First day was awesome!
Just got back from my first day, it went awesome! and fast! I showed up there 20 min early and the bossman really liked that, I met the crew, small but good folk. Bossman is an old timer, 60 years old, been a logger for 47 years. He gave me a brand new pair of chaps and my saw for the day, a one month old Husky 372 with a 24" bar and round ground chisel chain. We got at her I got a ride out to the cutting area in the skidder which is a 2001 (give or take) Timberjack 360 that he bought new. Anyways, the boss went up to a tree, showed me how he likes to drop them and away we went. I did the next one and he watched, he gave me a few pointers and by the second tree he was happy with my stump and the way I dropped and topped it. They're doing a thinning right now cant remember how many board feet there are in this job but there's around 200 acres and just under 1000 trees for us to cut. Mainly oaks ranging from 16"-26" and a few bigger ones in between. Anyways, after working from 7-10, the bossman left to get us breakfast while we kept going. He left us with some safety advice. Breakfast showed up on the skidder later and we stopped for a couple minutes had coffee and bacon egg and cheeses and got back at er. I chopped and topped proberly 25 trees going slow, taking my time to be safe. The bossman has us trim the trees really nice we smooth the knots out and trim all the buttresses and do a nice job, he says that the sawmill we go to pays us extra for having such nice trees. We also take extra time with the tops to make them nice. He says we're not racing to get as many trees cut as we can, we want to do a great job so we get work from the next guy. He really cares about his work being neat and I think that's awesome. So anyways, me and the other faller worked for a little over 9 hours, bossman stayed at the landing bucking and stacking timber and we had another guy on the skidder. Four man crew but we got a good bit done. The oak was hard on the chains I had to stop and touch up my chain fairly frequently. At the end of the day he showed me some pictures from when he lived out west cutting timber. Some real big stuff. Also showed my some pictures of pretty good sized trees from the west point area down the road from me. Also some pictures of some big bucks he's shot. He said that in all the years he's owned the company he's never run out of work. I asked him if I did a good job and he liked the way I worked, how long would it be til I'd get a raise, he said one week. He said the first week I'll get 100/day and the next week 120/day and then he said after a year or two I'd only go up. He said the last faller he had was really good and made 200/day. The pay is on the books too so that's just the gross pay, not sure what net comes out to. Anyways, the boss seemed to like me alot and so did the skidder operator and the other faller. The skidder operator only works weekends so during the week he said we'll proberly rotate me and the other faller every 2-3 days running skidder or falling. For clear cuts they've got a Bell feller buncher that I'd run also and right now his log truck driver is out for like 2 months and he needs someone with a cdl, I can drive big trucks I work on them and test drive them at work now but I don't have me cdl so I'll have to get that going.
Before I left the other faller said hey man you gotta quit your current job and come log with us! I said I think I might have to.
So now I have a decision to make on leaving my cushy union job that I dont really like but has good pay, to go do something that I love for less pay.
Oh and also bossman told me that if I come work for him I can take a load of firewood home every day, they'll help load it up and all. That's big, I can make pretty good money off the firewood. He said that I could make 15 grand a year selling firewood with the amount that he's got for me.
I know that AS is big on pictures or it dint happen, so here's a few pictures that I took with my cell phone that are hard to see, sorry about the bad quality, my camera lens is all scratched up.
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Be safe! Good luck!
