How many of us worked on crews in environments similar or the same ? It's a familiar scene to many of us, but does give an outsider a good perspective as to what takes place to harvest timber.
The guy who quit, or wanted to, how many of us have been there ? A little over dramatic, I mean that heavy boat anchor on tracks, (sherman tank) called a yarder is going to get stuck every so often. You do your best, it gets stuck you get it out. I've seen dozens of those daily quitters over the years, they usually get weeded out of a crew, no one wants to deal with it especially the foremen.
Ok, now I'll be somewhat critical, and I know nothing of their particular business but have been around very similar equipment most of my life, there are a lot of similarities, yet I still no nothing of what they do, but only what I see.
Last night they (forget what outfit) dropped a tree on the skyline, it was an obstacle, A. before you set the line, would'nt you have seen that ? It stuck out, the one lone tree to survive the winds that blew down that area. B.) Once the line is or was up, forestry says you leave healthy standing trees like this, and ok it becomes a problem after, well gee, would'nt you have put your spurs on, climbed up and lopped off sections until you could control it's fall or get it under the skyline vs. breaking skyline, damaging the car, having to splice the skyline, re-set same, fix the car and having to pay a crew for the down time ? Very possible I am completely wrong but the goal here is to minimize down time and NOT knock that line down, think they played that up for TV ? Maybe they wrote the cost of that into the scene, and the outfit was paid to make the show interesting.
Now one has to think, he's really trying to get over the hump with old equipment, that is no joke trying to get established and profitable depending on equipment as we all know, my father used to warn me about business's like that, because they can eat you alive to keep em going, the crew went home but the owner had to stay to recover proeduction losses, that darned tree in the way was an expensive one. Got to get those logs to the mill or you don't get paid.
I think these are the dramatics they are trying to exploit for the show to make it interesting for an audience that is assumed to know nothing of these kind of operations. I give that guy a lot of credit for not losing it when the tree dropped the skyline, the tag line did not work to control the fall, or..... was it planned, he was just too cool about it ? So was the guy who dropped the tree on it. That was a costly problem, won't call it a mistake, looked like one though.
These jobs don't seem to pay an awful lot either, they are a few hundred thousand each, one piece of equipment can be worth more than a job, and look at all the payables, payroll, insurance trucking, fuel, repairs, maintainance, injuries etc. etc. These guys on those crews can't be making high wages, and they must certainly love what they do.
This is no doubt a rough racket to run a business in, extremely hazardous, expensive equipment and the jobs themselves do not pay a lot, at least from what I am seeing.
The production numbers they tabulated in loads, seems like you are comparing apples to oranges, if they are to be taken as comparisons, it's really just a report, as nothing is the same, all different sites, topography, weather, soils, equipment, supervisors, methods etc.
I tried to notice the difference between outfits, was it Browning, they have later model equipment, fly in the skyline with a helicopter, and the rigging they used looked newer judging by what you can see. I can't imagine keeping up with the equipment and this owners high production standards in that environment, and without the latter in regards to production the business is done, I know that from running crews of union ironworkers, they have to show up and produce or the job is in the drink quickly, unless you can stop the payroll clock.
It has to be a tall order to produce a show on something like this, one would think that some things we have seen have been orchestrated behind the scenes.
All this from what I see, be great to hear from a logger working on the crew, I liked the show so far it is what it is, and I hope all those guys get home safe every night, that part of the job is no joke.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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