Future

By Dana Doran

As this article goes to print, the snow is melting quickly, the road postings are up across the state and many winter time operations are grinding to a halt. While mud season can be a time of frustration for our membership as cash flow slows down and the attention turns to maintenance and catching up on paperwork, it is also a time to recharge the batteries after the big winter push before summer rolls around and wood is moving again.

Spring is also a time to reflect upon the industry, all that is good, and all that is bad as well as the opportunities and challenges. As I talk to our members and get the lay of the land out there, I have a sense the challenges are mounting and even though markets have opened up, there is less and less optimism about the future.

Back in December, based upon the instincts of the PLC Board and the input of the membership, the PLC conducted a survey of its members to determine what the employment needs were at that point in time. We were hearing that it was getting harder and harder to find help, that the markets were wide open, and they could harvest wood without hesitation, but the workforce could not fill the need. Rumors were rampant that mill yards were nearly empty week after week and there were not enough operators, truck drivers or mechanics to do the work. The survey we did was striking as we heard back from a majority of our membership and the numbers do not lie. As of January, just among the PLC membership, there were between 750-1,000 job openings and no real idea how to fill them. This was surprising in that we knew there were needs, but not at this size and scale.

At the same time, we also heard from the membership that competition for labor was fierce and members were not only having a challenging time hiring new employees, but they were losing employees at a rapid pace because of the opportunity to earn more money with better benefits and fewer hours outside of the industry. Some members even reported that they were losing employees to local mills that they delivered wood to. This is a recipe for disaster at exactly the wrong time as the state has been marketing itself as having a glut of softwood pulp and biomass which has motivated new investment in the state, but now there are real questions about who is going to do the work. If the contractor workforce was not really there, could all of these new investments actually come to fruition? Would investment continue to occur if logging and trucking capacity was in question?

Following the collection of survey data and the general idea that contractors could not fulfill the demands they had presently, not to mention the additional work they had on the horizon as a result of mill expansions, the PLC Board decided it was time to get a third party assessment of the labor and wage picture both now and the future. How do we stack up against other industries and is the company by company picture the same on a larger scale?

In February, the PLC reached out to the Maine Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Southern Maine and asked Dr. Ryan Wallace and his team to compare logging and trucking against other similar industries and determine what we are really up against with respect to wages and benefits. Is it nearly impossible to hire new employees or replace old ones if the pool of people with similar skills are not willing to work in logging and heavy duty trucking? If the sense of freedom and autonomy which has always driven employees to this business, along with the enjoyment of the outdoors, is not enough to attract them anymore if the wages and benefits are not competitive? Is the labor shortage real and is it attributable to low wages and long hours and the fact that contractors can’t afford to pay their employees more money and still remain profitable?

What we found was quite astounding and now we have the data to back it up.

Put simply, Maine is facing a shortage of loggers and log truckers that will grow and could hinder the growth of the forest products industry in the state if wage growth does not occur. Wages for logging equipment operators and log truckers in Maine are lower than those for comparable jobs in competing industries in the state, and this combined with a tight labor market and looming retirement for large numbers of loggers is not a positive sign.

This analysis simply confirms and reinforces what many in this industry have known for a long time. The root of Maine’s vital forest products economy - the logging industry - must be able to offer higher wages to compete for existing workers and attract new ones at a time when they are desperately needed to support a resurgent forest products industry.

The heart of the problem is profit margins for logging contractors have dwindled as costs of doing business have risen, limiting the ability of contractors to raise pay for workers. With low unemployment and strong competition for skilled operators of heavy machinery and trucks, logging contractors are struggling simply to keep the workers they have, let alone attract new ones.

As I mentioned previously, we know from surveying our own membership, that the industry is already unable to fill an estimated 750 to 1,000 jobs today. Add to that the projected loss of upwards of 200 workers per year over the next 10 years due to retirements, coupled with the need for more loggers and truckers to meet rising demand for wood from expansions that have been announced by mills in the state recently and you begin to see the extent of this problem.

In addition to Maine expansions already announced by mill owners including Verso, Sappi, Nine Dragons, and Pleasant River Lumber, the FOR/Maine (Forest Opportunity Roadmap), a broad coalition that the PLC is working with to diversify the

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JACKMAN - Russ Griffin was one year old when his family moved from Levant to the Jackman area, and he has lived in this Maine border region ever since, working in the woods from his early teenage years through decades of major change in the logging industry and the state.

His father, Reginald, and grandfather came to the area in the late 1960s when the industry was booming, trucking with wheelers for several years before getting into logging themselves in the 1970s. In 1976 his father was one of the partners who started Moose River Lumber company.

“

So my father went from trucking to logging to sawmilling,” Russ laughed, “That’s the woods business.”

Reginald got out of the sawmill business in 1981, going back to logging, and founding Jackman Lumber.

“That’s about when I got into it,” Russ said. “I started officially when I was about 15, but from 12 years old that was all I’ve done my whole life. The name Jackman Lumber came from when we had thoughts that he