July / August 2023

2023 Logger Survey: Facing A Stand Of Challenges

Article by Dan Shell, Managing Editor, Timber Harvesting

In this year’s Timber Harvesting Logger Survey, loggers across the country report they are facing growing challenges to profitability and business viability.

Designing the logger survey, our loosely followed process at TH is to do a straightforward contractor profile kind of survey every other odd year, then try to find an issue or specific area to drill into in the survey and swap out some questions on the even years.

During the past several surveys the pandemic has taken up a lot of survey space, and this is the first survey since 2019 that doesn’t have a specific pandemic question. This is also a basic contractor profile survey year.

So in this 2023 Logger Survey Report, we decided to look at it as a “before” and “after” situation comparing business conditions and survey results from 2019 before the pandemic hit in early 2020 to now—a depressing new normal in many ways. Along the way, there’s been unprecedented forest product prices and soaring inflation, been more of the same around the country as loggers struggle with challenges such as ongoing public lands access and overall regulations out West, major closures and realignment in the pulp, paper and container sector with mill closures in the Carolinas, Florida, Maine and Louisiana. And weather events can quickly turn into huge business challenges as hurricanes, fires and even overly warm winters, continue to create risk and hardship around the country.

Not to get too proverbial here, but the silver lining in the old saying of being “lucky” to live and operate in “interesting times” certainly wears thin after a while. So this survey report will do a lot of comparisons to just four years ago, to highlight the changes wrought by unprecedented economic events and pandemic dynamics. In doing so, we spotted several interesting data points.