I used to have to run to make up for lost time doing dumb stuff like getting pinched in a buck, now I’m just efficient enough that I don’t need to run to cut 50,000 board feet in a day lol

I have sold just a few logs in my life. Had no clue about how the mill figured what to pay me.

The tree removals were a bit further than I liked from my place and a lot of driving back and forth to do so. I noticed a mill not far from the job and called them and asked if they were buying hickory. They said yes so I loaded the logs as logs and took them there. To me it was a nice close place to dump saving me about 4 hrs of wind shield time and fuel, bonus was getting paid to dump.

Board feet and grading logs is something I know nothing about. I see trees as what are the hazards( power lines, over houses, ect) access( how close can I get vehicles to it and if it has to all go through a 36" gate) and distance to dump) and loads to hall off. Time and help needed the price it. Wood is a bi product nice bonus is getting paid to cut and hall fire wood home.

Never used to be. Operators are getting payed more nowadays, but cutters were always the high paying job. When they went to cutting brush instead of trees the pay scale started changing. Since Tramp is still cutting real trees I'm assuming he is still higher up on the totem pole. Some operators are real artists and a joy to behold, but there are plenty of them that are glorified truck drivers, and there is a saying about truck drivers, "they are like refrigerators, close the door and the light goes out."

There's another saying that fits the situation described also, "if you can't take it, don't dish it out."

Pretty much nothing but operators anymore, at least in WA. Most mills have max diameter of 28 or 30 inches so if they happen to run into an oversize it gets left as a bird tree. Feller/bunchers have no problem handling that size and with the tethered machines, it seems there is nothing too steep. I did see last winter an outfit using a camera equipped grappel yarder and the FS puts out thinning sales that require a dropline carriage but other than that no men on the ground.
That grappel yarder was incredibly slow but industrial insurance is so high for men on the ground it just about precludes their use.
I'm too old for it now but everything I know is obsolete. I started on a spar tree and saw it too its end.

I make twice what an operator does and in half the time

Where you’re at they might be using Doyle scale, but they’re most likely paying by the ton. The mills down south do that a lot now, it’s easier to figure out a tonnage rate than it is to scale small diameter wood. When we’re talking logs going down to inches on the scale end, most of them have 100 board feet or less, it’s not even worth scaling them. Scribner scale is the standard for the west side of the country, Doyle scale is used in the east. Tonnage rates have become fairly common across the board, the only thing that gets weighed here is pulp

That’s the big thing these days is the comp rates are incredibly high on cutters and rigging hands, we have the highest industrial fatality rate, so our comp costs about $30 an hour per man

I was told years ago that running feller-bunchers and shovel logging only penciled out due to insurance rates. They cost so much for an initial investment and there is so much maintenance costs (too many moving parts, and there is no way to not use them harshly) that they are always more expensive than running cutters and a rigging crew. EXCEPT that L and I is SO much cheaper if you don't have any man on the ground.

There's a reason you can't hardly get good lumber at the lumberyard anymore. It's because you need real trees to cut decent lumber out of, but all they are cutting with feller-bunchers is brush, and get boards full of knots, half heart wood and half sapwood, and twisted up like a propeller. But that is what they are cutting, so most of the mills are set up to take that size wood, so like humptulips said, many times when they run into some oversize they just leave them. There is one mill locally that is set up to take decent size logs, and when I go to the lumberyard I'm always looking for their stamp on the lumber, because that is by far my best chance to end up with decent lumber.

The big joke being that even in wood small enough for a buncher, I can still out cut one. I’m already knocking the face out of the next tree by the time one hits the ground. And a buncher can’t set up dominoes like I can. If I have a whole hillside leaned the wrong way, I’ll go cripple a whole bunch of trees and whack them with one and send the whole hillside down at once

There's an oversize mill on Grays Harbor but they pay just over pulp prices because they have no competition.

But you can't stack it for the shovel loggers to swing it. Bunching it saves one operation for the shovel operator.

I hate eastern red cedar. My goal is remove all of them from my farm. It will never happen, but it's a goal. The number has greatly reduced over the last 25 years.

I can, but they gripe if you do, that’s only for bunchers I guess, they’d rather a hand faller fan it out than shoot at the same hole all day

That's only good if you're shovel logging. If you're running a yarder the choker setters are really going to cuss you. Of course if you're using a buncher you aren't running a yarder so that is a moot point. Most of the young cutters around here don't know how to lay timber down anyways, they just tip'er down the hill. A good cutter can make life a lot easier on the rigging crew and save a lot of wood by paying attention to how he lays it so he doesn't bust it up.

A couple years ago I was coming out from hunting one day on my snowmachine and had to sit and wait for about twenty minutes for them to yard a bunch of trees out of the road. I've been around logging all my life and had never seen anything like it. One guy setting chokers off a carriage. Nice guy but his IQ was about the same as the temperature outside (raining in the snow, so mid to upper 30s). A bunch of trees tipped down the hill with their tops across the road, he was walking up and down the road choking the tops of trees fell down hill, to yard uphill. The entire time I was there I never saw a single marketable log make it to the landing, everything he choked was busted into pieces when they went to yard it. He informed me he had been logging for something like 12 years, I don't know how he wasn't fired in 12 minutes.

Yeah I avoid tree length work when I can, any hack and slasher can do it, so it’s hard to get loggers or mills (depending on who’s paying for the cutting) to pay what a good cutter is worth unless there’s a standing relationship there, so they know I’m not charging them $150 an hour to cut 100 trees in a day, I’m charging them $150 an hour to cut 400 trees a day. But I still much prefer tipping them side hill and bucking them, I make more money, the loggers have a nice unit to work with, and idiots who can’t work with nice timber get tramped out in a quickness. Don’t let my name fool you on that either, there’s a difference between tramping and getting tramped lol