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Cobbling Together a Living

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Photos by George Bellerose

If you listen casually to the news about the so-called gig economy these days, this idea of people freelancing instead of working for a big, stable company can seem like a new phenomenon. And yet for many people in rural places who work in agricultural or nature-based jobs, a gig economy is all there has ever been. Here, logger Michael Quinn tells writer George Bellerose how being a jack-of-all-trades is his prescription for survival in an increasingly mechanized logging industry.

Every winter when I head out into the woods, I have at least two and probably three price lists stuffed in my shirt pocket and a measuring stick in hand. I need them to learn where, for each buyer, a quality saw log becomes lower-value firewood or pulp. I’m pretty much a laissez-faire entrepreneur. The first call is on me. I’m a small producer and need mills more than they need me.

Some mills will pay really well for super-duper butt logs, but much, much less for the lower-value tops. Some mills will give you an advance check and, depending on what a veneer buyer eventually takes, will send another check. Some mills don’t pick up your logs promptly and you wait and wait to get paid.

It’s very common on log landings to have five or six different piles of different quality – pulp, firewood, various grades of sawlogs, veneer sawlogs that will go to several different buyers. Some mills are really good markets for, say, yellow birch, red oak, and hard maple, but won’t take hickory.

Sometimes if a mill pays well but will only buy select species, a logger [or forester] will talk to another mill to see what they will do for the whole bunch.

Some mills will pay high prices but will shut you off with little notice when they’re full. Another mill that is getting full might start dropping its price. If you have been selling them high-quality stuff all winter, you might be able to bargain to bring in two more loads of hardwood logs at the old price. The bottom line is that all of this – the demand, the prices, the supply – is all very fluid stuff. Price lists often only give you a rough idea of who will buy your wood, how much they’ll buy, and what they’ll pay; things change constantly, and sometimes there’s negotiation involved.

Here’s an example from a log job I did a while back: On the landing I had a firewood pile, a pile for a log buyer, and another pile for a major mill. Then I had a pine pulp pile and my basswood pile. So, I was selling to five different people.

Even when selling low-grade wood, the marketplace is constantly in flux.

I’m shipping pine pulp to Ti (International Paper Company in Fort Ticonderoga, New York) now. There are also biomass buyers who will take stuff as long as it fits through their chippers and ideally isn’t too dirty. But demand for low-grade wood is currently pretty low, and so are the prices being paid for it.

And biomass is all about production.

If you’re a small logger, high-end hardwood is really a better bet because you can make as much on three big veneer trees as you can thinning 10 acres of low-value “weeds.” You can have an old dilapidated skidder and chain saw and go into a fairly small lot and turn out a small amount of quality hardwood. You can give the landowner a check and still make good money yourself.

Whether it’s pine pulp or a load of curly maple veneer logs, you need to stay nimble. I will play the field. Somebody is going to be hungry if you have good stuff, but the rules and prices are changing constantly. Fortunately for me, I’ve always been a wheeler and dealer. My basic philosophy, which is no secret, is that both sides have to think they are making money. The mill has to feel they’re making money or they won’t want to buy my logs anymore. And I have to feel I’m making money or I’m not going to sell them my logs anymore.

There is still a lot of skullduggery in the woods. There used to be even more.

There are things I won’t do that someone else will. And vice versa. If I cheated someone on stumpage, I couldn’t live with myself. And it would come back to me. If you give a mill a lot of mismatched stuff, they’ll take that good 16-foot log you included, find a defect, and pay you for only 14 “good” feet.

The problem for most loggers and mills is there isn’t much margin in the wood industry. The big guys have economies of scale because they are dealing in thousands of cords and board feet. Pennies per unit add up.

If I were to succeed just as a logger, I’d have to become too big to fail. I’d need a processor and a feller-buncher and chipper. When you have invested that much, you’d better be a good manager, and have a track record the bank is happy with.

Faced with this reality, many small loggers do what I do: log when you can make money and do something else when you can’t. Your equipment is paid for and is ready to run when the market is good. If you can make money on a certain log job, you do it. If you can’t, you plow snow.

Or for me, raise heifers, sell hay, sugar, run my mill, raise bees, and put on contra-dance and storytelling gigs. I’ve even found another niche that lets me put my logging equipment to use: technical tree removals, such as dropping a tree that could fall on a house in an ice storm. Tree services with their cranes are very expensive. I can use my skidder with a winch much cheaper, and I get to keep the wood. It’s not a production job, but it’s very lucrative.

Whether it’s these side jobs, or when I’m logging, I’m always looking to do stuff that nobody else wants to do. I’m looking for the jobs that the big guys aren’t the slightest bit interested in. That way I can name my price.

If you have 1,000 acres of sawlogs, the big guys will be bidding top dollar. If you have five acres in the back of nowhere to be thinned that can be bought real cheap, I can make money on that.

Cobbling Together a Living Gallery

| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose
| Photo: George Bellerose

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