Looking Ahead, Looking Behind

By Dana Doran

At the end of one year and the beginning of the next, it is always important to look in the rear-view mirror to see what transpired and to try to make improvements. 2019 was the 24th year for the PLC and our 25th year in 2020 should be even more productive as a result. We are looking forward to a monumental celebration of all that the organization has done over the past 25 years at our Annual Meeting on May 8, 2020 in Bangor.

Over the past year, I have spent a lot of time chronicling the challenges that the Maine logging industry has been up against. It has been a bumpy road as we have seen family-based businesses that that have been in operation for multiple generations either significantly downsize or go out of business completely.

Continuing with that theme, I have heard from quite a few of our members that they are reticent to recommend succession to their children because they just don’t see the future as being better than the past. If this is true, this is very concerning as family-based businesses generally don’t seek help from the outside.

As I’ve traveled across the state this fall and spoken with many of our members about their business operations, much of the focus has been on the “next generation.” There are a lot of young people that want to get into the logging industry or are kids of family-based businesses. More often than not I’m hearing that the ownership is telling them not to go into the family business and to look for other opportunities, go get that college degree, work in manufacturing or general construction or stay out of the business altogether. This is not a positive sign of a healthy bottom line and certainly should not be the number one take away from conversations when markets are coming back.

What it is a sign of is that family -based businesses are fed up. They are fed up with the long hours. They are fed up with the lack of family time. They are fed up with the lack of weekends and they are fed up enough to tell their kids that they shouldn’t be doing it.

This is a sad state of affairs and a message that will need to change if this industry is going to continue to provide fiber for mills to succeed in Maine.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, everyone must succeed in the chain. It can’t be two links of the chain that do well at the expense of another. It has to be all links of the chain in the end.

Businesses don’t decide to hang it up overnight and they don’t tell their children to move in another direction without deep reservation and thought. It happens generally as a result of a death by a thousand cuts and at some point, you have to give in.

Parents also shouldn’t have to tell their kids to go in another direction. They should be proud to have their children take over their business and thrive just like their grandparents did or the generation before. We must change the tone and the narrative so that this bad news story doesn’t continue.

To stem this tide and do our part to change the conversation, I have found myself trying to correct the wrongdoings of the past that many weren’t aware of,

Doran Continued Page 16

COBURN GORE - This year, Pepin Lumber Inc. adopted a new company logo in the shape of a steep mountain, and if you spend any time with owner Maurice Pepin and his logging crews, you’ll soon find out why.

Pepin Lumber routinely operates in some of the steepest, ruggedest terrain in Maine. When you travel through this mountainous region along the U.S.-Canadian border and see harvested slopes just below the peaks hundreds of feet above the valley floors, there’s a good chance Pepin Lumber crews were the ones who cut there.

Pepin Lumber started as a family business and it remains one today. Family members involved with the business include Maurice, his wife Julie, daughter Mylene, sons Cedric, Alex, and Carl, and Cedric’s wife, Marieeve.

The company has grown a lot since Maurice established it in 1981. Back then, Maurice had already logged with his father, Roland Pepin, for years with horses and later - over the objections of his father - with his first skidder, a Timberjack 230 that he bought in the late 1970s.

At one point Maurice did consider a career other than logging, and he even spent several months in Florida doing drywall, but he hated the heat and the work and he came back to the woods and logging. He has been doing it ever since, though when asked about retirement he said if it weren’t for his children being in the business, he’d be gone by now. Mylene doesn’t agree.

“You can take the logger out of the woods, but I don’t think you can get the ‘logger’ out of the guy, ever,” Mylene said of her father and his dedication to the woods and the business. “He’s off on Sundays, and he’ll be loading wood, and if he’s not in the woods logging, he’ll be tapping trees because him and his brother Philippe also own a sugar house.”

Pepin Lumber started out small and grew slowly. As recently as the early 1990s it had only a few employees, but over time it has become a major logging firm and anchor of the local economy, with nearly 40 employees today; three whole tree logging crews and one cut-to-length crew; subcontractors including chipping; 14 trucks; full road and bridge building capability; mechanics and a mobile maintenance vehicle; garages in Stratton and in Woburn, Quebec; and the office in Coburn Gore.

Pepin Lumber has cut for years on large commercial timberland for landowners including Weyerhauser,