FLORENCE, Ore. 
As Bobby King talks, it becomes clear that the story of R&R King Logging (and its Alaskan offshoot, Crown Alaska) is not just a family business narrative. It’s a case study in resilience, reinvention and sheer refusal to quit in one of the toughest corners of North American timber.

“We’re still operating,” King says simply, when asked what he’s most proud of. In his world, that’s not a throwaway line. It’s an achievement earned the hard way, over decades of boom-and-bust cycles, political battles, changing technology, and a chronic shortage of people willing to do hard work in tough terrain.

R&R King Logging is the 29th company to be awarded the Timber Harvesting Logging Business of the Year national award, and the third company from Oregon to receive it. The award was established in 1998 to honor logging companies of all sizes across the country: Standout operators and managers who not only excel in the woods executing logging operations but also working to improve their communities and the logging and forest industry.

R&R King Logging truly exemplifies the award as a three-time winner of an Oregon Dept. of Forestry Operator of the Year award (most recently in 2022) that recognizes logging companies that go the extra mile in challenging timber harvesting operations. In addition, the company is the first Oregon timber–related business to be recognized with a Top Family Business award (2008) from the Oregon State University Austin Family Business Program. The business award recognizes the achievements of family businesses in innovation, entrepreneurship, commitment and community involvement.

Six-Generation Footprint 

King has been logging since he was 14 years old. Now in his early 80s, he describes himself as an Oregon State business graduate and third generation logger, who has never really wanted to do anything else. As for King’s son-in-law and partner, Dan Waggoner, he’s a sixth-generation logger from the region. A Linfield College business graduate (and former football player), Waggoner is working land once logged by his great-grandfather.

The business today is structured under multiple related entities: R&R King and Crown Alaska for logging; King Family Enterprises for real estate and timber properties; and King Land & Cattle for roughly a 200 head cow/calf ranching operation.

“We kind of have diversified with different operations,” King explains. That diversification has been one of their survival strategies: timber, ranching, real estate, even helping to found a community bank in 1978, where King served on the board as chairman until his retirement a few years ago. 

However, the core remains logging. Specifically, King and Waggoner’s crews are long-span skyline logging in some of the steepest, roughest ground western Oregon has to offer. From a base near the coast, the company now works a radius of roughly 90 miles inland, running multiple sides under contract for Sierra Pacific Industries, Roseburg Forest Products and Swanson Group. 

At full bore, R&R King Logging runs five to six active sides, almost all of them yarder operations on very steep cable ground. A typical yarder side will feature a tower, processor, and log loader. Some of the rougher jobs require additional equipment to get wood from cramped landings out to the haul road. 

R&R King Logging has approximately 75 employees, which includes mechanics, a few floaters who can swing between jobs and at least one in-house log truck used alongside contract trucks. At one time, R&R King ran 10 company log trucks; today they subcontract the majority of their hauling to a large regional carrier, Ireland Trucking, with about 90 trucks. “It guarantees good trucking,” King says. 

On the logging side, each yarder crew runs lean with about eight people, a mix of rigging crew, yarder engineer, chaser, processor operator, log loader operator and supervisor.  “We’re kind of running seven sides right now, but we only have enough operators to run five, maybe six,” says Waggoner, who now functions as the day‑to‑day operations lead. “I run equipment every day right now,” he adds, with mornings starting early loading trucks before he flips into supervisor mode moving and checking equipment, lining up bid sales, and making sure the next move won’t cost the company a day of production. 

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