Making The Cut Sherri Hansen Become First Woman To Be President Of Logging Association

It was as natural as falling off a log when Sherri Hansen was elected in March as the first woman president of one of the West Coast’s largest timber-industry associations.

Of course, “falling off a log” is not an expression Hansen would use. Being a highly successful safety administrator is one of numerous jobs that led the Chewelah businesswoman to the presidency of the Washington Contract Loggers Association.

The 25-year-old organization represents about 550 logging companies and has 20 employees and a $1.5 million annual budget. About 100 big forest-product companies chip in financially but don’t get to vote.

The state’s big timber companies are represented by the Washington Forest Protection Association, which has a lot more money but only 70 to 80 members. The Contract Loggers Association concentrates on making loggers better business people and improving their image.

It’s a job Hansen relishes.

“I enjoy working with our members,” she said. “They are just wonderful people to work with - hard-working people.”

Growing up on a farm in nearby Valley, Wash., Hansen learned to appreciate hard work.

Now 35, she has been in the logging business since she married John Hansen in 1979. He had started Hansen Logging five years earlier with one skidder and a crew of eight, and she helped him build one of the larger contract logging operations in the state.

Hansen Logging now operates three logging sites with 50 employees, 12 log trucks and a road-building crew. It also has the 15th-best workers’ compensation insurance rating among some 1,700 logging companies in the state, due in no small part to Hansen’s work as the firm’s safety administrator.

She does inspections in the field and conducts regular safety meetings. Hansen also continues to oversee the business office, where she started as the company bookkeeper and office manager. If a log truck needs to be moved or driven in a parade, Hansen is licensed and ready for that, too.

“Your business is probably more geared for success if both of you are working at it,” Hansen said, noting her husband works long hours and doesn’t have time to oversee an office.

Husband-and-wife teams are the norm among contract loggers, according to Bill Pickell, general manager of the logging association.

Cutting trees is a male-dominated occupation, but running a logging company isn’t. Pickell said two of the Washington Contract Loggers’ four divisions also are managed by women, so there was no need for a token president.

“Sherri was elected because her peers respected her,” Pickell said.

He noted the association awarded her a lifetime membership three years ago, “and they don’t bestow that on just anybody. It has to be somebody that has gone out of their way to help the association and the industry.”

Hansen’s involvement with the association began in 1984 with what turned into a 10-year stint as president of the 25-firm ChewelahColville chapter.

Also starting in 1984, she served six years as secretary for the association’s credit union, which specializes in loans to logging companies. And she was the state association treasurer from 1986 through 1988.

“When she takes a job, she’s so loyal that she very rarely misses a meeting even though most of them are over here in Olympia,” Pickell said. “We have a hard time getting that loyalty from some of our members who live right here in Olympia.”

Hansen flew to Olympia last week to represent the association in a conference with federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials, who are proposing new regulations for the logging industry.

One of Hansen’s goals as president is to convince the state Department of Labor and Industries that it charges logging companies too much for worker compensation insurance. She said the fact that association consistently gets refunds from the department shows the risk classification for logging should be reduced.

Hansen said the association hasn’t failed to get a return in the 14 years it has operated a worker-compensation pool. Members pay a 2 percent surcharge on their premiums and split whatever refund the pool gets after claims are paid.

“This is one of the programs we have put together that has been very successful,” Hansen said, crediting safety classes the association sponsors.

Another of her goals is to gain some relief from the federal Endangered Species Act. Hansen will go to Washington, D.C., in June to ask Congress to “consider people also in the equation.”

“We do not want to abolish the ESA at all,” she said. “We want as much as anybody for our species to be saved. But we need to be sure of our scientific evidence. Is it really threatened and how much are we willing to spend to save it?”

Hansen believes precautions her company and Plum Creek Timber Co. have taken in Selkirk grizzly habitat show that logging can coexist with endangered species.

“We really do care about our lands, and we’re not out there cutting everything down,” she said. “I love this area. It’s an excellent place to raise your children.”

Oh, yes. That’s another of Hansen’s jobs. She has a 14-year-old daughter and a son who is about to turn 10.