Opportunity for Master Logger companies

By early March, with warming temperatures expected the following week, they were winding the operation - a job contracted through the Sappi Maine Forestry Programdown for the winter.

“It’s a big project,” Steve said as Jordan rumbled in and out of the woods in his grapple skidder keeping Jamison in the crane and slasher supplied with wood. Steve’s truck idled nearby, and within the hour he would head out with a load of wood for the Sappi Somerset mill in Skowhegan. “We’re not done here by any means, we’ve probably got another winter, but given the ground conditions we’re going to call it a season.”

The Frye Mountain harvest is a large one by IF&W standards, but like all harvests for the department it is focused first and foremost on enhancing wildlife habitat, and that mostly means little things about it are different for the loggers who handle the jobs.

“They leave a few trees that you normally wouldn’t think to leave,” Jamison said, explaining the foresters and biologists for IF&W like to ensure there is diversity in the habitat, as well as leaving enough trees like beech and oak to provide nuts and acorns for wildlife.

Maintaining a healthy understory in the forest is also a goal, Jordan said.

“That’s why they’re doing a lot of patch cuts, to get some new young growth established for the grouse, and even the deer to give them some browse,” Jordan said.

While Master Loggers routinely factor wildlife considerations into any harvest, the IF&W’s priorities can mean the finished job looks a bit different from a standard logging job, for example leaving an abundance of standing deadwood and other good habitat for wildlife.

Another challenge on any job involving public lands is the presence of the public; many of these lands including IF&W Wildlife Management Areas are popular destinations for recreational pursuits such as hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, hiking, and biking. While jobs are well marked, this can pose hazards. It can also lead to public criticism of jobs, particularly when they are not completed yet and final closeout work done to minimize visual impacts.

“Even if you’re the best of the best you’re still going to have slash on the ground and it’s still not going to be pretty, per se, it might look great to a logger or someone who knows what they’re looking at but for the tourist walking around getting limbs caught in their snowshoes it a different story,” Steve said.

None of those issues emerged on the Frye Mountain job, Steve added. While the crew saw some snowmobilers and hikers over the winter, there were no problems.

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Like many Master Logger companies, the Gradys said their certification is not necessarily something you can point to as the one thing that gets them jobs, but they feel it is certainly something that helps, as it did with the Frye Mountain job.

“They wanted someone in here that had good credentials because there’s a lot of sensitive areas in here,” Jordan said. “There’s a lot of water coming off the top of that hill and we had to put in a lot of bridges and there’s a lot of drainage streamswe had a lot to deal with.”

William A. Day Jr. & Sons, Inc. handled multiple jobs for IF&W in the winter 2020-2021. The company, which has done contract work for the Department before, cut about 100 acres at the Mt. Agamenticus Wildlife Management Area in York, about 13 acres at the Brownfield Bog Wildlife Management Area, and was completing a clearing job for a public shooting range in Fryeburg as the winter wound down.

Brent Day, president and co-owner of the company, said there is a lot of oversight by IF&W anytime a harvest is underway, and agreed with the Grady’s that logging on Department lands is different in small ways because of the wildlife considerations driving the harvest plan.

“It’s more plot cuts, and smaller plots, like when you go further north when they do a patch cut it’s a 50- acre cut, well they did more of the 5-6-acre patch cuts,” Brent said. “They’ll do a light thinning to try to get some of the overstory off it just to try to get some regen coming for cover, or you’re not promoting the oak or the pine you’re promoting the scrub bush and the oak and the beech for the food source, so things are just a little different that’s all.”

Southern Maine had a very mild winter, and that was a challenge on the jobs because it is hard to keep a harvest looking good under those conditions while it is still underway, Brent said.

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In those cases, it’s going to look like a mess,” Brent said, adding it just takes time and patience but with an experienced logging crew the end result is still one a landowner will be happy with. “But when we left it looked like a million bucks.”

The good example set by Master Logger companies working on IF&W lands, often in high visibility areas utilized heavily by the public, is beneficial to the whole logging industry, Ted Wright, Executive Director of the Northeast Master Logger Certification Program, said.

“It is great to see Maine’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department acknowledging and valuing the good work that Master Loggers do here in Maine,” Ted Wright.

“William A. Day Jr. and Sons and Grady Forest Products are top-notch logging contractors that uphold the high standards of the Master Logger program on every job, and their work and the work of other Master Loggers is raising the bar for the entire industry.”

The amount of acreage harvested each year on and ages. Healthy, productive, wildlife-friendly forests are the result, Eric said.

The revenue generated by timber sales supports the Department’ work and reduces the need for taxpayer dollars.

“It is dedicated to other habitat management projects within the state, it doesn’t stay within a specific wildlife management area, that’s a question that often come up,” Eric said.

“We try not to draw from state funding any more than we have to.”

Master Loggers are well equipped to responsibly manage woodlands for both timber production and wildlife, making them ideally suited for jobs on IF&W and other public lands, but a good logger will be managing a job with those things in mind no matter where the harvest is, Steve said.

“It’s all hand in hand, if you’re doing good timber management you’re doing good wildlife management as well,” Steve said.

IF&W land varies, but the Department is always conducting harvests and planning for future ones.

Habitat is managed for deer, ruffed grouse, woodcock, endangered New England cottontail, and many other species. Invasive species are discouraged and native vegetation encouraged, along with diversity in tree species

To learn more about the Northeast Master Logger Certification Program call Ted Wright at 207-688-8195, email him at executivedirector@tcnef.org, or visit masterloggercertification.com.

Doran Continued from Page 916 example of government intervention, I quickly remind whoever is making the statement that BCAP didn’t do anything to help the logger. It only helped mills, wood brokers and landowners make more in the end by lowering the price of the service or commodity they were purchasing. The contractor was gouged and other than saying, “thanks, glad to see the market is still there,” the program did not meet its intent.

Fast forward to today, we might be seeing BCAP already at a much larger scale over the past year.

As everyone knows, across the country, demand for building products is through the roof as folks are not traveling and putting money into other places such as home renovation. Prices for those materials, one being wood, as a result of exponential demand, have shot up. Certainly, supply and demand and basic economic elasticity can explain quite a bit of the price increase, but it seems to me there is something else at play.

It’s not just retail prices that are at an all-time high. Wholesale prices for materials are also at an all-time high. What’s not at an all-time high? Prices paid to loggers and truckers for the harvesting and delivery of the fiber that goes into these products.

Usually, this is explainable. Lumber markets ebb and flow. For the manufacturer, they have hills, and they have valleys. On the hills, they make money that can help when they hit the valleys. This is business for anyone and is certainly understandable. However, something is different right now as this price change and lack of pass through the chain is not applicable to every wood commodity.

In a recent Wall St. Journal article, the author did a deep dive on the trend, focusing on the primary building construction commodity – studwood. The author found that retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers are being paid a premium for their products, but none of that price difference is being passed along the supply chain. I found this to be quite interesting as it focused specifically on landowners in the southeastern United States, but I can also confirm that it is the same situation with contractors based upon what I’m hearing from our members.

So, the question remains, why is nothing being passed down to contractors? Is it simply supply and demand, is it simply about the hills and valleys, or is there something more pronounced at play here?

In Maine, we’ve seen many variables create havoc in markets and pricing – the explosion at Pixelle and the drop in softwood pulp utilization, the closure of the Sappi Westbrook biomass facility, and an oversupply of softwood chips from sawmills as a result of increased production. It can often be stated that softwood pulp and biomass have as much to do with studwood markets and pricing as anything else. As a result of decreased demand from biomass and softwood pulp here in Maine, there has been a prolonged period of time where pricing for sawlogs has been lower than normal because there is no other major source of competition for the resource. In normal market demand situations, especially when pulpwood and biomass markets have been depleted, I would say that the lowerthan-normal pricing is perfectly explainable, but I really think that this time is different.

It seems to me that there is a recognition that general assistance from the government in the form of paycheck protection program loans, SBA Economic Injury Disaster grants, and state economic disaster grants have helped contractors ward off deep economic losses since March 2020. If you purchase wood for a living, it’s not hard to find out who in the contractor ranks received public assistance.

The question is, has this information been used against contractors in some way? Has the preponderance of government money been used to keep prices for the commodity or the service artificially low because those who buy wood or manage contractors know that what they pay for their commodity or service is important, but not quite as important as it usually is? If this has happened, then shame on those folks who are trying to gouge contractors and perhaps this issue might require further inquiry beyond me.

Remember what I said before about no good deed goes unpunished?

On the horizon is the opportunity for contractors to seek additional help from USDA in the form of Logger Relief. Using the theory that I mentioned before, will it actually be relief, or will we see it taken away as fast as it arrives?

As we enter mud season, the issue of contractor sustainability has become even more top of mind. In the last two weeks, I’ve heard one of our members has decided to retire and another, who is only in his 30’s, put all of his equipment up for sale. In both cases, the contractors have decided that it’s not worth all of the effort to be a non-profit business and they simply want out.

I don’t think these are the only two examples of contractors who are rethinking their future and the next six months are going to be very telling as relief dries up and debt continues to build if markets and pricing don’t move in a different trajectory. You can only cut so much fat from the bone and if my theory is true that pricing is being kept artificially low on some commodities or services, then there is a much bigger issue that needs to be solved.

In my seven years in this position, I can probably count on two hands the number of new contractors that have joined this organization who are in their late twenties and early thirties. Most are

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Doran Continued from Page 15 first generation as longtime family logging businesses are not telling their children to head down this path. Therefore, there is not just another contractor on the horizon who wants to take the work and there is not just another young person who wants to get into the game.

At some point, the games have to stop, and the reality needs to be that there is room for everyone to make a living in the forest economy and being a logger or trucker should be just as valuable and just as profitable as any other leg of the stool. Gouging the contractor and using what they have done to help their business against them in some way is not going to help anyone in the long run. Partnership and ethics are worth something and if you can’t do it in Maine, I guess you can’t do it anywhere.

I look forward to continuing the work that we do every day here at the PLC to fight for every contractor out there who is not getting a fair shake. If you feel that there is nefarious activity at play, please let me know. There truly is strength in numbers and if there was ever a time to stand shoulder to shoulder to defend against what might be happening out there, it is now.

I hope all of you can enjoy some rest and relaxation during the mud season of 2021, as you deserve it more than anyone else in the industry.

Stay safe, be well and I look forward to seeing all of you in person, very soon.