My Take

EUGENE, Oregon – Loggers across the Pacific Northwest and plenty of points farther away made the trip to Eugene the last weekend of February for the 85th Oregon Logging Conference. The event included everything every logger needs (outside of a better cut-and-haul rate!) when it comes to equipment and tools for getting the job done, including not only the very latest in high performance timber harvesting equipment and machinery, but also the leading edge technology behind it driving production and efficiency gains…

One really bright spot concerning the American Loggers Council is the organization’s resilience as the pandemic slowly fades away: Many organizations and trade associations took a beating during the pandemic, but the ALC is surviving remarkably well and moving ahead on a variety of fronts. Two news items this month underline the importance of having an association like the ALC to provide a national voice for the logging industry as various issues come up…

One of the things I most look forward to each year, working on Timber Harvesting, is the Logging Business of the Year award. From reading all the nominations of worthy candidates, to being a member of the voting committee where we each present our case for our given candidate, to helping Managing Editor Dan Shell get the notification letter printed the right side up on TH letterhead (the Baby Boomer to Millennial joke writes itself here…)—I just…

In between looking for extra employees to fill out another shift or solidify the one or two already in place, or perhaps looking for larger vaults to hold the cash they’ve been putting away thanks to record lumber prices, lumber suppliers would be smart to take a look at the health of the supply chain feeding their mills. Ensuring all those nice equipment investments meet projections and ROI numbers requires a consistent flow of quality timber…

Inflation is on the news and all over the dot com as loggers grapple with rising costs for just about everything they need to operate. And there’s no doubt that, despite all our earnest attempts to believe and be “over it,” the COVID pandemic’s impact, especially on labor and supply chains, is something we’ll be living with and operating under for a while…