Table of Contents

October 2009 Classifieds

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

Our best leisure reading from our not-so-sharp minds

A 16-year-old boy came home with a new Chevrolet Avalanche, and his parents began to yell and scream. “Where did you get that truck?”

He calmly told them, “I bought it today.”

“With what money?” his parents demanded. They knew what a Chevrolet Avalanche cost.

Doing An About-Face by Jennifer McCary

Southern Logging & Timber Co. (SLTC) did an about-face in November 2007. Up to that point, the 57-year-old owner Larry Strickland had primarily been a grade pine log producer. Now roughly 90% of production goes into pulpwood markets.

Sawmill markets had been pretty rocky most of 2009, he reports. Grappling with a crumbling housing market, many of them adjusted their product mix and changed log specifications several times in an effort to remain competitive. “The mills kept changing their specs, which I am sure they needed to,” observes Strickland. “But when you cruise a tract of timber a certain way, you need to be able to cut it that way.”

Fuel Chips Operation Makes Move by May Donnell

The past year has gone “relatively well” for Sherwood Padgette, a third-generation logger who spends the majority of his time these days supplying power plants with fuel chips. Today he’s doing it with a Bandit 2590 whole tree chipper and says it’s the best decision he’s made yet.

Padgette has always been a creative fellow with a pioneering spirit. He’s good at adapting his business to the current economy and at seeing the future while others are busy dealing with the present. He’s re-invented Padgette Logging more than a few times over the past 40 years.

Nameless Texas Towns

EDITOR’S NOTE: This continues the serialization of the book, Nameless Towns: Texas Sawmill Communities, 1880-1942, by Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad (Copyright 1998). It is reprinted by permission of the University of Texas Press. For footnotes, bibliography, and index, please see the printed book. The series began with the March ’08 issue of SLT. Drawing on oral histories, company records, and other archival sources, the authors recreate life as lived in scores of bustling logging camps and sawmill towns that came and went in the east Texas pineywoods. Copies of the 260 page soft-bound book can be purchased from the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819; ph. 512-471-7233; www.utexas.edu/ utpress/books/sitnam.html

The ‘Want To’ by David Abbott

Dale Wood, 21, owner of Dale Wood Logging, specializes in shovel logging in swamps along the eastern border of the Carolinas, not far from Myrtle Beach. His company is an expansion of the family company, Wood Logging, owned by his father Henry. His brother Steven also owns a family operation that grew from Henry’s company.

Wood is a fourth-generation logger who grew up in the woods around his dad’s business. Henry, a life-long logger, started working in the swamps about 15 years ago with Randy Thompson, owner of Cape Fear Land and Timber of Tabor City, the timber procurement company with which both Dale and Henry Wood contract.

VLA Annual Meeting: “Best Ever”

Record attendance, a tour of a paper mill and a gubernatorial candidate’s participation highlighted the annual meeting of the Virginia Loggers Assn. (VLA) here August 28-30. “It was probably the best annual meeting ever for the VLA,” said a beaming Jim Mooney, the group’s executive director.

For several years VLA has attracted state officials to its meetings but this year it scored a major hit in drawing State Sen. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic nominee in the governor’s race. Approximately 100 attended the event.

Current Industry News

Providers of equipment, systems, supplies and services are increasingly showing interest in Timber & Biomass Expo Southeast and more than a dozen have booked space in the live event. Exhibitors have a choice of live, static or tent locations.

As of late September, exhibitors included Bandit, John Deere, Tigercat, Vermeer Southeast and Yancey Brothers (Cat), Cutting Systems, GCR Tire Centers, Rayco Mfg., Cleanfix Reversible Fans, Great American, Haglof, Hawkins & Rawlinson, Richie Brothers Auctioneers and Stihl. Inquiries are steadily coming in, according to Dianne Sullivan, Expo Coordinator for Hatton-Brown Publishers, sponsor of the exhibition. Hatton-Brown is the parent company of Timber Harvesting and Southern Loggin’ Times.

New Product Information

Ahlborn Equipment has added two new lines of premium quality steel chain saw files: Woody’s Files and Forester Chainsaw Files. Both lines fill an industry need for reasonably priced professional chain saw files

Woody’s Files are available by the dozen and are packaged in a patented, reusable file box that is 100% waterproof. The Forester files come in Ahlborn’s signature sleeves and are available in handy three-packs. Both Woody’s and Forester chain saw files are 8 in. long and available in all 6 sizes: 3/16, 5/16, 5/32, 7/32, 11/64, 13/64. And both are offered in flat-file style, too, in either 6 or 8 in. models. Phone 800-472-7600; visit ahlbornequipment.com. 4065

W.L. Wilder’s Legacy Continues by DK Knight

Afew issues ago, I offered SLT readers the opportunity of claiming this space to pay tribute to a spouse, parent, grandparent, child, grandchild or employee; to express their convictions about an issue; to write about their business; to touch on a hobby, etc.

Young Kassidy Houpt stepped up, and in doing so, struck a familiar chord. Kassidy, 25, and brother, Kenney, 31, are partners in E.K. Houpt Trucking Co., Pontotoc, Miss. They are grandsons of William Lamar Wilder, now deceased, and Anne Wilder, the surviving matriarch of the Wilders in the Pontotoc community. A disabled logger and sawmiller who turned to the keyboard to express himself and relate anecdotes and truths learned from his rural upbringing and forest-related work, William Lamar Wilder was a writer and columnist for this magazine in the mid ’80s. His column, RFD #7, was particularly popular, given Wilder’s homespun, humorous, touching style. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1987 and died on April 20, 1988. Before