May / June 2024

ATS Seeks ‘Right Size’

Articles by Dan Shell, Managing Editor, Timber Harvesting

KELSO, Washington – Looking at Adam Lee, co-owner of Adams Timber Service (ATS), is looking at the guy the logging industry is looking for—a younger contractor, just turned 39, solid and safe operator—to replace all those gray-headed 70-year-old loggers headed for the exits. And Lee has, growing his company from a small shovel logging side to a multi-crew, diversified operation.

But he’s learned a thing or two in the past quarter-century he’s been in the business and especially the past decade-plus as a contractor: Bigger isn’t necessarily better, and true business diversification is a great way to add consistency to what can be an up and down business. He’s also tried to buy as much of his own timber as possible, and avoid putting too much of his logging capacity into one business relationship.

Currently, the company works about half and half jobs on their own purchased stumpage, and the balance in more traditional fee timberland or company purchased timber sale contracting. “We think that makes us more viable,” Lee says of the work mix of purchased stumpage and contract work. “We always have some of our own work going on.”

Background

A native of southwest Washington, Lee has been in the logging business since he was 16 when he started working with his brother in his spare time and on weekends. Even though he had no family connection to the industry, Lee says he always knew he wanted to log. “I had bought a skidder that was buried in blackberries and managed to get it running, and we would cut timber and log on the weekends.”

Around 2003, Lee went to a Columbia Helicopter timber cutting school, and spent several years “tramping around” the greater logging West, cutting timber in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and California. “I was working as a faller, and I managed to learn enough not to kill myself,” Lee says, adding that he worked for lots of contractors locally as well as slowly beginning to do some small logging jobs of his own.

Moving back to southwest Washington, Lee was still timber cutting for local contractors, and doing some small logging jobs when the 2008 windstorm and resulting timber blowdown got him back into logging full time, although he was happy to see the dangerous timber salvage work in the rear view mirror. By 2010, he was shovel logging and running two shovels when he married Breanna, who was working in local real estate.

Soon after, he was able to swing a timber tract purchase that he was able to leverage into capitalization for future timber purchases, and he’s tried to buy as much of his own timber as he can ever since. As the demand for logging in the region recovered and grew after the Great Recession, Adams Timber Service went into a major growth mode right along with it.

Lee bought a Washington tower yarder in 2011, then added a Madill 071 as a spare. Another shovel side was added as well. “Back in 2014 and 2015 we did a lot of tower units, steep and ugly work that no one else wanted to do,” Lee says. A big part of the growth curve was adding Lee’s brother, Jason, who was operating his own trucking company but came to work for Adams Timber Service in 2012.