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Timbergreetings! May 24, 2002 page 3
When you sell your forest products as value-added items, direct to the consumer, the workers compensation insurance cost for the logging crew is about 1% of the value of the kiln dry lumber & flooring. Go ahead and pay health benefits and retirement too - spend 2% of the gross sales to be sure that your most important workers are respected, protected, and rewarded. Then you will truly know that your loggers and your members are all really insured.
You can afford to do this right by working together in a cooperative!
The article tells "There are many problems (keeping his crew fully employed) - enough so that Tim says he could make more money hand-cutting as a contractor to himself than he does running the operation and hiring the work. Way too much of this time is taken up by cruising and marking timber, submitting bids, chasing down log buyers, satisfying foresters and dealing with all the paperwork running a logging business requires.
Tim seldom gets to put in a day actually working in the woods."
A group of forest owners that join together to pool their resources can develop a common management strategy - with an annual harvest schedule - to produce a steady flow of timber. Timber harvests are systematically set up on the members lands by the cooperatives forestry staff, to efficiently manage the sustainable harvest. Loggers then simply follow the harvest maps and paint marks in the woods, moving from one members land to the next in an efficient and organized fashion. Loggers actually do logging, not all the chasing around looking for timber to cut. Workers are paid an excellent wage for excellent work.
We have been paying our loggers $165 - 200/mbf for harvesting timber following Full Vigor Forestry. We are prepared to pay more if needed. Forest owners should be willing to pay whatever the cost
for excellent logging - it is essential to our future.
No damage is tolerated, but a bonus is given for a job well done. The harvest crew knows that if they do a good job - they will work on the same property next year, and the year after that, and the year after that�.. They get to know the woods and the forest owner. A long-term team approach to forestry is developed. Each time you pass through the same woods, you can see the growth and improvements creating a more natural and productive forest. This gets exciting!!!!!
When the weather is bad, loggers have the opportunity of working at the cooperative; marking timber, sawmilling, manufacturing, marketing wood, or helping with building projects. This takes the pressure off the logger to work in the woods when conditions would cause damage to the forest, and gives them very valuable experience in the other aspects of forest management.
Again, all of this is possible when you sell your timber as kiln dry lumber and flooring for 10-100 times its original stumpage value!
Also, "He says that most problems between landowner and loggers result not from dishonesty on either part but, from misunderstandings about what is to be harvested and what is to be left. He feels that, at least in this area, most bad jobs are the fault of the landowners rather than the loggers. Next page
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