September / October 2024
2024 Timber Harvesting Logging Business of the Year
Timber Harvesting’s 2024 Logging Business of the Year, Shamco, Inc. in Iron River, Mich., is a fully involved family business that performs top notch woods work and also finds time to pro- mote the logging and forest industry and special causes in the community.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
COVER STORY
2024 Timber Harvesting Logging Business of the year
MY TAKE Shamco Solidarity: Family First Always
When I first started with Timber Harvesting, I didn’t really know what to expect. I was a fresh- faced city kid, with no concept of the logging business. But I knew the logging business was full of good families and I wanted to be a small part of telling those family stories. Just like, back then, I could point to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on a map, but I sure couldn’t have told you anything about the city of Iron River.
Newslines
- Vermont Announces New Forest Business Loan Program
- Stimson Investing $50 Million At Oregon Mill Facility
- Besse Forest Products Closes 3 Wisconsin Veneer, Ply Plants
- Weyerhaeuser Curtails New Bern Sawmill
- Restoration Fuels Closes Central Oregon Biochar Plant
- Weyerhaeuser Acquires Alabama Timberland
- 2 More Oregon Mills Go Down: Malheur, W. Cascade Closures
- Interfor Closes 2 Southern Sawmills
- ALC Founders Awards
Safety Alerts
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Three Signs of High Risk for Accidents
Idaho Professor Studies, Promotes Forest Industry
In a time when almost all logging contractors are having trouble finding new employees, the University of Idaho’s Ryer Becker is finding new ways to sell forestry and logging to a new generation.
Lead A Horse To Water, But Can You Make It Think?
I have been blessed to have a 43-year career in the forest products industry as a logger and a timber dealer. Fifteen years ago I moved my business and part of my family from southern New England to South Carolina. I have had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know a vast number of people who are a part of this industry and most will tell you I am very passionate about what we do. It deeply bothers me to see some of the issues that we are having to face these days that have hurt and/or closed many businesses in recent years, and I fear for many of us still hanging in there.
Fueling & Skidding
- Barko: The Root of the Issue
- John Deere Bogie Skidder
- NAF Axles Deliver Top Performance
- Olofsfors Tracks Boost Productivity
- Ponsse Fowarders: Durable Production
- Tigercat 6-Wheel Skidder Innovations
- Forest Chain: Wide Skidder Chain Range
Innovation Way
- Tigercat Upgrades Carbonizer System
- Logmeter Returns With Carbotech
- HAIX Introduces Coyote Athletic Work Boot
Select Cuts
- A Better Understanding
- LP Touts Sustainability
- Weyco Partners With Ark. Workforce Initiative
- LanzaJet SAF Gains Additional Funding
- SPI Announces Planting Of 300 Millionth Seedling
ALL IN THE FAMILY
The Shamion family’s Shamco, Inc. is the 2024 Timber Harvesting Logging Business of the Year award winner.
LIRON RIVER, Mich.
Logging businesses across the country, across the globe even, are often families—a father might have started the business and soon he’s joined by a son, some nephews, a daughter-in-law. Often, these businesses are popular in the smaller communities they operate in. Both of those facts— the family nature and the local popularity—are true about the Shamion family’s Shamco, Inc. in Iron River, Mich.
Shamco, Inc. is the 27th logging operation to win this national award, which began in 1998 when Timber Harvesting initiated the Logging Business of the Year to celebrate the country’s top loggers and recognize success in logging companies both large and small. Shamco is the second company from Michigan to win the award, 25 years after the legendary Earl St. John’s business in 1999. Shamco’s results on the ground speak for themselves and a business committed to safety, stewardship, efficiency and sustainability in the woods, plus creating a supportive work environment for employees. Shamco’s operational excellence and record of promoting professionalism and the industry are big reasons why Shamco is Timber Harvesting’s 2024 Logging Business of the Year.
Family patriarch Jerry Shamion worked in the woods his entire life, first in business with his brother, Ron, and later under the Shamco umbrella with his four sons, Todd, Scott, Eric and Ryan. Jerry would say, “If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.” This sentiment continues to run through the family today.
What started out as a smaller oper- ation grew in size rather quickly, not unlike Jerry and wife Christine’s family of six children (the four boys and two girls). But the boys, as their own fami- lies grew alongside the company, never forgot their humble roots or the life lessons their father taught them—that at the heart of everything is the Shamion family, and nothing is more important than that.
While Jerry has since passed (at age 77 in 2020), the four boys keep the business rolling and is one of the largest wood suppliers to LP’s Sagola, Mich. siding facility, PolatchDeltic in Gwinn, Mich. and Billerud in Quinnesec, Mich.
The business has also expanded over the years to include a small hardwood grade sawmill, a fleet of self-loading trucks and contract woods crews, plus a tree service business. Scott says the company is geared for “more vertical integration,” while maintaining financial solvency. Scott and Todd, the eldest two brothers, laugh that Eric and Ryan (the younger siblings, with Ryan being nearly 20 years younger) are the “retirement plan,” and they want to make sure the company is in the best position possible for everyone’s future.
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Spanning seven decades since its inception in 1952, Timber Harvesting highlights innovative and successful logging operations across the U.S. and around the world. Timber Harvesting also emphasizes new technology and provides the best marketing vehicle for the industry’s suppliers to reach the largest number of loggers in North America and beyond.
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