New Crew in the Woods

We are off and running! Back before the Jay mill explosion, we were contemplating starting a cut to length crew. The explosion and loss of that market squashed that plan real quick and in a hurry. Then, about a year ago we started down the road again, but just as soon as we were approved at the bank, we had a little panic attack and pumped the brakes again…. Then, this in August we decided it was time to stop talking about it and just go for it. We started the process of investing in a cut to length logging crew. It has been quite the process from traveling to New York, New Hampshire, and all over Maine looking for the right pieces of equipment, to working with the bank, to finding the best operators we could. All together, that has been no small challenge! We have had countless meetings with wood buyers, forestry consultants, potential employees, lenders, attorneys, accountants…. all while still working in the woods and keeping our whole tree crew processing wood.

I have been encouraging Randy to do this for so long. It sounds easy, really…. buy the equipment and start cutting wood. HA! If it were that easy everyone would be doing it. I still can’t believe we did it, but here we are, still in our infancy, but finally making loads and finding a rhythm. Honestly, if we didn’t find such great employees we wouldn’t be able to do this, and for that we are grateful. Brandon Webb is our lead guy, operating our processor. He has been working in the woods his whole career and is one of the most skilled operators we have had the privilege of knowing. We employed Brandon in the past, but only had a position in the skidder, and his skills exceeded the job so we parted ways for a little bit until we could get him in something more suited to his skills. Brandon’s confidence in us as employers helped give us the courage to take the leap. Patrick Prescott, our forwarder operator is a bit newer to the woods, but comes very prepared as a graduate of the Mechanized Logging Operations Program. He has been running crane in a log yard for a bit and his style is slow and steady... just the way we prefer it. It’s humbling to have these guys’ trust as we grow our company!

Luck would have it that we were able to send both crews to the same job to get the new crew up and running. We owe a cup of gratitude to Matt McCaslin and Dirigo Timberlands for that. Matt is a fantastic, organized forester and made this all come together for us. Randy works full time on the whole tree side, so it has been great to be able to have him on the same site to work out the kinks. It certainly didn’t start off seamlessly. The first week literally everything broke down…. truck, forwarder, and processing head, and even Randy’s loader. Let’s just say there were not enough logs to even make payroll that week. But our guys got it all back together and its going great!

We will be moving the whole tree crew off the job this week and heading to Stoneham. I have no doubt our new crew is off to a great start and we are now able to meet to goals of more landowners and foresters.