Table of Contents

March 2009 Classifieds

Download the Southern Loggin' Times March 2009 IronWorks classifieds here!

Down On The Bayou by May Donnell

Veteran Louisiana logger Malcolm Sibley is not always certain what the future holds for the forest industry, but he is sure that somehow his family will be part of it. They enjoy it too much to stop.

“We’re having all kinds of fun down here,” Sibley says.

“Down here” is Livingston Parish, just east of Baton Rouge, and family is something Sibley knows all about. He spent 20 years as a land manager and logging supervisor for Crown Zellerbach, following his father, Kerney, into the business, and today works closely with his wife, his son, his two daughters, his cousin and his cousin’s sons.

Nameless Texas Towns

Southern “company towns” began with Jamestown, Va., in 1607, so the sawmill communities of east Texas followed in a long tradition. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, textile mills, mining companies, cotton plantations, sawmills and other large enterprises all found it expedient to create and operate proprietary communities to house, support, and control their employees.

Despite their economic importance, the hundreds of east Texas sawmill towns, large and small, that came and went between 1880 and the beginning of World War II have received scant attention from historians. The Texas “Paul Bunyans,” and the big woods and sawmill towns in which they plied their trades, have played little part in the state’s popular historiography, which has been so preoccupied with cowboys, cattle kings, oil barons, and the wide open spaces that it sometimes even omitted the cotton farmers.

Staying On ‘Tract’ by Jennifer McCary

Upon graduation from Mississippi State University in 1976, Ken Martin teamed up with his father Rupert Martin and brother-in-law Bo Calendar to establish a logging job as a means of diversifying the family’s cattle business. Rupert’s father had had the foresight to plant pine trees back in the ’60s and those stands were ready to be thinned about the time Martin completed his degree. He is now the sole owner of Mar-Cal Inc., a name derived from the original partners’ last names. Calendar left the company to pursue a medical career and Martin’s dad passed away in 2000.

For more than 30 years, the 54-year-old businessman has worn two hats—one, as a landowner managing several hundred acres of timberland, and two, as an independent logger who supplements harvesting capacity by purchasing stumpage from private and public landowners.

Then & Now by David Abbott

“Everybody says times are bad. I can’t say they are.” That was the observation of Ricky Leonard, 51, owner of Leonard Logging, when Southern Loggin’ Times visited in December. “We get rid of everything we can cut.”

That was then. This is now.

Over the course of the following month or so, Leonard saw a drastic change. “The wood market in this area has gotten real bad,” he says now. The mill that has been his primary market for most of his career told him recently that lumber sales have come almost to a halt, and they have an oversupplied inventory already. “He (the mill owner) told me he has one order for white oak, and that is barely worth turning.” Like some other contractors, Leonard has been cut down to a two-day week. What keeps the mill and its logging partners going, he says, is the pallet market, for which Leonard supplies smaller, lower grade logs.

Current Industry News

There was a time when a man’s word meant something. I have always been proud of the fact that I try to be a man of my word, even if it takes a lot of effort to back it up. My wife even says that sometimes, to a fault, I keep my word; sacrificing my family time to do something I said I would do even though I really didn’t have the free time to do it.

A number of years ago while I was serving on our governor’s Healthy Forest Advisory Committee, we worked diligently to finish our recommendations for forest health improvement in Arizona. To release our document to the public, we took a roll-call vote on the measure to ensure that we had consensus. All committee members voted to release the document. The next day, on the front page of the Arizona Republic (the main Phoenix newspaper), one of our committee member’s organizations (one of the preservation groups our committee member represented) trashed the recommendations. Throughout the process, we gave concessions to this group to

New Products & Technologies

Cat Forest Products has launched the new B Series Prentice knuckleboom log loader with the introduction of the Prentice 2384B. The enhanced engine and hydraulic power system, a choice of operating modes and an automatic idle down system work together to give loggers the best of both worlds—high production and low fuel consumption.

More efficient use of horsepower to cut fuel consumption and maintain production is achieved through reduced engine and fan speeds, a reengineered hydraulic pump and bigger hydraulic lines. The new pump also decreases heat generation, resulting in cooler hydraulic system temperatures. Loader performance is further improved by a 15% increase in swing torque and modified main control valve spools that improve cycling to lower the boom faster. The increase in hydraulic line size also allows faster grapple action.

Say What?

Southerners, at home or transplanted, are well known for seasoning their dialect with colorful expressions or “sayins,” some of which may be difficult for others to comprehend. Here’s a generous sampling of some often used and some used not so often:

He’d gripe if he had a ham under each arm.

She’d complain to the Lord Jesus himself.