitten by the logging bug and loves to come out to the woods and help with the operation. He frequently runs the loader on school breaks and in between classes. While Tristan is eager to join the team full time right away, his dad isn’t so sure that is the best idea. He would prefer Tristan get a college degree first, then come to the woods, so if anything were to happen with logging, he has something he can fall back on. “I was so proud when I first started, young, coming up into this, I couldn’t wait until he got old enough to help me out here,” King recalls. “Now that he’s gotten old enough to come out here and help me, I wish he would go do something else. I don’t know—it’s changed so much over the years. I’m still proud of it, it’s just not what it used to be in my opinion,” King explains.
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Markets One of the biggest changes in King’s area has been the changing markets. Usually King finds himself on hardwood tracts in the 75-100 acre range. But after his main market for hardwood closed, he had to adapt, seeking out pine plantations. On this particular tract, King is carrying Southern Loggin’ Times
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his pulpwood to Pickwick Paper Co. mill in Counce, Tenn. with pine logs going to Hankins in Ripley, Miss.—though this tract doesn’t have a lot of logs, it’s mainly smaller wood. Whatever hardwood logs he gets go to small local sawmills. King Logging pushes out 50-60 loads per week. King admits that it is really difficult to get rid of his wood right now. With the closures of International Paper in Courtland, Ala. and the Westvaco wood yard in Bethel Springs, Tenn., the open mills got full and started implementing strict daily quotas—if you could haul at all. The closing of the Westvaco wood yard hit King particularly hard. Less than 10 miles from where he cuts, that wood yard was his lifeblood. “I was one of the main suppliers for the yard. I hauled to them for 20 years. When quotas came on and you couldn’t haul wood anywhere, I could always haul there. I don’t have that anymore,” he says morosely. Following the closing of the Westvaco yard, which bought all the hardwood in the area, King and other loggers had to start cutting strictly pine. “So everyone is running pine, and filled up Counce, and now you can’t haul pine,” he says. The challenge with markets is one of the changes King has seen over his tenure that makes him not want Tristan to follow in his footsteps.
From left: Jeff McClain, Jesse Jordan, Bailey Sweat, Jeff Evans, Greg King, John Kaiser, Kirby Gray, Robert Brewer, Corey Wilson, Gary Wilbanks, Kevin Stanfield
Iron Registry King is a self-professed obsessed Caterpillar man. His work truck license plate reads: RUNACAT. Tristan’s truck plate is of the same vein: RUNONECAT. Understandably, the King iron registry is filled with newer pieces of Caterpillar. His newest piece, purchased at the end of December 2015, is a 559C loader with a CTR delimber. In order to keep a good pace in the woods, King uses two loaders to
King uses two cutters, this Cat and a Tigercat, the only non-Cat piece on the crew.
prepare loads ahead of truck arrival, allowing trucks to just hook and go. His other loader is a 2012 2384 Prentice. King has three stair-step sized skidders—’10 535C, ’12 545C and the ’15 555D. At a given time, only two skidders will run, unless the job has been shut down for an extended period of time thanks to the weather. Skidders run dualed up tires. King has found that skidders running on single tires rut the land a lot quicker. With the duals, after a rain, as it is drying out, the tires pack the ruts back into the ground. Additionally, it just helps the machine hold up better, he believes. On the two smaller skidders, King runs 30.5 sized tires and the large skidder runs 35.5s. Best One Tire in Jackson, Tenn. and Southern Tire Mart in Tupelo, Miss. provide King his tires—usually Generals. The crew runs two feller-bunchers—’12 573C Cat and a ’10 Tigercat 724E. The Tigercat buncher isn’t King’s favorite piece of equipment but he was able to purchase it relatively inexpensively and it filled a need. “I want to upgrade it, and replace it with a Cat,” he says, showing his Caterpillar loyalty. Thompson Machinery in Tupelo, Miss. acts as King’s Caterpillar dealer, and he enjoys his dealings with salesman Mike Ferris. Generally, machines are rotated every 10,000 hours, or if it is a particularly troublesome piece. “I’ve always been Cat,” King explains. “You get used to something and it’s always been good to me. It’s hard to change. I started out with Cat and I’ve had good luck with it.”
Maintenance
The 559 loader, purchased in December, is the newest addition to the King crew.
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Typically, King handles all maintenance himself, with operators filling in as needed. Oils are changed every 250 hours. On Fridays the
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crew will knock off a little early and check fluid levels and clean out fittings and grapples, just generally trying to stay on top of everything. Most maintenance is done in the woods, but King does have a 50x80 metal shop building at his house that he uses to do major equipment work. The shop is mainly used for truck maintenance. With mainly newer pieces, King uses his dealer for all major repair work under the standard warranties. Willoughby Oil in Savannah, Tenn.
provides all needed support products, diesel, oil and DEF. King says he likes the timing of the system he has with Willoughby: they come out once a week and give him a few buckets of everything and by the time the next delivery is scheduled, they are running low. Five of King’s pieces run DEF fluid. Simply put, he doesn’t like it. “It’s just something I don’t think we need right now,” he elaborates. Each piece running it is fairly new, so he is hesitant to say whether it has given
him any extra trouble, only time, and wear and tear on equipment and trucks, will really tell about the DEF fluid, he believes. He does know that it is just another expense: “If everything out here was running DEF I would have to put another tank on the back of the work truck. Adds more expense to me and no one is reimbursing me for it. It is just coming out of my pocket. No one is paying me a dollar more a ton to take care of it.”
Trucking King runs four late model Kenworth trucks, one with the extra cab. “I love them, they are good trucks, built better than any other kind,” he asserts. Plus, with the extra cab model, King’s truck is eight in. longer than others on the road, and, of course, bigger is always better in King’s mind. Trucks are purchased from MHC Kenworth in Jackson, Tenn. The crew uses nine log trailers. Trucks are not hot loaded; preloading cuts down on turnaround time. Since the paper mill in Counce is only 15 miles away, quick turnaround on the landing is important to King. Most of the nine trailers are Blondie trailers, from Savannah Machine Shop in Savannah, Tenn. However, King does have one trailer he built himself. As a selfproclaimed ace welder, he can weld “anything from a broken heart to the crack of dawn.” Originally he set out to build the trailer himself to save some money. “I didn’t,” he says with a laugh. “I figured it up, by the time I had everything done, I thought crap, I could have bought one for that.” It was a good learning experience for King and his son, Tristan, however. King views trucks as a necessary evil, like most loggers. Between keeping up with miles, highway use tax, tags and the DOT, he doesn’t think the trucks make enough money. “You have a $130,000 investment on one truck and trailer and it is going to gross $600 a day. That’s a challenge,” he says frankly.
Office Management King Logging is a member of the Tennessee Forestry Assn. and is a former Tennessee Logger of the Year. The crew has an impeccable safety record with no recordable accidents in the 24 years they have been in business. Each week the crew has tailgate safety meetings, though sometimes it can be daily. “When you see something going on, you have to try to fix it immediately,” he says. Forestry Mutual Insurance provides workers’ comp insurance. Amy, King’s wife, does all bookwork. Like her brother Tristan, King’s daughter Allie is extremely interested in the family business. Amy is training Allie on the bookwork side. Both ladies are no stranger to the jobsite, either, and often come out on the weekends to help, if needed. Allie has particular interest in loader operation. Gesturing to Allie, Amy and Tristan, King says, “This is why I do it. I love it, but they are my reaSLT son for living.” 20
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Overcoming Adversity ■ Kason Lott had to step up quickly when his father passed away.
At only 20, Kason Lott had to take over the family company when his dad and best friend Mark passed away two years ago.
By Jay Donnell FITZGERALD, Ga. ason Lott was just 20 years old when his father, ★ Mark, died in July 2014, but he knew he had to be tough and resilient if the company he watched his dad work
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so hard to build was to survive. Mark Lott spent his whole life logging, operating as Mark Lott Timber Co. since 1989, having followed in his own father’s footsteps. Kason wasn’t going to allow this logging legacy to drift away. When Kason was just a teenager his father would pick him up from school and they would go out to the
woods and work. “My dad taught me how to log and he was pretty much my best friend,” Kason says. “He taught me almost everything I know about this business.” Mark died on a Sunday and Kason was back at work on Monday morning fixing a skidder that was needed for a job that week. Grieving had to be done on the
Lott is a fan of the 648 skidder from John Deere’s L series, his newest acquisition.
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job—no production meant no bottom line. Kason and his crew took one day off for the funeral, but then went right back at it. It took a while for the crew to adjust to their new young boss, but everything got back to normal fairly quickly. “It took some time to get that through their heads,” Kason explains. “They snapped to it though. You
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The crew has doubled in size in the last several years; the Tigercat is one of two cutters used.
couldn’t ask for a better crew.” Most people couldn’t imagine taking over a family business at such a young age but in the world of logging, people are exposed to the woods very early. Kason’s experiences with his father helped him tackle the challenge. Nearly two years after losing his best friend, Kason and his business are doing just fine. His dad, no doubt, would be proud.
Forest Operations Kason Lott’s crew harvests an average of 60 loads a week working generally flat terrain. They clear-cut half the time and thin about half. The company’s timber buyer is Ken White of Southern Timber Products and that’s whom they work with almost exclusively. “We’ve been working with him ever since we’ve been in business,” Kason says. “We have a great working relationship.” When Southern Loggin’ Times visited Mark & Kason Lott Timber, Inc. (incorporated two years ago), the job was clear-cutting a 60-acre private tract and making several sorts including pulpwood, short logs, treelength logs and two different grades of utility poles. The tract was about 45 minutes away from their home office in Fitzgerald. They had just left a 250-acre tract and they average about 100 acres per tract. Most of the time the roads are already in place, but sometimes Kason will have to fix them up. “We make sure to clean roads out
and we make sure trash is picked up,” Kason explains. “We push ramps up and make the place look nice. I like to talk to the landowner before we leave just to make sure everything is good to go.” The company generally works pretty close to home with hauls ranging from 30 to 60 miles away from the shop. They haul logs to Interfor in Baxley, Hubert Moore Lumber in Alapaha, Gilman Building Products in Fitzgerald, Suncoast Bedding in Fitzgerald and Georgia Biomass in Waycross. Mark & Kason Lott Timber harvests pine 75% of the time and the
rest is hardwood and some cypress. Employees arrive on site at 7 a.m. and leave at 6 p.m. After they haul 1,350 tons, each crew member receives a $100 bonus and another $10 a load after that. The business has eight employees. Thomas (TC) White runs the loader, Alfred Snead is the skidder operator, Tripp Tank operates the feller-buncher and David White is the “set out man.” Terry Fields and Jeremy Simmons are the truck drivers and James (Bo) Ball handles accounting and paperwork. All of the employees except for Tank worked for Mark Lott.
Safety The company holds monthly safety meetings with Safety On Site. They also keep a first aid kit and a list of emergency contact numbers in the back of the company labor truck. Workers are granted personal time for sickness and family emergencies. New truck drivers must fill out an application and go through a background check before they are hired. They must also submit to random drug testing. Drivers are paid by the load and they get a $50 bonus after they hit 15 loads. If they hit 20 loads
Now doing business as Mark & Kason Lott Timber, Inc., the company successfully made the transition to the younger boss.
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they get another $50. In trailers are preferred. addition to their own The company’s drivers, Lott has a couequipment dealers are ple of contract drivers. Tidewater in HazleThe business has only hurst, Yancey Bros. in had one insurance claim Waycross and Flint over the past five years. Equipment of Albany. This could be due to the The John Deere 648L fact that they don’t hire skidder was purchased inexperienced drivers. just two months ago All drivers must have at from Flint Equipment. least three years of “The hydraulics on the experience in order to 648L are much faster work for the company. and it has so much Even though he’s had more ground speed,” good luck with drivers, Kason says. “The Kason admits that it’s biggest improvements I hard to find them these see are how beefed up days. “It’s hard to find the frame and boom are good truck drivers and how well balanced because there just aren’t they are versus the that many out there,” he older models.” says. “It seems like all He adds, “The 648L the good ones are has been the smoothest taken.” operating skidder I’ve Drivers were encoun- Front row, from left: Alfred Snead and David White; back row, from left: Thomas White, Kason Lott and Tripp Tank ever been in. The visitering some lines at the bility from inside the operates a 2010 John Deere 748H mills earlier this year, but that’s not this as wet as it is and the mills cab of the machine is great and the skidder, 2011 Cat 559B loader with the norm. “Usually it’s pretty much being full,” Kason says. turnaround is a plus. The seat keeps a CTR delimber, 2002 Tigercat in and out,” Kason says. “The mills the operator from having to look T250 track loader, 1996 Timberjack back all day.” around here are normally pretty Equipment 608 track feller-buncher and a 2013 good about that.” Kason prefers Firestone tires and Mark & Kason Lott Timber’s Tigercat 720E feller-buncher. The Wet weather has been a challenge likes to keep dual tires on the rear newest machine is a 2016 John company owns a 2009 Freightliner along with daily and weekly mill of one skidder. “I do that to try and Deere 648L skidder. The crew also and a 2006 Mack truck. Big John quotas. “I haven’t ever seen it like stay prepared for the wet weather,”
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he says. “The duals help keep the skidder from breaking through the soft ground, preventing it from getting stuck. The duals also make it a lot easier to stay on mats in the woods because if you run single tires on a mat they like to push the mat apart and fall through.” Most of the maintenance work is done by Kason and feller-buncher operator, Tank. “I’m the main mechanic and I pretty much learned it from watching my dad over time,” Kason explains. “When he died I had to learn how to do a lot of it on my own because there wasn’t anybody else that could do it.” The Cat loader and John Deere skidder get serviced every 500 hours; all other equipment every 300 hours. Machines are greased once a week and oil is changed every 200 hours. Rotella 15W40 oil is preferred. The operation used to keep a van out on the job with all of their tools, but they stopped doing that because it would get broken into on a regular basis.
Using set out trailers, the crew hauls an average 60 loads a week.
Business Kason’s father taught him how to log, but he also taught him many other things about life. “He always told me to try and save my money,” Kason explains. “He said you could dip it out faster with a teaspoon than you can put it in with a wheelbarrow. He taught me how important it is to keep your equipment up and he told me how important it is to try and keep everybody happy.” Although the company only runs one crew they’re still much bigger than when Kason’s dad started the business in 1989. It really started to expand right before Kason’s eyes within the last seven years. Adding a second skidder to the mix really helped boost production. “We didn’t always set out trailers back then,” Kason says. “Now we have two set out trucks and a set out trailer.” Kason doesn’t see his business expanding to two crews anytime soon. Right now he has his hands full managing one crew. “I don’t want any more than I can look after myself,” he says. “I’d like to keep it somewhat simple and I don’t want too much of a headache.” But he adds that if the mills would open up and provide a little bit more production, the operation could possibly add another truck or some more trailers. Kason enjoys racing go-karts all over the Southeast and he also enjoys fishing in local ponds when he has time. Sadly, there isn’t a whole lot of time for leisure activities when you’re a 21-year-old trying to run a SLT successful logging operation. Contact Kason Lott by email: Kasonlott123@gmail.com Southern Loggin’ Times
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Family Strong ■ Faith and family help the Carters remain steady after losing one of their own. By David Abbott FLORENCE, SC ★ he name of the company is Carter Bros. Logging, but that could be a bit misleading. Indeed there are quite a few in this bunch with the last name Carter, including a few brothers, but only one who has his name on
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the paperwork. Mitchell Carter, 46, says he’s the only one “tied up as the owner,” but his brothers Robert, Elton, Billy and Steve Carter, son Jacob Carter, nephews Hank and Dale Carter, and cousin Randy Carter are all on the crew. Another cousin, David Carter, is a contract trucker who sometimes hauls for Mitchell’s crew. In addition, several of his other kin also own separate logging outfits in the area.
The Carters have two Tigercat loaders, sometimes working in conjunction, other times separated with one dedicated to feeding the Morbark chipper, above.
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Family is clearly the heart of the company. Unfortunately the family’s heart was broken last year when it suffered its greatest hardship. Mitchell’s son, William Mitchell (Mitch) Carter, Jr., passed away in an accident in the woods on June 29, 2015. He was only 21. “He helped us get where we are, definitely,” his father says. Mitch ran a cutter on his dad’s crew. Last summer, they were working a tract around a pond. Mitch was about to cut a few trees on the pond’s edge, when his dad had to leave on a parts run. “I told him to wait till I got back, and I would help him finish cutting it,” Mitchell recalls. “He wanted to go
ahead and do it before I got back. He didn’t have but four trees left on the pond. He went up the edge of the bank, cut one and started backing down.” Nobody can say for certain what happened next. “The only thing I could figure, one of his tires evidently slipped off the edge of the bank and threw the machine into the pond.” The cab filled up with water and Mitch wasn’t able to get out. Obviously the entire family was hit hard by the tragedy, especially Mitch’s parents—Mitchell and wife Cindy. Jonathan Boling, a forester from Kingstree Forest Products who works with the Carters, says that it was their deep faith that sustained
them through the difficult time. “If it weren’t for that, we couldn’t do it,” Mitchell believes. OSHA investigated the incident, interviewed everyone and ruled it a freak accident. The crew took a week off to grieve. Then, it was back to work. Mitchell initially attempted to juggle filling his son’s spot in the cutter full-time with his regular duties as owner. He says he just couldn’t quite do it all, so he brought in his brother Robert to man the feller-buncher a few months ago. Mitchell and Cindy have two other sons: Jacob, 18, who is already working on the crew, and
Front row, kneeling, from left: Tyrone (Slow Poke) Washington, Steve Carter, Jacob Carter; middle row, from left: William Guthrie, Kimani Adams, Donald Norton, Randy (“I’d Rather Be Fishing”) Carter, Elton (“I’d Rather Be With Him”) Carter, Mitchell Carter, Hank Carter, Robert Carter; back row, standing on truck: Johnny Williamson, Dale Carter
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Mitch Carter, Jr., the oldest son of Mitchell and Cindy, was killed while working on the crew last summer. He was 21.
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Dillon, who, at 13, is obviously staying in school for now. “I tell him he’s going to be the brains of the family,” Mitchell beams.
Setup
A pair of 620Es and one 630 keep both loaders busy.
It all starts with two 724G feller-bunchers.
CSI delimbers, Carter says, keep the loads so clean, no pole saw is needed.
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Carter Bros. operates all its equipment together as one big crew, but sometimes splits up to different sections of a tract, depending on conditions. One loader is set up to feed a chipper whenever there is enough material piled up for it, which is about a third of the time. “In the last 12 months, if you added up all the hours it has operated, it really only worked about four of those months,” Mitchell estimates. The rest of the time, both loaders are set up to work side by side to delimb and sort roundwood and load trucks. The Carter Bros. crew works mostly Tigercat equipment: two 724 cutters, a 630E and two 620E skidders and two 234 loaders, both with CSI delimbers. A John Deere 700J dozer and a Morbark 40/36 chipper round out the roster. A fleet of 11 trucks includes four Peterbilts, five Freightliners and two Western Stars. Log trailers are Whites and Evans and chip vans are Peerless. Mitchell estimates his investment at close to $2 million. Main equipment dealer is Tidewater Equipment in Conway, SC. Mitchell opts to keep fresh equipment—he buys only new machines and normally trades after two or three years. The only exceptions are the dozer and chipper, because they aren’t run as much. As such, most of his machines at any given time remain under warranty. Thus, Tidewater handles the major repair jobs, and generally supplies a temporary replacement for any machine undergoing repairs. For trucks, Carter Bros. looks to local mechanic Gane Eaddy for repairs on-site, or to AC Mobile Repair or Stone Truck Center, both in Florence, or to Hartsville-based Pee Dee Fleet Services. The crew handles routine maintenance and minor repairs in the woods; Carter Bros. is currently in the process of acquiring a shop. Though some say newer machines can last longer between oil changes, the Carters still prefer to change oil about every 300-350 hours, or at least once a month. Trucks are serviced every 1215,000 miles. Carter Bros. uses Delmar 68 for hydraulic fluid and Rotella 15w40 for motor oil. Cutters and skidders take Goodyear 30.5x32, with sizes 11225 and 11245 on trucks, purchased from Black’s Tire & Auto Repair Services in Florence. Mitchell figures total expenditures for maintenance, parts and repairs at about
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$250,000 a year, sometimes more. Even with routine maintenance, breakdowns are still a part of the job, and the Carter Bros. crew is up to the task. The morning Southern Loggin’ Times visited in early March, a hydraulic fitting cracked on a fellerbuncher head, causing a leak. That took some time away from production, but with a little teamwork Mitchell and his crew had it back up and running in short order.
Production The crew averages 150 loads a week, and they say they haul at least 130 even on bad weeks. Generally, that’s something like 100-130 loads of roundwood and 15-20 loads of chips. The crew runs 10 trucks, with one spare, each hauling typically 15 loads a week, three loads per day. Only occasionally does the crew have to work weekends. Mills are buying wood right now and everything has been going well so far this year, despite heavy rainfall. “There has been a pile of rain, but we haven’t missed but a day or two here or there, waiting for a road to dry off or to see where we will move,” the logger says. Primary mill outlets are Canfor New South in Darlington, Camden and Conway, WestRock in
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The crew moves up to 150 loads weekly of roundwood and chips combined.
Florence and International Paper in Georgetown and Eastover, as well as Smithfield, NC. Fuel chips go to Sonoco in Hartsville. “We cut whatever the market is taking,” Mitchell says. That usually means more clear-cuts than thinning jobs, but it includes hardwood and pine timber, both big and small. The first quarter of 2016 has brought a heavy dose of rain, so in the early spring the Carter Bros. crew has been working a lot of tracts they wouldn’t normally work this time of year— smaller pine pulpwood that the owner says they typically save for wet times because it is in sandy ground. Carter Bros. has been working almost exclusively for timber dealer Kingstree Forest Products, based in Kingstree, SC, for the last two years. They deal primarily with forester Jonathan Boling and Benji Filyaw, who is one of the owners of Kingstree. Boling comments on Mitchell’s personality: “This is a guy who never complains,” the forester says. “You just let him know where he needs to go and he goes there and does what he needs to do.”
Background Brothers Robert, in the foreground, and Mitchell Carter, in the back, work together to replace a cracked hydraulic fitting on one of the cutters.
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Logging is in the Carter family DNA. The area is full of Mitchell’s
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relatives who share his vocation, either in his company or in their own. Mitchell himself started working in the woods practically from childhood. His father, Richard Carter, and his uncle, Thomas Carter, worked together when Mitchell was growing up. Richard eventually left the woods to be a mechanic full time, so Mitchell went to work for his uncle at T. Carter Logging, based in Florence, for several years. Mitchell always knew, however, that his
dream was to go out on his own. He finally did so in 1993, founding his first company when he was only 23. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. “I didn’t do very well the first go-round,” he admits. “I ended up having to quit for a year or so to get my head together and get grown up.” After recovering from that first false start, and learning from his mistakes, he came back and tried again. This time, Carter Bros. stuck. He cut for Florence-based timber
buyer Swamp Fox Timber Co. for 11 years before moving to Kingstree in 2014. That move, he says, has played a role in his company having become more profitable in the last two years. “They buy more big tracts than what we used to cut,” Mitchell explains. That has translated into more loads and fewer moves between tracts. The other reason for increased profits, he says, is the drastic drop in fuel prices in the last year. Monthly fuel cost is now in the
$30,000 a month range; it was twice that two years ago. Mitchell figures a healthy return on investment for a logging operation is between 5-10%—a rate he says he’s hit these last two years for the first time. “We have done it because we have hauled a heap of wood,” he says. “It’s about being efficient and that’s from having a jam up good crew—which we do.”
Team “This crew gets along very well,” Mitchell says, noting that the team is often joking and laughing with one another. Crew includes Robert Carter and Kimani Adams on the cutters— Adams has been with the company more than 10 years; Jacob Carter, Hank Carter, Dale Carter and Steve Carter on the skidders; and Randy Carter and Elton Carter on the loaders (Elton runs the loader that sometimes pairs with the chipper). Truck drivers are Donald Norton, Tyrone (Slow Poke) Washington, Jeffery Lane, William Guthrie, Johnny Williamson and Billy Carter. When needed, contractor David Carter is called upon to supplement hauling capacity. General liability insurance is with Swamp Fox Agency in Moncks Corner and workers’ comp is with Walker Hunter & Associates in Columbia. They send monthly safety briefs, which the team goes over in the woods. Everyone wears appropriate safety gear, and rarely does anyone ever set a foot on the ground. “We hardly ever even take a chain saw out, and the boys load the trucks so clean we don’t even use a pole saw,” Mitchell says. The owner also warns his truck drivers never to text or talk on a cell phone while driving without an earpiece. They use CBs to communicate. Outside the woods, Mitchell and Cindy are active in their local church, and he enjoys spending his free time on his four-wheeler or his tractor. He says he likes to go fishing, too, but doesn’t take much time to do it. “From what I have seen,” Mitchell advises, “the key to success, for anybody, is a lot of hard work and a lot of planning. We’ve done well.” Pausing briefly, he adds, “One of the most important things a logger needs is a good woman to put up with you.” SLT Seems he found that. Contact Carter Bros. by email: dillmom@aol.com
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Steady Growth ■ Big John Trailers follows a path of stability, dependability and loyalty. By Jay Donnell FOLKSTON, Ga. ohn Drury started out as a logger and a welder. He worked his way into ★ building log trailers and lowboys for his own use, but to understand his story you have to go back to when he was just a boy. Drury (nicknamed “Big John”) had to quit school in order to help provide for his family. His boyhood days consisted of working with his father and brother, cutting down bottomland trees and running yoke oxen to pull out logs for railroad ties. His family lived in a log cabin in a place known as Pine Island, Ga. At age nine he lost his mother. Drury’s dad was an alcoholic and
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spent nearly every dime he made on liquor. “My dad went to bed many nights cold and hungry,” Drury’s son, Pedro, recalls. “He would have given anything just to have a biscuit.” In 1940, Drury’s father died of a heart attack. Big John was 15 years old. He didn’t know how to read or write, but he knew how to work hard so he left his home and went to work for a steel company where he remained for several years. He eventually got into logging and had his own seven-man crew. “When I was 10 I went out there in the woods with him,” Pedro says. “He could do everything and run any machine. He could do anything if he set his mind to it.” In 1955, Drury bought the property where Big John Trailers sits
today. He built a house and a service station. He sold bait and tackle as well as other goods out of the service station while still working in the logging business. Drury eventually became a contract logger for St. Regis Paper Co. where Big John’s current co-owner, Jimmie Gowen, was the manager of the company’s harvesting operation. “For the type of work he was doing, he needed some log trailers,” Gowen recalls. “But there were very few trailer manufacturers back in those days. Mr. Drury was the kind of person if he saw something he’d say ‘I can build that.’ So he decided he was going to build his own log trailers.” There were numerous other loggers in the area who also needed trailers so they started asking Drury
to build them. Before long he decided to quit logging and start building trailers full time, starting up Big John Trailers in 1974. “He’d visit equipment companies with a pad and a pencil and say ‘I’m not going to buy anything today, but I’m going to make me one,’” Pedro recalls. Big John’s business kept growing and became a mainstay in the area. His rough childhood built a drive in him that lasted his entire life. “He promised the Lord that if he ever grew up and had kids he wouldn’t let them go hungry,” Pedro says.
Company Expansion The company grew until health issues forced Drury to retire in 1984, at which time Gowen pur-
The Gowen brothers: Sidney, left, and Jimmie. Inset, the Big John company logo was designed to represent the likeness of company founder Big John Drury himself.
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chased the business. St. Regis had sold out to Champion International, which wanted to transfer Gowen up east or to the southwest. Gowen wasn’t looking to move. Gowen’s brother, Sidney, signed on as a partner in the corporation known as Gowen Enterprises, Inc. dba Big John Trailers. When Gowen took over the company they were making about 50 trailers a year and struggling with a limited customer base except for what Drury had accumulated. The business needed some help. Gowen had met Johnny Ward of W & W Truck and Tractor in Moncks Corner, SC during Gowen’s time at St. Regis Paper so he decided to give Ward a call. “When things got really tough I called Mr. Johnny and said ‘I need some trailer orders,’” Gowen recalls. “He said ‘build me three lowboys,’ so we built them and before long he was asking us to build him another three. Mr. Johnny helped me sell some log trailers during that time and we were able to accumulate some more customers.” The first trailer Gowen sold cost $7,200. It was a straight frame log trailer which was heavy in weight. Over the years the company transitioned to a lighter trailer so that trucks could haul more payload. “Somewhere in the mid ’90s we developed a lightweight trailer that was made out of a high tensile steel,” Gowen says. “That was when we started to really grow.” As the business started selling more trailers they hooked up with equipment dealers and they now sell all of their trailers through a dealer network. “We found out that the salesman for the dealer network could do a much better job selling than we could,” Gowen explains. “We started creating arrangements with equipment dealers and we quit selling direct.” The company has dealers throughout the eastern half of the United States, from Texas to Florida to Maine. Flint Equipment, Tidewater Equipment, James River Equipment and Cutting Systems, Inc. are just a few of the dealers that carry Big John products. Since that time, Big John Trailers has been growing steadily by building and expanding its trailer line, as well as operating a trailer parts center and repair and service facility. One thing Big John Trailers prides itself on is loyalty to its customers. “We have a stable customer base and we try to serve those customers who are loyal to us,” Gowen explains. “They are our first priority and we try to do a good job for them.”
All Big John trailers are sold into the logging industry.
Trailers are built entirely at the Folkston plant.
as vice-president and manufacturing manager. Lee Gowen, son of Jimmie, is the general manager. Hunter Gowen, son of Sidney, has been employed with the company since 1987 and is the service manager and CAD operator with responsibilities in engineering design and manufacturing. The business manufactures and sells about 700 trailers per year. The trailer products offered by Big John Trailers are log trailers,
lowboys, knuckleboom loader trailers, and self-propelled loader carriers. They also have an agreement to build the KODIAK delimber loader trailer with hydraulic landing gear legs. Big John’s most popular log trailer is the four bolster recessed center and plantation design units. In the loader line it’s the delimber trailer with the hydraulic legs. Onehundred percent of Big John’s trailers go into the logging industry.
Present Day Today, Jimmie serves as president of the company and Sidney serves
Big John facilities are on about 14 acres.
Some trailer companies up north use aluminum alloy for trailer stakes, or bolsters, to help keep weight down, and aluminum is widely used in Europe as well, but Gowen doesn’t believe that type of material can hold up under conditions in most Southern logging operations. “It doesn’t hold up to the rugged logging that goes on here,” he says. “The aluminum is more brittle and it’s softer as well.” He recalls when a person from Sweden came to the Southern U.S. to promote aluminum uprights and the aluminum cross bolsters. Gowen took him to a logging operation where the logger was working in some bottomland that was wet and boggy. “They were loading a trailer and then a truck came down to try and haul it away, but his wheels spun and the truck couldn’t move so the skidder operator tried to push the trailer and the salesman from Sweden looked at me and said ‘oh no no, my product won’t stand that.’” Gowen adds: “One thing we owe our success to is the way we design the trailer and the way we build it. It’s become recognized by loggers out there as a proper design and a very useable trailer. Our design is pretty much standard.” Quality control is an important part of the manufacturing process for Big John Trailers. Employees are trained to be responsible and proud of the workmanship that goes into each trailer. “I’m a firm believer in the philosophy if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” Gowen says. “We build a lightweight product that holds up well and it’s doing a good job in the woods.” Big John Trailers is on 14 acres, where all of its trailers are built. The company employs 28. “We’re a stable operation. We pay our employees well and we’re happy with where we are right now,” Gowen says. Employees receive a bonus each year based on the number of trailers they produce. Gowen is impressed at the caliber of logger he’s seeing these days— more stable and better businessmen. They seem to be satisfied with Big John trailers. “What more can you do to make a log trailer any better than what it is right now?” Gowen asks. “You could get lighter with it if they came out with a better material. That would bring on some more experimenting.” Gowen, 77, does not plan on retiring anytime soon, but believes his son and nephew will be able to take over the business. The company continues to build its popular line of trailers with the same determination that Big John Drury had when he started the business 42 years ago. Big John died in 2000 at SLT age 74.
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An Oddity From Another Era his is an old west story with a couple of intrigu-
T ing twists.
Western stagecoach companies were big business in the latter half of the 19th century. In addition to passengers, mail, and freight, stages hauled gold and silver bullion as well as mining company payrolls. Before the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Donner Pass (elevation 7,000plus feet) in 1868, the only transportation through the Sierra Nevada in northern California was by stage. Tough, weathered teamsters, known as “whips,” held rein over six powerful horses as they tore along narrow, perilous mountain trails, encountered Charley Parkhurst bandits and dealt with nasty weather. As historian Charles Outland described, “It was a dangerous era in a dangerous country, where dangerous conditions were the norm.” Courageous drivers were skilled, fearless men who pushed themselves and their spirited horses to the limit. Stage drivers were collectively known as “Jehus,” after a passage in I Kings 9:20: “…and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.” Clark Foss was generally regarded as the most fearless and famous stage driver, or “whip,” of his day. Other drivers of outstanding skill included George Gordon, Hank Monk and Charley Parkhurst.
Parkhurst’s Early Years Born in New England in 1812 and later taken in by an orphanage in New Hampshire, Parkhurst ran away from the orphanage at age 12. According to one account, Parkhurst soon met Ebenezer Balch, who owned a livery stable in Providence, RI. He took the youngster under his care and treated Parkhurst like a son. Balch taught him to work as a stable hand. The boy developed an aptitude with horses, and Balch eventually taught him to drive a coach, first with one, then four, and eventually six horses. Parkhurst worked for Balch for several years, during which he may have gotten to know James Birch, who was a younger stage driver on the local circuit. In 1848 the youthful Birch and his close friend, Frank Stevens, went to California during the Gold Rush to seek their fortunes. Birch soon began a stagecoach service. Seeking opportunities in California, Parkhurst in his late 30s left Rhode Island, sailing on the R.B. Forbes from Boston to Panama. While in Panama, Parkhurst met John Morton, who was 38
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returning to San Francisco, where his drayage business was based. Morton recruited Parkhurst to work for him. Later, Parkhurst went to work as a driver for James Birch, then moved on to drive for Wells Fargo, along the way developing a reputation as a stellar whip. The story goes that around 1856 Parkhurst was kicked in the left eye by an agitated horse, causing blindness in the eye and forcing him to wear a patch. This incident led to the nickname One-Eyed Charley or Cockeyed Charley. Over the years, Pankhurst’s reputation as an expert driver grew. Legend has it that from a distance of 15 paces he could slice open the end of an envelope or cut a cigar out of a man’s mouth. Parkhurst smoked cigars, chewed tobacco, drank with the best of them, and exuded supreme confidence in the stage driver’s box. One afternoon as Charley drove down from Carson Pass the lead horses veered off the road and a wrenching jolt threw him from the rig. He hung on to the reins as the horses dragged him along on his stomach. Amazingly, Parkhurst managed to steer the horses back onto the road and save all his shaken but grateful passengers. In another instance, he reportedly drove a stage across the rain-swollen Tuolumne River, reaching the other side just before the quivering bridge collapsed. Once he rolled an empty coach and “busted in” his side, probably breaking a few ribs, but never saw a doctor about the injury. Perhaps his most disastrous mishap was when some hogs spooked the horses, causing them to “jump grade” and wreck the stage. One related account reported that “five deaths occurred.” Parkhurst had no patience for bandits, despite their demands and threatening gestures. One notorious road agent was nicknamed “Sugarfoot.” When he and his gang accosted Charley’s stage for the second time in six months, it was the last robbery the thief ever attempted. Charley cracked his whip defiantly, and when his horses bolted, he turned around and fired his revolver at the gang. Sugarfoot was later found dead with a fatal bullet wound in his stomach. In appreciation of his bravery, Wells Fargo presented Parkhurst with a large watch and chain made of solid gold. He spent 15 years running stages, sometimes partnering with Hank Monk, the celebrated driver from Carson City, Nev. Monk occasionally shared the same stage box with Parkhurst, known to him as “Parkie.”
Ranching, Logging In 1865 Parkhurst stopped driving and opened his own stage relay station, only to sell it a few years later. He resettled to a small ranch near Soquel, Calif., where he farmed and raised cattle. During winters he often worked in logging camps where he reportedly earned top dollar at $5 per day when many others earned only $3. He later moved into a small cabin about six miles from Watsonville. On December 18, 1879, Parkhurst died. Tongue and throat cancer had taken its toll.
The Astounding Discovery When neighbors and a doctor came to the cabin to prepare the body for burial, they were astounded to discover that Charley was actually a woman. The discovery of her true gender became a local sensation and was soon carried by regional and national newspapers. One newspaper article noted how unusual it was that Parkhurst could have lived so long with no one discovering his assigned gender, and to “achieve distinction in an occupation above all professions calling for the best physical qualities of nerve, courage, coolness and endurance…” When Hank Monk heard the report that Charley had turned out to be a woman, he was so overcome for several minutes that he gasped for breath, then drawled: “Je—hosaphat! I camped out with Parkie once for over a week, and we slept on the same buffalo robe right along. I wonder if Curley Bill’s playing me the same way.” Once the news broke, plenty of people said they had always thought Parkhurst wasn’t like other men. Even though he wore leather gloves summer and winter, many noticed that his hands were small and smooth. He slept in the stables with his beloved horses and was never known to have had a girlfriend. Charley never volunteered clues to her past. Loose fitting clothing hid her femininity. She weighed 175 pounds, could handle herself in a fistfight and drank whiskey like one of the boys. Charley’s real name was Charlotte Parkhurst. After running away from the orphanage, she soon discovered that life in the working world was easier for men, so she decided to masquerade as a man for the rest of her life. That’s not where the story ends, exactly. The Santa Cruz Sentinel of October 17, 1868 listed Charles Parkurst on the official poll list for the general election of that year. There is no record that Parkhurst actually cast a vote, but if he had voted, Parkhust may have been the first female to SLT vote in a presidential election in California.
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Two Million Tons ■ The two new Drax pellet mills in the Southeast require lots of wood fiber.
Price LogPro crane maintains wood yard inventory.
By Rich Donnell GLOSTER, Miss. rax Biomass, a North American subsidiary of United Kingdombased Drax Group, con★ tinues to fine-tune operation of its 450,000 metric tons annual production capacity wood pellet plant here, known as Amite BioEnergy, while a nearly identical Drax wood pellet plant at Bastrop, La., called Morehouse BioEnergy, is in a similar phase of production. Amite BioEnergy broke ground in 2013, produced its first pellet in December 2014 and was commissioned in August 2015. The Gloster operation trucks its pellets—about 57 trailer loads daily at peak production—to Drax’s new Baton Rouge Transit LLC facility at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, which is 60
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BRUKS Rockwood chip stacker reclaimer
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converted, this figure will rise to 7 million metric tons annually. Its two new Southeast U.S. plants will supply 900,000 metric tons when in full production.
Back In The U.S.
Dry fiber exits two silos and goes to pellet production station.
miles south of Gloster. From the port, pellets are shipped to UK ports and transported by rail to the Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire, England, which is an hour’s ride from the east coast off the North Sea. What Drax has accomplished in the UK and in the Southeast U.S. in less than five years is remarkable. Drax Power Station, when it was built and started up with three boiler lines in 1974, was state-owned, and still was when it added three more boiler lines in 1986. Each of the coalburning units had a capacity of 660 MW. Drax Power became not just the largest power station in the UK, but the last coal-fired power station to be built in the UK. In 1990 the UK power sector became privatized and the Drax Power Station came under the ownership of National Power, one of the newly formed generating companies. Nearly a decade later, in 1999, National Power sold the plant to the American electrical power generator and distributor, AES, but regula-
tory challenges, a drop in wholesale electricity prices and resulting financial problems forced AES to walk away from Drax in 2003, leaving it to be restructured under the ownership of a number of financial institutions. In late 2005 Drax underwent refinancing and became publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange. The Kyoto Protocol in the 1990s started the momentum to fight global warming through the reduction of greenhouse gases. The UK and a number of other European governments signed on. As far back as 2003, Drax, seeing the writing on the wall, started experimenting with biomass and began co-firing at a limited level to test the technology, the impact on boiler operations, heat rate and other efficiencies. The situation ramped up even more when the European Commission set forth the 2020 Climate & Energy Package, which became legislation in 2009, and which set three targets to be met by 2020: 20% cut in
Tedrick Ratcliff, executive VP of Mississippi Forestry Assn., left, checks pellets with Tommy Taylor, Drax plant engineer.
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greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; 20% of EU energy from renewable sources; and 20% improvement in energy efficiency. As these policy targets trickled down to the member states, the UK government was handed a 15% renewable sources target by 2020. Drax began looking at biomass in earnest and in 2012 announced it would pursue the conversion of three of its boiler lines from coal to biomass fuel, including the installation of new raw material handling infrastructure—a whopping investment of more than $600 million. Drax has completed the conversion of two boiler lines and a third is operating primarily on biomass with a full conversion awaiting a green light from the European Commission. Drax has also announced a desire to pursue additional conversion. In 2015, Drax Power Station procured 5 million metric tons of wood pellets annually from a broad supply chain of countries and companies. Once the third unit is fully
Pellets unload from rail car at the port facility.
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At the same time that Drax committed to biomass at its UK power station, it also decided to invest in the upstream supply chain. One reason was to gain the security of supply that comes along with vertical integration; it also wanted to test out pellet manufacturing technology and develop a process to produce a consistent high quality pellet. Drax combed the Southern U.S. with the idea of placing facilities in established timber industry areas that had experienced decline and consolidation in the pulp and paper industry. Thus it would not be adding fiber consumption but replenishing a portion of what was lost, and meanwhile benefiting from an experienced logging, hauling and fiber procurement infrastructure. Each of the new Drax pellet plants would require about a million short tons of fiber at full production. Drax decided on Gloster and Bastrop, two areas heavily hit by paper mill contraction, both with abundant fiber supply inventory and favorable growth-to-drain ratios, and both with appealing timberland ownership proximity, ranging from a large landowner like Weyerhaeuser to a variety of family owned timberland operations. And as importantly, each community received Drax and its potential economic development with enthusiasm. From the outset Drax has made it a point to be active citizens in the communities and contribute to them whether through donations to parks and recreation, libraries, schools, charitable fundraising efforts and in numerous other ways. Meanwhile Drax had settled on the Port of Greater Baton Rouge to build a new wood pellet receiving and shipping facility. It fit Drax’s needs perfectly for a deep water port capa-
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One of two Drax pellet storage domes at the port facility
Pellets are loaded into one of the ship holes.
ble of handling the large Panamax style cargo vessels and with rail and truck transportation. The pellet plants and the port facility would represent an impressive $350 million investment.
in-woods chipping capacity in that area. As is typical with the ebb and flow of most mill startups, along with pulp and paper mill outages and weather issues, the logging force has experienced some disruption, but Spigner manages those relationships and notes there’s a lot of capacity not being utilized and he’s anxious to see the supply base flex its muscle. The Gloster plant is a fairly tight layout (compared to the more spread out Bastrop facility). The process gets going with a Price
Amite Bioenergy Drax Biomass VP-Fiber Procurement, Rusty Booker, and Amite BioEnergy fiber procurement manager, Jason Spigner, a former logger, have pulled together the logging force, roughly 35 crews, to supply
the mill at Gloster. The mill is designed to handle 80% pulpwood logs and 20% biomass chips (forest residuals) toward the 1 million tons demand at full capacity. That represents about 150 truckloads per day. However, today the mill is bringing in exclusively pine pulpwood logs for processing into chips on site. Booker notes they’ll ultimately bring in in-woods chips once the pellet manufacturing process has been optimized. The Morehouse facility may turn to in-woods residuals sooner than Amite because of more existing
LogPro 25 ton capacity crane unloading trucks and feeding a Price LogPro drum debarker line. Logs from the debarker move through an Andritz HHQ chipper with 16 knives. It produces 10 mm long chips with 2-3 mm thickness. Chips come in at 50% moisture content to the Dieffenbacher dryer and leave at 12% MC. Material from the dryer moves to six CPM hammermills, which reduce chips to a less than 5 mm particle size with a majority being less than 3 mm. Fiber is conditioned with water and
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then enters the pellet production area with 12 CPM pellet machines, which produce 6 mm diameter pellets. Firefly spark detection and extinguishing zones begin just after the dryers and are located throughout the process risk zones all the way to load-out. Each pellet silo has 1,665 tons of storage capacity. The design calls for loading out of one silo while filling in the other, which provides pellets more time to cure and cool. The mill performs various tests on
its materials for durability, moisture content, particle distribution and other properties. “We want to make the pellet with the smallest particle size we can so that when they get it over there (in the UK) and grind it up, it burns with very little ash,” comments plant engineer Tommy Taylor. “We have all kinds of lab tests, but after you get experienced with a pellet mill there is a lot of look, touch and feel to see what you’ve got.” Alex Swift is the plant manager at Amite BioEnergy, overseeing a
workforce of 55. The Morehouse Bioenergy operation employs a similar number.
Port Facility Baton Rouge Transit LLC, a Drax subsidiary, can process 2 million metric tons of pellets per year and load and ship 40 cargo vessels per year. The facility made its first shipment in April 2015. Drax owns the storage and handling equipment, but leases the land from the Port of
Greater Baton Rouge. The facility receives trucks from the Gloster mill and rail cars from the Bastrop facility. A truck driver drives into the unload building, scans the ticket he received at the mill, verifies the information, the conveyor system starts and he opens his two hoppers. It takes drivers an average of seven minutes to leave from the time they arrive, though they’ve gone as low as under five minutes. Rail cars come in by Union Pacific from Morehouse in 45-car trains. They sit outside the port until they’re brought in and set up on the Drax tracks. They all unload in seven to eight hours. Two conveyors from the truck building converge on a main conveyor from the rail car unload, and pellets pass into one of two 40,000 metric ton domes designed by Dome Technology. Inside the domes a temperature control system monitors the pellets as they’re stored. Conveyors come out from underneath the domes to one outbound conveyor, which brings pellets to the water side belt conveyor that runs parallel to the river and transfers pellets up into the hopper at a BRUKS traveling ship loader. The loader has 520 ft. of travel and can hit all seven holes on a Panamax vessel with its spout, which has 82 ft. of line.
Power Station Once pellets arrive at the UK ports, they travel on specially designed Drax rail cars to the Drax Power Station. Drax invested heavily to streamline pellet handling infrastructure at its UK power station, from the special trains to rail unloading, to screening, storage domes, transfer tower, more screening and then feeding into the boiler house, where pellets are pulverized back into wood fuel for the boilers. Drax Biomass Director of Communications and Policy, David Malkin, comments, “Apart from just the massive investment, what is most noteworthy is that in the process of converting those boilers to run on 100% biomass, we were able to make technical modifications to greatly minimize any impact on efficiency and (power) plant output.” He adds that one of the benefits Drax supplies to the UK is flexible output, as each unit can ramp up or down to between 200 MW and 645 MW. “As the UK makes that transition to 15% renewable generation, a lot of that is coming from wind and some solar; that generation is intermittent, it can’t be dispatched,” Malkin explains. “So you’ve got to have some baseload 46
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generation in place that can be ramped up and down on short notice to balance that intermittency. We would argue that this is one of the major value propositions of the Drax Power Station in addition to its contribution to the UK’s overall renewable energy generation.”
Environmental The Drax Power Station accounts for 7-8% of total UK electricity demand, and of all the UK renew-
able electricity generated in the UK last year, Drax accounted for 12%. Malkin adds, “When you look at the carbon emissions reductions we’ve been able to achieve with these three (boiler) conversions, it’s an 86% reduction.” This includes any greenhouse gas emissions associated with the manufacturing of wood pellets by Drax Biomass and any of its other pellet suppliers, and the transport of these wood pellets. “We have a large number of controls in place and are subject to a number of regula-
tory regimes from the UK and elsewhere in Europe that assures that’s the case,” he adds. Malkin notes that the 86% reduction in the Drax carbon footprint stems from the assumption that biomass is carbon neutral. “It’s carbon neutral provided that it’s sourced from sustainably managed working forests in which the forest cover is stable or increasing,” he says. Sustainability is a cornerstone of the business, says David James, sustainability manager, and there
are many pieces to the puzzle. When it comes to forest management certification on the ground in North America, there’s the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), American Tree Farm System for family forest landowners, and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) programs. James stays on top of the developments in these certification programs, and communicates with managers and procurement on the collection of data and monitoring activities. Drax has received SFI and PEFC chain of custody certifications, as audited by NSF, as well as FSC chain of custody and controlled wood certifications, as audited by SCS Global Services. These certifications cover fiber sourcing, as well as the manufacturing, distribution and sale of wood pellets across Drax Biomass operations. Right now, Drax is on the verge of gaining its Sustainable Biomass Partnership certification. SPB is a certification scheme for large-scale Europe-based energy producers using woody biomass such as pellets and chips. It basically provides assurance that woody biomass is sourced from legal and sustainable sources, while also standardizing data inputs for calculation of greenhouse gas emissions As confusing as the multiple certification programs can be, James comments, “I like the competition that goes on. Best practices come out of it. Some things have been simplified through stakeholder engagement.”
Headquarters In 2014 Drax Biomass established North America headquarters in Atlanta, Ga. In March 2015 it named Peter Madden as CEO. Madden, whose career began in forestry, had most recently served as the vice president of Renewable Energy and Supply Chain for Plum Creek Timber, which is a major fiber supplier to the Drax pellet plants. Director of Communications and Policy Malkin is also based in Atlanta along with more than 30 other Drax personnel. Malkin comments that another reason the business has been vertically integrated is to identify other new business opportunities. “One of the things we’ve been able to prove out is that biomass works,” Malkin says. “It can be cost effective relative to other sources of renewable generation. There are other business SLT opportunities out there.” Another version of this article appeared in Wood Bioenergy magazine, an affiliate publication to Southern Loggin’ Times.
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INDUSTRY NEWS ROUNDUP As We See It: The Importance Of Relationships By Richard Schwab
Today we are experiencing three to four different generaPeople crave relationships. tions of loggers and other proAfter the necessities of life are fessionals in our industry attained (air, food, and drink) working together. It’s interestgood relationships come into ing how different generations focus. We were created for relate to one another and how Schwab relationships. Working on our culture has changed the relationships consumes much way we treat each other and of our lives. Even though loggers the value we place on each other. The work in the woods away from most way we view relationships depends people we still spend a lot of time on what generation we are in and working on relationships. what we expect from one another. We all know that if we have relaMy grandfather’s generation— tionship problems, especially with the “the builder generation”—built our opposite sex, it can consume our industry into a mechanized workthoughts and energy. During safety place. Their relationships were training we are encouraged to leave strictly business. Most of their genour personal issues off the job, but we eration acted honorably because it all know that is impossible. That’s was the right thing to do. They how much relationships affect our operated out of a sense of duty. Not lives. Even if we have a hard time that they didn’t value people or relating to people, we still end up relationships, but they had a job to having relationships with our pets. I do and a moral code they operated think that’s why I have two dogs that on for the betterment of the compago to work with me every day. ny or industry. This has made the What I want to discuss here are work environment as stable and our professional relationships and predictable as it could be. how they’ve changed over the years. As the years went by my dad’s
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generation—“the baby boom generation”—took the industry to the next level. In a lot of ways this generation has made our industry what it is today. We see the relationships turning into a more self-serving role. “How can I get ahead?” “I don’t care who I need to step on to get to where I want to be.” This has made our workplace and industry unpredictable. Not that the boomers don’t care about people, but it is a different set of values based on self-focus rather than the betterment of the company or industry. Now, as my dad’s generation is getting ready to retire, my generation—“generation X”—is in our 40s and ready to take the reins. We, because of experiencing the two generations before us, and seeing the benefits and downsides to both, crave something different. We value the personal side of relationships more than just the “strictly business” or “what is best for me.” We want to win, but experience a win for both parties. Think about it. What would our
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relationships and our industry look like if we did what Jesus and our moms told us to do? Could our business and our industry be better? Could we get a win/win not just because it is the right thing to do or because it is best for my personal interests? There is no one right way to evaluate relationships. You see things through a lens of your personal experiences and from how and when you were raised. I think we would all do better if we applied “Do to others as you would like them to do to you.” (Luke 6:31) Schwab is president of the American Loggers Council and procurement manager for M.A. Rigoni, Inc., a full service timber harvesting and forest management company located in Perry, Fla. The American Loggers Council is a non-profit 501(c) (6) corporation representing professional timber harvesters in 30 states. Visit amloggers.com or phone 409-625-0206.
Equity Firm Plans To Beef Up Morbark Stellex Capital Management has acquired in-woods chipper, recycling
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INDUSTRY NEWS ROUNDUP and sawmill machinery manufacturer Morbark. The acquisition is focused on providing growth capital and resources to significantly expand the company, according to a statement. “Our acquisition of Morbark is a great fit for us. We believe the company is well-positioned to grow in the coming years, and we are confident that the capital and resources we bring will fuel that growth,” says
David Waxman, principal of Stellex. Lon Morey, Morbark CEO and son of the late founder, Norval Morey, comments, “Though always difficult to leave a family business, we felt this was the right time with the right investor who can build on the legacy my father started and I have spent my entire life dedicated to.” Morbark will remain in Winn, Mich., where it started in 1957 and
which today is home to headquarters and manufacturing facilities. The company states, “Upon Mr. Morey’s death, the family was left to keep things going and they have been very successful with that. However, Mr. Morey’s family wants what is best for the company and the employees going forward and has decided that the best thing…is to let someone that has more resources
take Morbark to the next level.” The company adds that it is not in financial trouble; on the contrary is poised to grow sales because of the successes it has realized in recent years. The company also says the new owners have no plans to relocate the company. Stellex’s focus is on middle-market companies going through transitions, as well as special situation opportunities. While existing product lines will continue to be manufactured, emphasis on new products and new markets is expected. The plan is also for the company to improve the quality of its products and reduce warranty costs, improve information systems, and reduce inventory to free up money for investment in other technology for the plant, and overall look for better ways to manufacture its products. Current Morbark officers, President Jim Shoemaker and VP of Sales and Marketing John Foote, will continue in their positions; while Dan Ruskin will become the new CEO.
SWPA Equipment Expo Planned For Valdosta A Logging & Transportation Expo will be held June 10-11 at the Rainwater Convention Center in Valdosta, Ga. in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Southeastern Wood Producers Assn. (SWPA). According to Tommy Carroll, Executive Director of SWPA, this year’s expo will build on a similar event held in concert with the group’s 2014 meeting on Jekyll Island. “Valdosta’s location is better suited for its proximity to logging companies and their employees, and the convention center is more convenient for vendors. We expect a larger attendance and greater participation overall,” he explains. SWPA is changing its usual meeting format to include a Friday morning continuing education program, good for four credits. One segment will focus on the many trucking challenges confronting loggers and log truckers. It will feature Jimmie Locklear of Forestry Mutual Insurance Co., who will give an interesting, eye-opening presentation titled Log Truck Safety—The TEAM Approach. In addition to displays of the latest logging equipment, attachments, supplies and services, this year’s expo will also have two new features: a loader competition and live chipping demonstration. On Friday the expo begins at 1 52
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INDUSTRY NEWS ROUNDUP p.m. and closes at 6 p.m. It resumes at 8 a.m. Saturday. The loader competition runs from 9 a.m.-3 p.m., with the chipper demo starting at 1 p.m. Indoor exhibits will close at 2:30 p.m. so the area can be prepared for the evening banquet, which will feature well-known speaker Steve Gilliland, who will present “Enjoy The Ride,” his blueprint for getting the most out of life. Pre-event activities include a June 9 “skeet and eat” sporting clays competition and a morning golf tournament on June 10, the proceeds of which will be donated to Log-A-Load for Kids program. For more information, call 904845-7133 or visit swpa.ag.
“Tremendous Year” For SLC In 2015 According to Todd Martin, Executive Director/CEO of Southern Loggers Cooperative (SLC), the organization had “a tremendous year” in 2015. Some highlights: a membership increase of 450-plus to bring the total to 2,300; fuel sales of 32.4 million gallons, up from 26.9 million gallons in 2014; a net profit increase that exceeded $300,000; and the addition of three more fuel stations— Moundville, Ala., Mansfield, La., and Lufkin, Tex. SLC later this year expects to return about $1.4 million in dividends to its members. This amount will be greater than the 2014 dividend, Martin informs. Last year SLC expanded its office space from 1,600 to 3,200 sq. ft. and earlier this year added another person
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to its accounting department to keep its high efficiency level intact. It still has only seven employees, which Martin says manages to turn out a tremendous volume of work. This year Martin expects the SLC to sell 36 million gallons of fuel. It is steadily adding new stations, two more of which will soon come on in South Carolina. It currently has 27 stations in seven states. It is looking to expand in both Louisiana and Mississippi, is exploring opportunities in Arkansas, Florida and Georgia, and, in the words of Martin, “is actively working with the Professional Loggers of Maine to expand our footprint to the far Northeast.” Martin notes SLC has grown and expanded its tire and parts programs and hopes to establish respective programs for lubricants and certain types of insurance. Last year SLC was named one of the top 10 cooperatives in America by the Mid-American Cooperative Council. For more information, visit southernloggers.com.
SYP Industry Suffers Loss William Dwight Harrigan II, a longtime producer and leader in the southern pine lumber industry, died at his home in Fulton, Ala. on February 28. He was 78. Harrigan grew up in the longestablished, already legendary family lumber business at Scotch Lumber Co. in Fulton. He followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and became mill manager, then
president and CEO, and played a key role in the expansion of the company with the addition of Scotch Plywood, then Scotch Forestry and Land Management. He also formed with his father, William (Billy), another lumber operation, Harrigan Lumber Co. in Monroeville, Ala., and became president for many years. Harrigan Lumber sawmill continues to run today with Dwight’s son, Patrick, as president, another son, Chip, as chairman of the board, and a third son, Jeff, as a board member. Harrigan’s son, Patrick, says that of all the comments people have made since his father’s passing, the one theme that stands out was Dwight Harrigan’s generosity. “He was always giving of his time and resources to many causes both local and around the nation and world,” Patrick says. “I think that spirit is why so many of our employees have worked for Harrigan Lumber Co. for so long. My father established an environment that let his employees know that they were important to this company and to him personally.” Harrigan’s dedication to the forest industry led to years of volunteer service. He was president and treasurer of Alabama Forestry Assn. as well as the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. He was chairman of Southern Forest Products Assn., and a director of Southeastern Lumber Manufacturers Assn. He served on the Forest Industries Council of Timber Valuation and Taxation, National Forest Products Assn. Board and Auburn Forestry Advisory Committee. His interest in education and desire
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to help his fellow man led him to serve in many capacities and lend financial support to numerous educational institutions, hospitals and foundations. Harrigan loved the outdoors and was an avid hunter, fisherman and conservationist. He treasured good times spent at his hunting lodge with family and friends.
Celebration Service Honors Glen Yake, Jr. Funeral services for highly respected hardwood logger-lumberman Glen Yake, Jr. were held February 26 in Springfield, Mo. Yake, 63, died on February 22, the result of an on-the-job accident. Survivors include his widow, three sons, four grandchildren, one brother and one sister.
Exhibitors Signing Up For Mid-South Show As of late March, 54 exhibitors had booked space for the 2016 MidSouth Forestry Equipment Show, set for August 26-27 in Starkville, Miss. The list includes companies ranging from logging equipment and attachment manufacturers to insurance providers. The live logging equipment demo, the longest running event of its type in the South, will again be staged at the Charles E. Burkhardt Pavilion & Site, located about six miles south of Starkville along Mississippi highway 25. Continuing education courses for loggers, foresters and landowners
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will again be offered, and the Mississippi Loggers Assn. will hold its biennial banquet on-site on Friday, August 26. Pre-registration will be open beginning on May 30. Visit midsouthforestry.org or call 662-325-2191 for more information.
Morbark Praises Top Four Dealers Morbark honored four of its top dealers for earning Gold Tier Dealer status during a company sponsored “Industrial Boot Camp” in Hattiesburg, Miss. The four dealers are: Cardinal Equipment, Deacon Equipment, James River Equipment
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and Tidewater Equipment. Mobark dealers are reviewed and scored annually on customer service, business plan, equipment and parts sales, warranty efforts and more. After the 2015 review, James River and Tidewater retained their Gold status for the third straight year, while Cardinal and Deacon earned their first Gold rankings.
Pellet Operation Files For Bankruptcy A week after an insolvency court in Germany initiated proceedings against the assets of German Pellets GmbH, one of German Pellets’ affiliate wood pellet operations in
the U.S., Louisiana Pellets (also German Pellets Louisiana), commenced filings for Chapter 11 with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The Louisiana Pellets operation in Urania, La. was planned for two startup phases. Phase one for 500,000 tons of annual wood pellet production was substantially completed in late 2015 and put into limited production to conduct required emissions and production tests. However, according to the company, those tests revealed defective electrical work, which would take until this summer to correct. Phase two, which was supposed to bring annual production to 1 million tons, was still under construction.
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AFEX, John Deere Tackle Fire Protection AFEX Fire Suppression Systems and John Deere have teamed up to make it easy for loggers to protect their machines from fire. AFEX systems are now available as a factoryinstalled option on John Deere fellerbunchers and skidders. Simply choose the appropriate option code at the time of purchase to ensure your machine will be delivered with a factory-approved fire protection system. The cost of the system will be included within the financing package. Contact an AFEX Specialist at 919-781-6610 or visit deere.afexsystems.com.
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AT THE MARGINS Creating A Safe Work Environment By Jari Mennala Director, Sales-Marketing John Deere Forestry U.S./Canada/Latin America As a logger, many things compete for your attention, among them: a harsh and changing envi-
ronment, long hours, looming deadlines, managing a fleet and crews. Any one of these could distract you from operating safely, which is why it is so essential that safety remain the focus of everything you do. Today’s machines are equipped with modern safety features, but at
the end of the day, keeping your equipment and work environment safe is up to you and your employees. Safety is everyone’s responsibility, and there are important steps that can (and should) be taken to ensure the safety and health of everyone on a logging team. There is a wealth of information available on workplace safety and safety programs within the workplace. Across the board, several common themes arise: 1) all injuries and fatalities are preventable; 2) visible management, commitment and consistent “leading by example” are the keys to success in safety; 3) a sustainable improvement in safety comes through change in attitudes and behavior of people; 4) communication and reporting is incredibly valuable; and 5) safety begins at home and in our daily lives. The idea is that safety in the workplace is a continuation of safety in our daily lives. Creating a culture of safety, according to industry and agency experts, is to maintain effective standards to protect workers. Standards are voluntary practice guidelines to help workplaces meet regulatory requirements. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when creating your own culture of safety within your organization. Develop a safety policy. Having a strong, structured policy in place to ensure everyone on your team is aligned in terms of safety is an ideal first step. Whether your logging operation includes just a few machines or a large fleet, five employees or 50, ensuring your team has proper tools in place is crucial. Some key components of a safety policy may include: 1) Wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for the job you’re doing, including a hard hat, safety shoes, gloves, eye and hearing protection, and reflective clothing; 2) knowing where to find and how to use fire extinguishers or fire suppression systems and emergency equipment, including firstaid kits; 3) understanding jobsite rules and regulations related to your application and equipment. These expectations will vary according to work environment or geographical location. Commit to a safe workplace. Once a structured program is in place, it’s important that you constantly review the safety standards that apply to your work and ensure these standards are fully met by all employees. Demonstrating an ongoing, genuine commitment to workplace health and safety at all levels
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of the organization, from the top down, is key. It is also critical to ensure that all workers are properly trained and supervised by competent personnel. Young and/or new workers tend to have more injuries, largely due to inadequate training and supervision. Make health and safety an integral part of organizational meetings, hiring, promoting, objectives, publications, and reviews. If you’re in need of additional support, contact a safety association, private consultant or the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) for more information. Safety and your equipment. Forestry equipment manufacturers are making great strides in the name of safety. For example, the John Deere L and M series machines were designed so that all filters, grease points and critical components are easily reached from ground level. This keeps the operator safe from slips and also reduces maintenance time. John Deere has also gone to great lengths to increase visibility across its entire portfolio of forestry machines. The improved sightline on the front, sides and rear of the cab helps increase productivity and keeps the operator safe by enabling him to be more aware of what is going on around his machine. Practice regular safety inspections. Without a doubt, safety inspections should also be an essential part of every logging operation’s safety routine. Not only are they necessary for the well being of your crew, they are also a crucial step to keep your machines operating efficiently and issue-free throughout a product’s lifecycle. Fortunately, these frequently overlooked practices are some of the easiest to perform, and typically don’t require a mechanic or specialist. Many inspections can be conducted monthly, while a few may be needed more often, depending on operating conditions. Playing it safe with regular inspections will go a long way toward optimized working conditions for your crew, increased productivity, reduced downtime and lower overall operating costs. When in doubt, check with your dealer for additional information on safety inspections to incorporate in your maintenance routine. Whether you are just starting out or an established logging operation with years of experience, safety is good for your business. Good safety practices save lives, prevent injuries and improve your bottom line. SLT
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Collapsing Log Stack Kills Log Yard Worker BACKGROUND: On a cold, early spring morning in the Southeast, a log yard worker was removing a plastic tarp covering a stack of veneer logs that had recently been steamed prior to the log peeling process. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS: The 20-year-old log yard worker had been working full-time for the company for a few years. When he was originally hired, he had received verbal instructions on his yard duties from the manager, in addition to instruction from other yard workers on how to apply the tarps and uncover the veneer logs. UNSAFE ACTS & CONDITIONS: The yard worker exited the front-end loader he was operating and approached a pile of logs stacked 12 to 14 feet high. He removed some pieces of wood that were lying on top of the tarp and then climbed approximately 14 feet
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up to the top end to begin removing the tarp. Although this log stack had an end metal brace (approximately 10 feet by 10 feet) against which logs could be stacked to prevent them from rolling, post-accident investigation by the state OSHA agency discovered that the end logs had not been positioned against the metal upright brace. ACCIDENT: While the victim was removing the plastic tarp and standing on the pile, some of the logs shifted, rolled down, and pinned the victim from his waist down. INJURY: A saw operator noticed the partially uncovered log pile and
observed that no logs had been moved to the veneer processing deck—this was probably within 15 minutes of the accident. He walked over to the area, and he found the victim, pinned and unconscious. The co-worker ran to get assistance from additional employees to rescue the pinned worker, and one employee called 911. When EMS arrived approximately 15 minutes later, the victim was not breathing and had no pulse. The medical examiner arrived shortly after that and pronounced the victim dead (due to crushing injuries and bleeding). RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CORRECTION: The NIOSH Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program report describing this incident made the following recommendations: Employers should develop an
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engineering control measure to eliminate the hazards associated with the need to climb on stacked logs to apply or remove tarp coverings. (The employer has since built a concrete foundation with a permanent tarp cover on a fixed frame over each of the log steaming stacks, which eliminates the need for workers to climb the piles.) Additionally, companies can develop and utilize a yard safety checklist as part of its standard operating procedure. Employers should ensure that logs are properly stacked, secured, and maintained in a manner that eliminates worker exposure to injury from logs falling or rolling from the stack. Employers should develop, implement, and enforce a comprehensive occupational safety and health program and provide worker training that includes hazard recognition and the avoidance of unsafe conditions. Such training should include individual assessments to assure that workers are competent in the recognition of hazards and safe work practices, and the employer should document the content, dates, and names of employees completing the training. Supplied by Forest Resources Assn.
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Dead Tree Strikes Logger On Windy Day BACKGROUND: On a windy, fall afternoon in the Appalachians, a logger was felling and bucking timber. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS: The 56-year-old logging business owner had been a logger for many years. He was experienced and “fully trained,” and he was wearing personal protective equipment, including a hard hat. UNSAFE ACT AND CONDITIONS: The logger apparently failed to notice that there was a large, dead tree in the area where he was cutting and bucking timber. There were strong wind gusts on the afternoon of the incident. He was using his chain saw to trim limbs off a felled white pine tree that was close to the dead tree.
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ACCIDENT: The dead tree fell or blew over, pulling its roots out of the ground and striking the logger’s head. INJURY: The hard hat was not enough to protect the logger. (The tree trunk was about 18 inches in diameter at the point where it hit the logger.) When the skidder operator returned from the log deck to the area where the logger was working, he found the logger, already dead. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CORRECTION: Do not manually fell and trim timber during periods of high winds. Always look up and around the immediate working area to identify hazards before beginning felling operations. OSHA logging regulations specify
that “each danger tree, including lodged trees and snags, shall be felled or removed using mechanical or other techniques that minimize employee exposure before work is commenced in the area of the danger tree. If the danger tree is not felled or removed, it shall be
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marked and no work shall be conducted within two tree lengths of the danger tree unless the employer demonstrates that a shorter distance will not create a hazard for an employee.” Supplied by Forest Resources Assn.
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MACHINES-SUPPLIES-TECHNOLOGY John Deere E-Series Loader
John Deere’s latest upgrade to its lineup of logging equipment is the Final Tier 4 437E knuckleboom loader, which is full of features that will further improve job site productivity and uptime, while lowering daily operating costs. The E-Series upgrade comes just one year after the release of John Deere’s L-Series skidders and wheeled feller bunchers and M-Series tracked feller-bunchers and tracked harvesters. Brandon O’Neal, product marketing manager, John Deere Construction & Forestry, comments, “To design the E-Series, John Deere collected invaluable insights from our Customer Advocacy Groups (CAGs) and responded with machines that meet the uptime, fuel efficiency and performance needs, that we know are paramount to a logger’s business and success.” Most noteworthy, the 437E delivers a 5%
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increase in both swing torque and boom lift over previous models for more productive delimbing and truck loading times. John Deere made several updates to the ESeries with uptime in mind. The 437E boasts a 173 HP Final Tier 4 engine that uses the same FT4 after treatment perfected in the 700K forestry crawler dozers, providing the reassurance of a proven system. The 437E also uses the same hydraulic system that has proven to be reliable on previous models. The 437E boasts improved serviceability as well. A ground-level oil drain and filter change make hydraulic oil and filter maintenance much faster and safer. Additionally, an optional electric refill pump simplifies service even further. The hydraulic oil reservoir capacity has been reduced from 80 to 35 gallons. Additional improvements include a faster, easier CB radio installation and an updated electrical system. Integrated circuit boards replaced the fuse panel and relay board, offering improved reliability by eliminating relays and a dramatic reduction of wiring and connections in the circuit board area. All John Deere knuckleboom loaders come standard with the JDLink machine monitoring system and remote diagnostics as part of the John Deere ForestSight package of customerdriven technology solutions. Visit johndeere.com.
Tigercat Steep Slope F-B
The new Tigercat LX830D feller-buncher for steep slope felling features tight tuck boom geometry and minimal tail swing. It takes steep slope felling to the next level with a number of improvements aimed at service access, ergonomics and hydraulic efficiency. The 330 HP Tigercat FPT C87 Tier 4f engine is housed in a completely redesigned upper enclosure with significantly improved right hand side visibility. At the push of a button, the clamshell style enclosure fully opens with swing-out side doors for easy access to critical components, daily maintenance points and both sides of the engine. A larger fuel tank increases capacity to 155 gallons and includes ground level fueling. The new cab structure with narrower front posts and larger side windows enhances visibility.
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MACHINES-SUPPLIES-TECHNOLOGY The skylight has been replaced by a camera system providing the operator with a much wider field of view. The LX830D is now standard-equipped with LED lighting for improved productivity in nightshift operations.
The updated cab interior is quieter and instrumentation is placed to optimize ergonomics. The electronic control system interface is an intuitive 7" color touchscreen for machine monitoring and function adjustment. There are also multiple mounting points for additional electronic devices, an auxiliary input port, Bluetooth audio with hands free calling and two 12 VDC power outlets. With massive cylinders, thick steel and tapered roller bearings, the leveling system provides reliability and long life. Visit tigercat.com.
Tigercat D-Series Shovel Loggers
Tigercat has released the D-series shovel loggers in North America. Operating at 282 HP, the Tigercat FPT powered S855D and LS855D meet Tier 4 emission requirements. Tigercat will continue to offer the C-series shovel loggers in South America, Australia and New Zealand. The S855D series machines are a versatile solution for steep slope and sensitive site logging applications. The LS855D is well suited to felling, pre-bunching and shovel logging on steep terrain. The LS855D is commonly equipped with a feller director boom and the Tigercat 5195 directional felling head for felling and shovel logging. Alternatively the carriers can be equipped with a live heel boom system and grapple for pure shovel logging. Along with the high flotation undercarriage, this is an excellent configuration for Southern U.S. style log matbased lowland logging applications. With the patented Tigercat ER boom and energy recovery swing system, the S855D series can cost effectively forward wood to roadside in steep or wet soil conditions up to distances of 260-330". Unlike excavator-based shovel loggers with add-on forestry packages, the S855D and LS855D are purpose-built for heavy duty forestry applications. The efficient hydraulic system is optimized for shovel logging and felling with a directional felling head. The LS855D is equipped with Tigercat’s patented leveling system. It uses two massive hydraulic cylinders and heavy steel sections. The ramped undercarriage allows the machines to easily drive up over rocks and stumps. Visit tigercat.com. About MACHINESSUPPLIES-TECHNOLOGY Products All products presented here were submitted by manufacturers, who are responsible for any and all claims made. SLT reserves the right to edit for style and space considerations. How To Submit Products Electronic images and copy (please be brief) are required. Images should be scanned as 300 dpi and saved as either tiff or eps files. E-mail to rich@hattonbrown.com. Ship disks to Rich Donnell, P.O. Box 2268, Montgomery, AL 36102-2268 or to 225 Hanrick St., Montgomery, AL 36104-3317. Ph. 334-834-1170.
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2012 John Deere 437D Knuckleboom Loader STK# LU225667; 6,080 hrs $124,000
2012 John Deere 643K Feller Buncher STK# LU645108; 4,716 hrs $108,000
2007 Prentice 2470 with Mulcher STK# LUVB1971; 3,992 hrs $155,000
2013 John Deere 848H Skidder STK# LU652358; 4,892 hrs $165,000
2013 John Deere 648H Skidder STK# LU654754; 4,267 hrs $168,000
2013 John Deere 843K Feller Buncher STK# LU625805; 5,521 hrs $105,000
2012 Chambers Delimber STK# LUD10327; 4,690 hrs $65,000
2013 John Deere 748H Skidder STK# LU652927; 5,094 hrs $165,000
2012 John Deere 648H Skidder STK# LU645165; 7,490 hrs $115,000
2005 Tigercat 718 w/ 20" Tigercat 2010 CAT 545C D/A grapple, CAT C7 5000 bunching head, Cummins engine, 232hp; 8585 hours; 16.6 grapple, Tires: 12,000 hrs., Tires: new Firestone 30.5x32, clean & painted........$139,500 30.5x32 tires .........................$62,500
2003 Barko 395ML Log Loader, John Deere engine, 7400 hrs., plumbed for bucksaw & delimber, Rotobec grapple ..............................................$35,000
2006 CSI FDT-6000 Debarker and 363 Delimber, runs off loader, 2 chain flail delimber, ideal for 1st and 2st thinning ..................................$36,500 or OBO
2013 Bandit 2290 drum-style whole tree chipper, CAT 440HP with 1175 hrs.; radio control, 10' infeed conveyor, pintle hitch, engine warranty ............$189,000
2010 Bandit 2290 drum style whole tree chipper, CAT 350HP with 2143 hrs.; radio control, infeed conveyor, pintle hitch ...........................$102,000
2005 Tigercat H822 Harvestor with Waratah 622B Processor head; Cummins QSC8.3 engine, 28" pads ............................................$128,000
1998 Franklin C5500 Feller Buncher 1996 Timbco 415-B Feller Buncher w/ with Koehring/Waterous 20" sawhead; Quadco 20" sawhead; Cummins Cummins 8.3 engine with 8369 hrs.; 6BTA5.9; 32" pads ...................$29,500 Tires: 73x44x32 .....................$21,500
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** FRLIVEEERY E
** FREE DELI
30 DAY POWERTRAIN WARRANTY
VERY
D
SKIDDERS
SKIDDERS
FELLER BUNCHERS
FELLER BUNCHERS
MULCHERS
2012 John Deere 748H Grapple Skidder – 7,800 hours, 2 new, 2 good 30.5 x 32 tires, Cab with air, Winch, Ready to work! ....Reduced to $135,000
2011 Cat 535C Dual Arch Skidder – 8,684 hours, 2 New, 2 very good 30.5 x 32 tires, Cab with air, Winch, Ready to work!.....Reduced to $119,500
2013 Prentice 2470C Feller Buncher - 3,934 hours, Cat C6.6 Tier 3 engine, SC57 Center post saw head, very good 28L tires, Cab with air, Ready to work! Reduced to $159,500
2010 Prentice 2570 Feller Buncher– 6,130 hours, 2,931 engine hours, 28L tires, Waratah FD22 saw head, 6.7 Cummins engine, Cab with air, Ready to work! .........$115,000
2011 Prentice 2470 Mulcher – NEW FAE 200U/225 smooth drum mulching head, NEW high pressure pump and hoses, 6.7 Cummins engine, Cab with air, Good 28L tires, 4,500 hours on machine, 0 hours since the conversion from a Feller Buncher. Rent to own with approved credit ($17,000 per month). ................................................$189,500
2011 John Deere 748H Grapple Skidder - 8,300 hours, Good 30.5 x 32 tires, Cab with air, Winch, Ready to work! .............Reduced to $125,000
2010 Cat 525C Dual Arch Skidder – 8,000 hours, 2 New, 2 good 30.5 x 32 tires, Cab with air, Winch, Ready to work! ..................................$109,500
2012 Cat 573C Feller Buncher – 5,200 hours, SC-57 Center post saw head, Cab with air, 28L tires, C7.1 Cat engine, Ready to work! .............Reduced to $145,000
1999 Tigercat 720B Feller Buncher – Center Post saw head, Good 28L tires, Cummins engine.................$49,500
2005 Hydro – Ax 721E Mulcher - 3,400 hours, Fecon BH250 Mulching Head, Good 28L tires, Cab with air, John Deere engine. ............$145,000
MULCHERS
LOADERS
2014 Barko 930 Mulcher - 1,300 hours,FAE 300U smooth drum mulching head, 28L tires, Cab with air. Rent to own with approved credit ($20,000 per month)............. ........................................$269,500
2012 Prentice 2384 Log Loader – 7,310 hours, Mounted on trailer with CTR 426 Delimber, Cab with air, Cummins engine. Ready to work$129,500
2011 John Deere 748H Grapple Skidder - 8,255 hours, 2 new, 2 good 30.5 x 32 tires, Winch, Cab with air, Ready to work! ....Reduced to $125,000
2010 Prentice 2432 Grapple Skidder - 6,779 hours, Good 30.5 x 32 tires, Winch, Cab with air, Cummins engine, New hydraulic pump, Ready to work!
2012 Cat 563C Feller Buncher – 4,592 hours, Prentice SH56B bunching head, Good 28L tires, C7.1 Cat engine, Cab with air, Ready to work! .............Reduced to $129,500
FELLER BUNCHERS
800-983-1971 Office : 903-238-8700 Shane Fuller : 903-235-1147 Jason Bruner: 903-452-5290
2012 Cat 535C Dual Arch Skidder – 5,800 hours, 3 New, 1 very good - 35.5 x 32 tires, Cab with air, Winch. Ready to work! ...Reduced to $149,500
2013 Cat 563C – 3,900 hours, SC-57 Center post saw head, Cab with air, 30.5 x 32 tires, C7.1 Cat engine, Ready to work! ....Reduced to $159,500
2012 John Deere 643K Feller Buncher – 5,410 hours, Good 28L tires, Waratah FD22B saw head, Cab with air, Ready to work! ........................ $149,500
www.equipmentandparts.com Forestry & Construction Equipment Used & rebuilt Parts
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EQUIPMENT FINANCING
7195
• Preferred Good Credit Plans • Rough Credit Plans (turned down, tax liens, bankruptcies)
• Purchases • Refinance • Start-up Business • Loans Against Your Existing Equipment for QUICK CASH! 2-Hour Approvals! Low Monthly Payments Little or No Down Payments
15 Years In Business CALL NOW
985-875-7373 Fax: 985-867-1188
Email: coastalcapital@bellsouth.net Personal Service
Ask For L.T. DEALERS WELCOME
1447
FOR SALE ’12 JD 759J, FD 20 head, 5461 903-277-9902
2726
hrs, complete new undercarriage minus pads at 4480 hrs, 28" pads, clean dry, no leaks, fire suppression system, tier 3, 240 horse engine.................$249,900
FOR SALE
SOME DAYS ARE DIAMONDS! CAT: 366-8021 RING GEAR & PINION SET......$1,250 JOHN DEERE 843H: AT168958 TILT CYLINDER ........................$1,250 TIGERCAT: 5700 COMPLETE SAW HEAD ........$18,500
CONTACT: 478.550.2330 - Keith 478.256.4063 - Gary
8 Converted in-woods Chip Vans All in good condition ........$6,500 ea.
804-586-7198
213
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FORESTRYPARTSRESOURCE.COM
Please send me _______ bumper stickers at $5 each. Enclosed is $__________ total.
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Serco 200F Log Loader Tier 3 John Deere 175 HP engine!!! 32' boom, Carrier/Slasher hydraulics, air conditioner, joysticks ...................CALL FOR PRICE
Serco 170A Log Loader Tier 3 John Deere 175 HP engine!!! 30' boom, Slasher hydraulics, air conditioner, joysticks .....CALL FOR PRICE
4 Loaders to choose from 8 – 748s & 648s to choose 5 Cutters to choose from ..............................$CALL from.........................$CALL .................................$CALL
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SKIDDERS
CAT 559C (0KAS00258), 2013, 5716 HRS., CPY, GRPL, H48 TRLR, DELIMBER ........................................................$153,000
DEERE 670 (HA18975), 2005, 11686 HRS., CAB, AC, 30.5X32 ..............................................................................CALL
CAT 525C (052500404), 2007, 14878 HRS., CAB, AC, 30.5, 14.4 BUNCHING GRPL, WINCH.......................................CALL
CAT 579B (PR65023), 2011, 9265 HRS., CAB, AC, 11-22.5 TRLR, GRPL, DELIMBER ..................................................CALL
PRENTICE 2470 (PB19355), 2007, 11347 HRS., CAB, AC, SH50 SAW......................................................................$82,500
CAT 535C (053500623), 2012, 5378 HRS., CAB, AC, 30.5L-32 26 PR FS 2X RING, GRPL, WINCH...................................CALL
PRENTICE 529DS (PR61917), 2006, 8376 HRS., 50-55 GRPL, EVAN 45’ TRLR, CTR 320 DELIMBER ..........................$89,500
CAT 545C (054500304), 2006, 9788 HRS., CAB, AC, 35.5-32, DUAL ARCH GRPL, WINCH..........................................$99,500
DEERE 435 (WC0435X012172), 2004, 16828 HRS., CAB, AC, 52 GRAPPLE, BIG JOHN TRLR, 11R-22.5, DELIMBER...CALL
DEERE 848H (DW848HX614552), 2008, 11683 HRS., CAB, AC, 30.5X32, GRPL........................................................$47,000
KNUCKLEBOOM LOADERS CAT 559B (PR65147), 2011, 8569 HRS., CAB, AC, 5055TWR50 GPL, EVANS 48’ TRLR, CTR 30 DELIMBER......... ......................................................................................$112,500
FELLER BUNCHERS CAT 563C (0JCB00324),2013, 5600 HRS., CAB, AC, SAWHEAD............................................................................$165,000 CAT 563C (0W6300120), 2013, 4978 HRS., CAB, AC, 30.5, SH56B HEAD.....................................................................CALL
PRENTICE 2570 (PB19613), 2008, 10457 HRS., CAB, AC, 28L-26, SH50 SAWHEAD ..............................................$95,000 TIGERCAT 726 (7260852), 1997, 10000 HRS., CAB, AC, 30.532, 22’’ SAWHEAD .........................................................$24,500 TIMBCO TL735B (13110408), 2008, 5669 HRS, AC, QUADCO HEAD HOT SAW ..........................................................$289,500
SCREENS
CAT 573C (0RJT00256), 2012, 3657 HRS., CAB, AC, 30.5L-32, SH56B SAW .................................................................$208,500
CAT 559B (00PR65586), 2013, 6106 HRS., CAB, AC, GRPL, PITTS H48 W/ HYD TRLR, DELIMBER .......................$144,000
DOPPSTADT SM720 (W0962121781D07286), 2009, 2475 HRS., 7’ 20’’ DRUM W/ 3/4 ‘’ PUNCH PLATE, 435/50R19.5..... ......................................................................................$250,000
HYDRO-AX 470 (HA18564), 2004, 9968 HRS., CAB, AC, 28LX26 ...........................................................................$44,500
CHIPPERS
CAT 559B (00PR65341), 2012, 6505 HRS., CAB, AC, PITTS TRAILER, CTR DELIMBER, GRPL...............................$172,500
DEERE 843K (1DW843KXT90627494), 2010, 16029 HRS., CAB, AC, 73X44X32, FD22B SAW ................................$85,000
PETERSON 4300 (43-07-1704), 2010, 5500 HRS., CAT C18 765HP, 36X40 WIDE DRUM, BABBITT KNIFE ............$125,000
CAT 545C (054500304),2006, 9788 HOURS, CAB, AC, 35.5-32, DUAL ARCH GRAPPLE, WINCH .....................$99,500
CAT 563C (0JCB00324), 2013, 5600 HOURS, CAB, AC, SAWHEAD ..................................................$165,000
PRENTICE 2570 (PB19613), 2008, 10547 HRS., CAB, AC, 28L-26, SH50 SAWHEAD ..........................................$95,000
DOPPSTADT SM720 (W0962121 781D07286), 2009, 2475 HRS., 7' 20" DRUM W/ 3/4" PUNCH PLATE, 435/50R19.5 .............................$250,000
2891
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FOR SALE
249
PETERSON 4800E DEBARKER (1E1611689) C9 CAT EXCELLENT CONDITION
FOR SALE
5) OPEN TOP CHIP TRAILERS: 3–PEERLESS 2–CRESCENT CONTACT: 706.326.3000 – HUGH 706.741.4677 – KEITH
2004 John Deere 853-G Track Cutter ............$67,000....$63,500
Financing Available
Scott Christian 580-236-5358
FOR SALE
• 430B Timberjack Loader...............$30,000 • 648G John Deere Grapple Skidder ..................................................$25,000 • 525C CAT Skidder, Single Arch, Grapple Skidder.......................................$35,000
678-588-9355 13159
HOSE, FITTINGS & CRIMPERS SERVING THE LOGGING INDUSTRY FOR 20 YEARS. WE CAN SAVE YOU MONEY.
Tim Alligood Days or Nights: 1-252-341-9891
13177
770
Day 334-312-4136 Night 334-271-1475 or Email: johnwpynes@knology.net
566
IF YOU NEED
To buy or sell forestry, construction, utility or truck equipment, or if you just need an appraisal, contact me, Johnny Pynes with JM Wood Auction. Over 25 years experience.
I OFFER same day while you wait OR 2-day service on straightening and balancing all types of Feller Buncher sawdisks. Tooth holder repairs. Complex or severely bent sawdisks no problem, approx. 14years experience CALL CARLTON CARVER CARVER SAWDISK REPAIR Washington NC • (252) 945-2358
8309
OLIVER LOGGING COMPANY
1386
email: tim.cavalierhose@yahoo.com
www.southernloggintimes.com
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ADVERTISER AFEX Fire Suppression Systems American Logger’s Council American Truck Parts B & G Equipment Bandit Industries Big John Trailers Carter Enterprises Carter Machinery Cat Forest Products Cooper Forestry Equipment John Deere Forestry Doggett Machinery Service East Coast Sawmill Expo Eastern Equipment Brokerage Employer’s Underwriters Equipment & Parts Firestone Agricultural Tires Flint Equipment Forestry First Forestry Mutual Insurance Hawkins & Rawlinson HydraTech Systems Hydraulic & Pneumatic Services Industrial Cleaning Equipment Interstate Tire Service Ironmart Kaufman Trailers Lasyone Auctions Mike Ledkins Insurance Agency LMI-Tennessee Louisiana Machinery Magnolia Trailers Manac Maxi-Load Scale Systems Mid-South Forestry Equipment Show Moore Logging Supply Morbark Nokian Tyres Ozark Machinery Pemberton Attachments Peterson Pacific Pitts Trailers Prentice Puckett Machinery Quadco Equipment Quality Equipment & Parts River Ridge Equipment S E C O Parts & Equipment Southern Insurance Southern Loggers Cooperative Southern Tire Mart Stribling Equipment Team Safe Trucking Texas Timberjack Tidewater Equipment Tigercat Industries Timberblade Todd Sieber TraxPlus Trelan Manufacturing Tri-State Auction & Realty Truckworx Kenworth USA Woodlands Utility Trailer Sales VPG Onboard Weighing W & W Truck & Tractor Wallingford’s Waratah Forestry Attachments Watts Auction Realty Appraisal J M Wood Auction
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COMING EVENTS April 20-22—Virginia Forestry Assn. Summit, Sheraton Virginia Beach Oceanfront Hotel, Virginia Beach, Va. Call 804-278-8733; visit vaforestry.org.
May 4-6—Forest Resources Assn. annual meeting, Cheyenne Mountain Resort, Colorado Springs, Colo. Call 202296-3937; visit forestresources.org. 13-14—Expo Richmond 2016, Richmond Raceway Complex, Richmond, Va. Call 804-737-5625; visit exporichmond.com.
June 10-11—Southeastern Wood Producers Assn. Trade Show and annual meeting, James H Rainwater Conference Center, Valdosta, Ga. Call 904-845-7133; visit swpa.ag.
July 8-9—West Virginia Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Canaan Resort Conf. Center, Davis, W.Va. Call 304-372-1955; visit wvfa.org.
ence, The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. Call 336-885-8315; visit appalachianwood.org. 29-30—Missouri Forest Products Assn. annual meeting, The Elms, Excelsior Springs, Mo. Call 417336-5400; visit moforest.org.
August 25-27—Virginia Loggers Assn. annual meeting, Hotel Roanoke, Roanoke, Va. Call 434-589-1942; visit valoggers.org. 26-27—Mid-South Forestry Equipment Show, Starkville, Miss. Call 800-669-5613; visit midsouthforestry.org. 30-September 1—Florida Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Omni at Amelia Island Plantation Resort, Amelia Island, Fla. Call 850-2225646; visit floridaforest.org. 30-September 1—Louisiana Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Golden Nugget Resort and Casino, Lake Charles, La. Call 318-4432558; visit laforestry.com.
September
23-25—Georgia Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Jekyll Island Convention Center, Jekyll Island, Ga. Call 478992-8110; visit gfagrow.org.
11-13—Alabama Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Perdido Beach Resort, Orange Beach, Ala. Call 334-265-8733; visit alaforestry.org.
23-26—Appalachian Hardwood Manufacturers Summer Confer-
29-October 1—American Loggers Council annual meeting, Bay Point Resort, Panama City Beach, Fla. Call 409-625-0206; visit amloggers.com.
October 4-6—Arkansas Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Chancellor Hotel, Fayetteville, Ark. Call 501-3742441; visit arkforests.org. 5-7—North Carolina Forestry Assn. annual meeting, Grove Park Inn, Asheville, NC. Call 800-231-7723; visit ncforestry.org. 5-7—National Hardwood Lumber Assn. Annual Conv. & Exhibit Showcase, Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Call 901-3771818; visit nhla.com. 26-28—Texas Forestry Assn. annual meeting, La Torretta Lake Resort, Conroe, Tex. Call 936632-8733; visit texasforestry.org. Listings are submitted months in advance. Always verify dates and locations with contacts prior to making plans to attend.
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