Long - Bighorn Logging

BY DAN SHELLBANKS, Ore.★Long-time logger HarveDethlefs, who came tothe woods as a secondcareer, has earned awell-deserved reputation forreliable, quality work while guiding acan-do logging company that hasbecome a multifaceted venture able tohandle different harvesting applications.Thanks to a combination of marketfactors and a well-honed organizationcharacterized by its equipment andpersonnel and administrative, clericaland shop support, Dethlefs’ BighornLogging Corp. (BLC) is doing as wellas it ever has since he started it in 1980after a 20-year career in electronics.“The last two or three years on thelogging side have been some of thebest since we’ve been in business,”Dethlefs says, particularlypointing to the “good price”purchase of several state and privatetimber tracts, whichBighorn held and sold at a highermarket level.Those kinds of moves, along with ageneral upsurge in woods activity dueto log and lumber export markets, havehelped grow BLC to its current configurationof three cable and two groundcrews, plus a cutting crew. (BighornLogging also has a biomass venture,Biomass Harvesting, that was profiledin July-August 2011 TH.)“We seem to be pretty fortunate, andwe have work lined up,” Dethlefs says,adding that Bighorn recently won a bidto harvest a large timber sale for BoiseCascade in 2013. “We try to keep plentyof work ahead of us so we don’t haveany gaps in production. And we venturedinto buying some of our own timber,and that put us on a line for betterprofitability.”The increased activity and companygrowth is reflected in production numbers.After moving 21MMBF in 2010,Bighorn logged 32MMBF in 2011.Solid LeadershipKey to the company’s success is theleadership of Dethlefs, his daughter,Denise, who manages an extensiveoffice and support structure, and MarkStandley Jr., vice president of operations,who joined the company in2002 and has been instrumental inrecent growth and the successfulexpansion into biomass.TIMBER HARVESTING & WOOD FIBER OPERATIONS ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 ■ 10

Dethlefs, who turns 75 this year, sayshe still loves the work and plans to staywith it as long as his health allows, buthe can also see the end of his secondcareer drawing near. However, he’s notsweating the future of his company.“I think we’re well covered for thefuture,” he says, adding that Standley,whom he’s grooming as his replacement,“has a great personality that fitswith the employees, plus he knows thebusiness really well and won’t let anyonewalk over him. I think we’re wellpositioned from here on until howeverlong they want to carry it when I can’t.”BackgroundThough Dethlefs grew up in a loggingfamily, he believed opportunity was limitedin the woods when he exited militaryservice in 1958. Instead, he went toFully mechanized at the landing with dangle-head processors, Bighorn Logging still maintains its own in-housecutting crew while also using contract cutting to move more than 30MMBF in 2011.

After starting out as a contract cutter in 1980, Dethlefs has deep appreciation and respect for hand-falling beautiful big timber.work for Tektronix in nearby Beaverton,Ore., a step which led to a 20-yearcareer before he retired in 1980.Dethlefs and an acquaintance began acontract cutting business in 1980, butdissolved the operation within twoyears. Dethlefs then began slowly buildinga logging company. The going wasquite slow at first: “I remember I paid25% interest on the first skidder Ibought,” he recalls in starting out duringtough economic times.The logger began a relationship withLongview Fibre Co. and later begancontracting with other large timberlandowners. By the late ’80s, as the companyexpanded, Dethlefs transitioned intoa managerial role—“mainly makingsure we had jobs, paying the bills andrunning after things,” he says. Thecompany also got out of contract cutting.“I had to get away from what Iloved, and that was running a saw andfelling timber. That was my specialty.”(According to Denise, “he still comes inthe office once in a while with sawdustin his hair and I know he’s been out cuttingdown a big tree somewhere.”)Early on Bighorn embraced mechanizedprocessing at the landing. “Thatreally helped speed up the landing chasingprocess instead of having two orthree saws out there,” Dethlefs says.Bighorn Logging ran stroke delimbersfor about six years until an operatorran the machine’s boom into a yardercab with the yarder engineer inside. Theengineer wasn’t hurt badly. “But I saidenough of that. A yarder landing is notthe place for a stroke delimber,” Dethlefsremembers.He switched to the dangle headprocessor design and never lookedback. “We think they’re quicker thanstroke delimbers, plus you don’t havethat boom sticking in everyone’s face.Dangle heads are also more versatilebecause you can do a little felling withthem if you need to,” Dethlefs says.Bighorn currently operates four 24 in.capacity Waratah processing heads.As many did, the company struggledin the early ‘90s, then came backstrong. In 2000 BLC experienced itsbiggest production year ever—56MMBF. Dethlefs decided he wasgoing to semi-retire, work summerswith a guide business in Canada thathe had an interest in, then come backto Oregon during the winter. But afterreturning to Oregon to “straightenthings out” the first two summers, hedecided the arrangement wouldn’twork and came back full-time.Bighorn had scaled back a bit from2000, then Standley arrived in 2002.“He’s young and aggressive and wantsto go, so we’ve kind of let him take thelead in rebuilding the company the lastcouple of years, and now we’re up tothree yarders and two ground sides,”Dethlefs says. “We’ve established ourselvesin 30 years as one of the bettercontractors in the area, and a lot of workcomes to us by word of mouth.”BLC is active in community affairsand has been active in local organizations.It received an Operator of the YearAward from the Oregon Dept. ofForestry in 2008 for a Northwest Regionproject that involved building a deflectionboom in a landslide-prone area thatprotected the property below while itincreased harvest opportunity above.TIMBER HARVESTING & WOOD FIBER OPERATIONS ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 ■ 12

Busy year for Bighorn in 2011 led to moving a yarder out of "spare" status and starting up a third cable logging crew.Woods WorkThe first BLC job Timber Harvestingvisited featured large logs coming off atimber sale offered by the City ofMcMinnville, which owns a largewatershed area west of town and offersonly a few sales annually. In this case,McMinnville had offered two timbersales. Bighorn bought one, Boise Cascadebought the other and Bighorn wonthe bid to harvest the Boise tract aswell. The sale Bighorn purchasedincluded almost 2MMBF (and 130 poletrees) on just 24 acres of broken terrainthat offered a challenging and ruggedfalling and ground logging opportunity.On site were Kobelco 330 and 350shovel-logging machines, plus a JohnDeere 748G III dual-arch skidder withEco-Wheel Track tire chains. The poletimber had been decked and previouslyremoved by a subcontractor whobrought in specialized pole hauling rigswith 60 ft. steerable trailers.The job had been somewhat slowgoing, Standley said, due to cautious cuttingand felling of the valuable large timberon broken ground and special carewith the pole trees. Production had averaged9-10 loads daily (some featuringonly three or four stems), with large logsgoing to Starfire Lumber and peelers toBoise Cascade. Other mills buying logsfrom the sale included Columbia Vista,D.R. Johnson and Hampton mills.On a second job site, BLC was workinga state timber sale that had beenpurchased by Boise Cascade. The5.6MMBF sale was spread over 187acres and four units, including one 41-acre partial cut area. Bighorn had placedtwo crews on the site. Equipmentincluded Thunderbird 6255 and 6250swing yarders, Kobelco 350 andKomatsu 300 carriers fitted withWaratah processing heads and a 210Kobelco loader. The 6255 yarder wasflying a Boman carriage, the 6250 anEagle carriage. Timber falling was handledby Bighorn’s in-house cutting crewthat included five chain saw operatorsand a TimberPro TL735 track-typefeller-buncher coupled with a Quadco2900 sawhead. Output was mostlyDoug las fir and hemlock, headed toBoise Cascade mills, plus some whitefir bound for Hampton Tillamook.Although the company does operateone log truck, it relies on subcontractorsfor the bulk of transportation.Commenting on the busy work load atthe end of the summer, Standley notedthe company had two additional sitesworking, a cable logging job and shovellogging job, both on Stimson timberland.“This is one of the few times we’ve hadall our crews and equipment working,”Standley says, noting that the companydoesn’t employ fixed crews andmachines. “We put the machines andpeople with the job that requires them,”he says. “It makes us more flexible, andwe believe we’re putting the right equipmentand experience where it’s needed.”While the 6255 yarder was classifiedas a spare when TH visited, since thenBighorn expanded, putting it to usefull-time.SupportBLC employs 40 and staffs an officein Banks and a shop in Rainier. Dethlefs’daughter Denise and two full-time clerkswork at the office. Two full-timeTIMBER HARVESTING & WOOD FIBER OPERATIONS ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 ■ 13

Two ground-logging crews are anchored by Deere 748G III skidder and Kobelco and Link-Belt shovel-logging machines.mechanics work at the shop (one makesin-woods service calls), and one drivermoves equipment with a tractor and lowboy.Bighorn offers employees a reasonableand good medical insurance plan,401-k plan and vacation pay.Business and logging operations arefully computerized through Quickbooksand Office Equipment Co.’s (OEC)Load Tracker and other logging softwareapplications. One way the staff hasaccelerated operations is by automatingalmost all load ticket data information.Bighorn receives e-mails with load ticketdata from scaling bureaus and uses anOEC conversion program that automaticallyenters the data into the correctfields within Bighorn’s record-keepingsystem. Some bureaus send dailyreports, others are weekly. Some millsprovide hard copies that have to beentered manually. The automatedprocess has been in place seven years.“We used to enter every bit of databy hand, piece by piece,” Denise says.“At times we would get days behindwhen we had four or five sides goingand had to enter all the ticket numbersand trucking info and destinations, letalone scale and weight.”The company is also setting up amaintenance record-keeping system oncomputer, and the staff closely trackswarranties and repairs. “We still don’tget all the information we want, butwe’ve gotten some better prices on usedmachines because we could documenthow things had been maintained andrepaired,” Denise says. “We try to takegood care of what we have.”The shop performs lots of maintenanceand truck work. “Some operatorsdon’t want anyone touching theirmachine, so they take care of a lot ofthings themselves like greasing andbasic maintenance,” Standley says.One mechanic also works in the field,visiting crews and doing on-site repairsfor both the logging and biomass crews.“Most anything major we take to thedealership,” Standley adds. “Harve likesto rotate equipment frequently, so wedon’t get much engine work.”TrainingA long-time member of AssociatedOregon Loggers (AOL), the state’s loggingorganization, BLC and its managementare appreciative of the association’sefforts in logger training and safetyprograms, which have helped raisethe level of professionalism for thecompany and the industry.“AOL undertook aggressive ownershipin creating a ProLogger programthat would be SFI-compliant,” Denisesays, adding that the program is offeredat little or no cost to AOL members, andthe program doesn’t discriminate againstsmaller operators. However, “it’s notunsubstantial, the amount of training tobecome initially certified, but AOL hasdone a good job making sure we don’thave three or four hoops to jump throughand also making sure our program iscompliant,” she adds. Bighorn sendsthree or four employees throughout theyear for ProLogger training, and is lookingat sending newer guys to supervisorytraining this year.The AOL ProLogger training feedsinto Bighorn’s own internal employeetraining for new hires. “There are certainthings every employee has to doannually, like watch the SFI trainingvideo,” Denise says. There are also atleast three hours of training videos andTIMBER HARVESTING & WOOD FIBER OPERATIONS ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 ■ 14

The company doesn't employ fixed crews and equipment and instead puts the right manpower and machinery on the jobs that need it.training guides from AOL for newemployees, part of an extensive orientationprocess that occurs before a newemployee goes to the woods.New employees or those with littleexperience are paired with experiencedrigging employees, who are told to keepa close eye on the new hire.Denise says Bighorn has occasionallytrained people with no experiencewho’ve made great employees, andthere are others who like the idea oflogging more than the work. And younever truly know with a new employeeuntil they get their boots muddy.“We had one who thought he wantedto be a logger more than anything whoonly made it one day,” Denise says. “Wehave another guy with very little experience,but right now it looks like he’sgoing to make it.”THBighorn Logging uses contract trucking mostly, but the one hauling rig it does operate shows off a nice load of logs.