I've heard overhead is just too high in this day and age for a lumber company or sawmill to put loggers on their payroll with an hourly or salaried wage along with benefits. This could include smaller lumber companies or sawmills along with larger corporations such as Weyerhaeuser. Are those days gone, or does anyone know of any companies who still do this? Are there still loggers who belong to unions? Thanks for any information.
You've had some good answers to your question already but maybe I can add a little. The company that I have the most experience with, Sierra Pacific, owns almost 2 million acres of timber land in California. They also own most of the mills. The majority of the timber the mills get comes from their own land.
See the pattern? One company basically controls the majority of timber cut in this part of the state. They also have land and mills in other states and are buying more all the time.
They're not a logging company, they're a lumber company. Logging, to them, is just a part of the supply chain, and other than the fact that it keeps the mills supplied with lumber they're not really very interested in it. They do however take a great deal of care with their land so that it will keep producing timber. They started buying timber land when it became apparent that government timber sales were starting to decline. It was a smart move on their part.
The only SP employees that go to the woods are the Foresters, the 'ologists, and the logging truck drivers. Everybody else in the woods is a contractor of some kind. The company owns no logging equipment nor do they want any. The logistics of a company that size doing their own logging would be a major undertaking. They've found that, financially...long term, it's better for them to hire the logging done than to do it themselves. Knowing them as well as I do and knowing how shrewd they are with a dollar I have to believe that they've chosen the course that benefits them the most.
They're not union and I doubt seriously if they ever will be. SPI is owned by one family, basically four people, and the anti-union feelings are strong. SPI pays their own employees decent wages and the benefit package they offer is outstanding.
The company tends to use the same loggers as much as possible. There are several logging companies that work only for SP. They tend to be good outfits that are in tune with how SP wants things done. I've seen logging companies come and go but the ones that seem to have the most success are the ones that log clean, know how to work with the THP, put out a decent amount of production, and are willing to work for what SP pays them. This is the important part. I'm not saying that SP doesn't pay a decent rate. They do. They just don't pay any more than they have to for their logging. It's up to the logger to find some way to make a profit out of what he's being paid. Every major timber company I've ever seen was that way.
The loggers supply the men and machinery to get the logs to the mill. As a rule the fallers are not employees of the logger but independent contractors themselves. Almost every faller I know has himself set up as a business. They contract themselves to the logger and are usually paid by the foot or by the day. The fallers are responsible for all their work expenses...including insurance. When you hear about the day rates fallers get...especially steep ground fallers on a helicopter or yarder side, you might think they're making a lot of money but they're not. By the time a faller pays his expenses he's not left with much.
I don't know what the average WC rate is for fallers right now but I imagine it's huge. Small logging companies or large, nobody can afford WC for fallers...thus the move toward fallers being contractors themselves. None of the loggers and none of the fallers have any affiliation with unions. I don't see that changing any time soon.
Like OlympicYJ said, SP has some of their own logging trucks but the majority of the logs are hauled by gypos...either trucks belonging to the logger himself or owner-operators with their own trucks. The last figures I heard was that the SP trucks hauled approximately 25% of the logs going into the mills on a company-wide basis.
