Logging

A Look At Logging by Manny Martin – from the Golden Star – June 20, 1963

It’s hard thing to describe a typical logging operator. Of the dozens of loggers I have known none seemed to be what might be called a typical logger. They’re all widely different in a number of respects that is hard to realize that they are in the same type of business. Paragraph all loggers however have some problem in common. If we take a look at all the problems we will come out with some sort of pattern.

A loggers year runs from breakup to breakup. He gets started under normal circumstances, around the middle of May. This gives them approximately six to eight weeks before the fire season begins. This is a short time, loggers seem to save most of their energy until the hot summer fire season is behind them. No sense in getting all fired up only to be closed down again while the woods are closed or all the crew and equipment are out in the hills trying to put out a fire. The fire season, on and off, usually manages to eat up six or eight weeks, and ends when the fall rains start.

The fall rains usually result in a sort of breakup in reverse. Instead of waiting for the ground to thaw out, they wait for the frost to come in. This means that there really isn’t too much sense in getting all fired up before freeze up. More than likely they would be closed down because of muddy roads and impossible woods conditions.

Freeze up can be expected in late November or early December at this time of the year the crew starts thinking about taking a month off to go to visit their relatives on the prairies. The year is alreadytwo-thirdss gone and the Christmas season is fast approaching. No sense, really, and getting all fired up until after the holidays are all over. The crew starts wandering back in about the end of the first week of January.

A good year will allow the logger approximately two months before spring breakup rolls around again. Allowing for a week when the weather gets too cold to run machinery, and another week in January thaw, when it gets too wet to get much done, the time seems awfully short until the end of February.

The time has come to buy new license plates for the truck. It’s the breakup is now just around the immediate corner, there isn’t too much scent sense in getting all fired up until after breakup.

The average person would think that this unproductive cycle would discourage anyone of sound mind from ever entering the logging business. Suffice it to say it usually does. There are however, always some people who are the super optimistic optimists that all loggers must be. Their motto reads “We didn’t get bugger all done today, but we’ll give her hell tomorrow.”

Most loggers are men who are formerly employed as fallers or cat skinners. They watched the operation and decided they could do better on their own. Start out with one broken down crawler and a temperamental power saw. This size of operation usually runs in the black. They reason, therefore, that if one cat and one power saw can make a bit of money, surely 2 cats and 2 power saws would make double the money.

Anyone else except a logger would be as careful as a porcupine making love when it comes to committing themselves to pay out $50,000 for a new piece of equipment. This is why so many of us aren’t loggers.

When the second crawler arrives it is put to work creating roads. No more logs come in than before, but the payroll is somewhat bigger. The logger who only worked 16 hours a day now finds he is working 20 hours a day to keep both machines running.

If the production insists on being low the hauler gets the blame. He hasn’t got his track out there every time there is a load of logs ready to go. There is only one thing to do. Buy a truck. Cost money. And to do, therefore, is to mortgage all the equity in the other equipment and sell the farm back in Saskatchewan to buy a heel boom loader and a truck.

We now have a full fledged logger, waiting only until after breakup or until the ground freezes or the holidays are over.

As soon as some good logging weather comes along he is ready to “give her snooze.”