LOGGED OUT?

ST. MARIES – Chad Nelson’s workday starts at 4:30 a.m., when he slides a key into the ignition of a 75,000-pound log processor.

Warming up the 300-horsepower engine takes about 15 minutes. From then on, Nelson’s day is all about speed. A Caterpillar operator dumps loads of pine, fir and larch trees in front of his machine. Nelson tries to keep up.

Working a console similar to a video game, he manipulates the processor’s blades – slicing branches from the trunk and cutting the trees to marketable lengths. By the end of a 10-hour shift, he’s transformed 1,300 trees into sawmill-ready logs.

Nelson, 25, feels born to a life in Idaho’s timber industry. By the time he was a sophomore at St. Maries High School, he was working part time in the maintenance shop at Danielson Logging Co. The prospect of running a $500,000 machine enticed him in ways that formal education never did.

“My dad always wanted me to go to college,” Nelson said, “but he knew I wasn’t into school.”

Nelson’s experience was once common in rural Benewah County. Kids followed their dads into the woods and raised families on comfortable, blue-collar paychecks.

But two decades of downturns in the timber industry thinned the ranks of young adults interested in logging. Now, logging contractors in one of Idaho’s most timber-dependent counties are facing the unthinkable: a shortage of qualified workers.

Logging is “long hours and hard hours,” said Bob Danielson, Nelson’s employer. “Right now, there are jobs all over the place for young kids getting out of school. They can do anything they want.”

Danielson said the lack of qualified workers is keeping him from expanding his 34-employee company. He has five logging operations going right now but has work for six crews. At St. Maries Logging, one of Danielson’s competitors, costly equipment sometimes sits idle because the firm can’t find enough skilled operators.

Ten percent of applicants can’t pass the mandatory drug test, said Joe Epler, the logging manager at St. Maries Logging. In addition, he loses about 20 percent of his 60-person staff each year to turnover. Experienced loggers are recruited away by other companies. New employees find the work too demanding and quit.

“It’s a severe problem in our industry,” Epler said. “I can remember back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when we’d get 10 to 15 applications each spring from boys graduating from high school. Now, we’re lucky to get one every two years.”

North Idaho’s record-low unemployment is a contributing factor. So are demographic shifts, which mean fewer young adults are entering the work force.

Competition is particularly keen for workers who can fill “strong-back” jobs typically held by young men, said Kathryn Tacke, a regional economist for Idaho’s Department of Labor. Building contractors and manufacturers are also vying for those workers.

Logging contractors are up against the perception “that they’re a dying industry,” Tacke said. “People just discourage their kids from even considering it.”

North Idaho’s logging employment peaked at nearly 1,450 workers in 1978, according to state statistics. Last year, 925 people worked for logging contractors.

Steep cutbacks in federal timber sales reduced the amount of work available for loggers. Mechanization also trimmed loggers’ ranks. Trees are now cut by fast-moving machines called “feller bunchers,” replacing the labor-intensive harvesting once done with chain saws. Logs arrive at the mills without having been touched by human hands.

The industry is smaller but more efficient, according to Shawn Keough, an Idaho state senator and the executive secretary of Associated Logging Contractors.

“Our area grows trees so well,” she said. “To the degree that private lands remain in the timber base – and aren’t all carved up for development – there will continue to be a need for contract loggers.”

The lack of young people moving into the industry concerns large landowners as well as logging contractors. According to a University of Idaho study, nearly two-thirds of all loggers in the Inland Northwest are 40 or older. Their bosses are even older. The average age for logging contractors was 51, according to the 2005 survey.

Matt Donegan is co-president of Forest Capital Partners, a Boston-based timber-investment firm that owns 2.1 million acres of forestland in six states, including 600,000 acres in the Inland Northwest. Forest Capital relies on contract loggers to harvest its trees.

“I would say we’re seeing a competition already for high-quality contractors,” Donegan said. “It’s a national trend. … We believe there will be lots of opportunities for contractors in the future.”

Competition is most acute for companies that can do specialized types of logging, such as helicopter logging or logging on steep terrain, said John McGhehey, a vice president at Stimson Lumber Co., which uses about 50 contract logging firms to harvest 332,000 acres of company-owned land in the Inland Northwest.

Not all logging contractors, however, are awash with work. Tom Foust, co-owner of Foust Inc., said multiple mill closures in Western Montana and North Idaho during the past five years hurt his family-owned logging company in Bonners Ferry. Now, “we go all over to find work,” he said.

Recruiting new loggers will continue to be a challenge, industry leaders predict.

Nelson’s alarm clock rings at 3 a.m. While he showers and gets ready for work, his girlfriend packs his lunch. Most days, he won’t be home for 12 or 13 hours.

In the summer, Nelson’s processor is surrounded by choking clouds of dust. In the winter, he’s working in snow. During his first year as a full-time employee at Danielson Logging, he was laid off for nearly three months during spring breakup, when the ground was too soft to run equipment.

During a 10:30 a.m. lunch break, Nelson and his co-workers assessed logging’s pros and cons. For many, the work is an extension of the outdoor, recreational lifestyle they enjoy. They like operating big rigs, working independently, and spotting deer and elk for the upcoming hunting seasons.

“They’ll eat dust on the job site all day, and then they’ll go home and ride their motorcycles,” said Tom Moore, a forester with Danielson Logging.

But logging has its drawbacks, too, the crew members said. It’s physically demanding work. And prices for logs and lumber are controlled by global commodity markets far beyond their influence.

While mechanization has reduced the logging industry’s accident rates, it remains a dangerous occupation. Logging accidents claimed the lives of four Idaho residents during the last fiscal year, according to the state’s Industrial Commission. Another 277 non-fatal injuries were reported.

The whiplash effect of jolting over rough ground in heavy equipment is a common complaint for Nelson’s co-workers. Most have slipped off equipment and fallen 10 or 15 feet.

Many loggers have standing appointments at the chiropractor’s office, said 36-year-old Brett Boutiller, of Fernwood, Idaho, who attributes chronic back and neck pain to nearly two decades spent working in the forest.

Would Boutiller recommend logging as a career path to his son? He hesitated. Boutiller earns $20 an hour operating a feller buncher, which is top pay at Danielson Logging. But the money from the woods isn’t what it used to be, he said.

While loggers’ wages have risen, they haven’t kept pace with inflation, according to Idaho’s Occupational Wage Survey. Logging equipment operators, for instance, earn an average of $18.27 an hour. That same job paid $23 an hour in 1980, after adjusting for inflation. Tacke, the regional economist, attributes the decrease to a smaller union presence in the forest products industry, along with downsizing in the industry.

Bob Danielson, 50, can sympathize with loggers’ dilemma over whether to recommend the job to their children. He’s wrestled with that question himself.

Danielson’s grandfather, a Swedish immigrant, logged with horses in the St. Joe River region. His father, Daniel Danielson, used a chain saw.

Hard labor left Daniel Danielson disabled at 50. “Don’t go into the woods,” he told his son.

Bob Danielson trained as a welder after high school but found himself drawn to the timber industry. He worked at mills and later ran a cedar shake company. In 1988, Danielson bought a Cat and started salvage logging. By investing heavily in mechanized logging equipment, he figured he could spare himself and his workers the injuries his dad faced.

Someday, Danielson hopes to pass his company on to a handpicked group of employees. In the meantime, he looks for workers who share his affinity for the woods.

Danielson prefers applicants who like to hunt, fish and camp. If they ride ATVs, snowmobiles or motorcycles, that’s another plus. “If they like the outdoors, they’ll like logging,” he said. “If they’ve ridden motorcycles since they were kids, they’re not scared to take a piece of equipment up a mountain or over a bank.”