Episode 37: Scott Rossman; What It Really Takes To Keep A Town Warm in Alaska

A lot of people talk about “ending up” in Alaska. Scott Rossman actually did it, and the reason is almost ridiculous: a roadside lunch stop, a broken moving van, and a young mechanic who thought he could fix anything. Scott walks us through the full arc from a dairy farm in western New York to 41 years in Haynes, Alaska, building a life around logging, firewood, and the kind of hands-on problem solving you only learn by doing.

We dig into the early grind and the wild detours: road construction camps, winter trapping trips that teach more than they pay, a taste of commercial halibut fishing that ends with Scott realizing he is not a “boats” guy, and even a brush with Skagway history as the White Pass dock and railroad kick off the modern cruise era. Then the conversation hits a major moment in world news when Scott joins the Exxon Valdez oil spill response, describing what it’s like working tugboats and tending a massive logistics operation in Prince William Sound.

From there, the story turns into a practical look at the Alaska timber and firewood business. Scott explains how he starts selling firewood in the early 1990s, why he used to ferry loads to Juneau and Skagway every week, and how he mechanizes with a homemade firewood processor that can really move wood when everything runs right. We also get into Alaska DNR timber sales, how logs get graded into saw logs, house logs, and firewood, and why Sitka spruce house logs give Haynes a rare edge for builders in the Yukon and Interior Alaska.

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to heat a town, run a one-person operation, or keep equipment alive long past its prime, you’ll get real answers here. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who burns wood, and leave a review if you want more local stories like this.

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Transcript

Welcome And A Gift

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions. Today, my guest is the owner-operator of the stump company, Scott Rossman. Welcome to the show, Scott.

SPEAKER_03 0:09

Thanks for uh interviewing me. Don't quite understand why, but okay. I'm here.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

You've you've you've been highly requested by members of the community. People want to know, people want to know your story, Scott. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Okay. Well I guess it's not that exciting a story.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Well, maybe not, maybe not to you, but to others it is.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

None of our stories are really that exciting to us, right? I guess. I guess yeah, that's right. Before we get started, I I got a gift for you there. Right on. And then on the back it shows that you had answers.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

We don't know that yet.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Well, that's I'm putting some I'm putting pressure on you here. Now that now that I gave you the coverage of pre-prep. Prepaid, yeah. You have to have at least a couple answers.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

At least a couple.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Or I already kind of did that, sorta. Sort of.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah.

Growing Up On A Dairy Farm

SPEAKER_00 1:04

So where let's let's get back at uh young Scott. Where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_03 1:11

Uh upstate western upstate New York. Western New York.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Near kind of near, well, anywhere there is near Buffalo, but on the Pennsylvania border 100 miles from Buffalo. Okay. On a dairy farm.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

And how well that was a lot of work. Uh well, yeah, I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

It was a great way to grow up. I mean, I'm you know, like I mean, when I left, I left the farm and I went as far as I could go to get away from the farm. I grant you that. But growing up, it was a great, absolutely fantastic place to, you know, an environment to grow up in, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

How many how many dairy cows did your family have?

SPEAKER_03 2:00

Uh sixty. Back then you could do that. Like that's long gone. I mean, nobody can subsist on that anymore, kind of like a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

It's all went to the gotta get baby, you know, fucking five hundred and thousand and two thousand cow things, and that, you know, the ability that that family farm with the old wood barn and that whole scenario has pretty much disappeared from that part of the country. Maybe maybe you can find it in Amish country or something, but it's kind of gone.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

So is that what what age were you starting to get up early and have to go out and help with the milking and oh I I actually never had to do, you know, we had you know automated, not totally automated milking, but like I never had to like get up and like milk cows.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Uh-huh. I had plenty of chores, but you know, the milking the milking is where your money is made at when you're on a dairy farm and how you deal with the cows, and and so my dad and my uncle, it was owned by my dad and my uncle at the same time as partnership, so you know, I they were there to do that, because that's where you make your money. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Makes sense. Makes sense. Do you do you have any siblings then?

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Three older sisters. They were just here for a day.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

One day in 41 years. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

So did they kind of boss uh young Scott around a little bit?

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Well, you know, it it they were all older and so I didn't really the oldest one was ten years older and then eight years older, and then six years older. So they I was disconnected from them. I mean they were all they they they grew up and graduated and went away and and so I really didn't I really didn't I mean my cousins lived down the road and the three boys and and they were my brothers. I mean I was way closer to them than I was my sisters just because of that.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Just because of the age. You know, that's so a little bit probably when I was little, but I was so little I really don't remember much about being around them, to tell you the truth.

The Truck Ride Toward Alaska

SPEAKER_00 4:35

So what uh what brought you to Haynes?

SPEAKER_03 4:40

A 1967 Chevrolet pickup truck.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Was that just I'm getting out of the dairy business of good goes far away?

SPEAKER_03 4:50

I live I I grew up the place I grew up is a college town. And I went to college for two years of agricultural engineering, a two-year for the two-year, you know, thing, not the four-year. And two days after graduation, I was in the truck headed this way.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

And were you did you set out for Haynes or were you just going to Alaska to see what would happen?

SPEAKER_03 5:16

I was going to Alaska. I was going to Fairbanks because there was some shirt tail connection of maybe a c uncle's cousin's brother's sister, something in in Fairbanks, and so I was headed that way and had all my tools, and like I'm a super mechanic, because I just, you know, graduated from blah blah blah and driving along the road and stopped in a uh uh roadhouse gas station restaurant in BC north of Fort St. John called Truch Mountain. And the road doesn't go over the mountain anymore. The road's down in the valley, so the place doesn't exist anymore. But I parked and I went in and I ate lunch and I came back out and there was a there was a moving van and a uh motorhome parked one on each side of me. And the hood was up on the moving van, and there was these two tall big guys standing there looking at it, and I started talking to them, and this kind of connects with you a little bit because the two people were Clint Amex, your meat guy, and his dad. His dad?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

And they, you know, damaged the motor coming down a mountain prior to getting there, and they're wondering what to do, and I'm like, you know, oh man, I can do anything. So we fixed the motor sitting on the mountaintop and BC there, and and uh he had property and houses here and was like, well, don't go to Fairbanks, just follow us to Haynes, because we got a place for you to stay for the summer, blah blah blah. So okay. So I followed him here. So Clint MX is the reason that you got to Haynes.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Yeah. Oh, that's wild that you met.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

That was 1985.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

1985. Him and his dad were broke down and you fixed them up and pretty much exactly hands.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

I mean the fix 'em up took like a week. Yeah. Because you got to go 150 miles down to Fort St. John to get parts.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

I mean, we had to do that twice. Which is a miracle that it only had to happen twice because it was fairly major, but got enough put together to get 'em here. I think that moving van is still stuck in the bushes around town someplace. That yellow one? It was not yellow. Maybe it was. No, it was gray. The gray one? Gray.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Okay. I knew you had a couple of them. It's gray. Yeah, no, it's probably here somewhere. So what what when you got to town in 85?

A Dead Town And A Road Job

SPEAKER_03 8:06

This town was dead. This town was deader than a fucking doornail in 1985. I mean, dead, dead, dead.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Were you thinking about somebody were you like, what the hell was I thinking about all of these guys?

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Yeah, well, no, I mean, they because you don't know. I mean, I mean, your yardstick is zero, you know, when you arrive somewhere. I I say that because I know that now. You know what I mean? Yep. But everybody's like, well, there's a road job going on up in Canada. I'm like, well, I can't go to Canada. Well, well, yeah, you can. Then I learned all about this shackwack thing, you know. Oh, yeah, you can they can. So I can't remember who somebody I took with me back that's long gone, but we both went up and drove to 65 mile up at Chuck Creek, is where the construction camp was, and went in and went into the office and filled out an application. And and then I came back and like three days later I got a phone call via Clint, because that was my contact number, and went back up there and spent the summer working on that road job as a service oiler for uh far north construction out of Skagway and General Enterprises out of Whitehorse, and I still see go to Whitehorse once in a while, and I'll see an old piece of equipment or a low boy or something, and I can see the remains of a logo on the on the side of it. Man, I was there. That's where the first summer was.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yeah. So what'd you do when winter hit?

First Winter Trapping For Experience

SPEAKER_03 9:49

Ah, winter hit, and I went with a guy that's dead now named Brian Ford. And we got the bright idea we was gonna go trapping, and we went over across the river and stayed in a little camp. And I know you know where it's at. It's over above what used to be. You still got a camp over there over on Murphy Flats?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Above on Murphy Flats. No, my dad had that teacher cabin over there. Okay, like Lewis is using that.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

Above that, okay, like uh uh Tom Bender and and Dick Boyce and maybe somebody else had a little tiny cabin. And I mean tiny, like stuck in the trees over there. So we went over and spent two months over there trapping. We're going mountain man. Gonna be mountain men. So the first winter was over there till Did Did that pay off? Did you get a lot further? I mean I learned I yeah. In money, no. No. It was just to do it. You know, live in the middle of nowhere and but pay, no.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah. But experience, yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

It was that.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

So what was uh so now you're into the summer of 86. Are you still in construction or did you just decide to do something else? Summer 86.

Fishing Openers Gold Fever And Survival

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Uh got a taste of commercial fishing. Went halibut fishing. There was uh two openings, that was the dirty days where you had twenty-four hours to go like mad for the first time. End of April went with uh Billy Walker, Hal Matthews, and Bruce Spencer. Okay, the riptide. Yeah, that was the name of the boat, and got uh education in all kinds of different ways. Well, Bruce is the only one left alive besides me on that from that expedition. And then a month later, I went with uh Bubba, you know, you remember Bubba and uh Billy Walker's dad.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Don. Don.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

Don Walker on the that wasn't the riptide, Chubby. Chubby and did another 24-hour thing, out of it thing. Then in and amongst all that, Clint knew Joe Joe Jurgolite. And me and uh and somewhere in there during that trapping thing, I got to be friends with uh uh Bob Piper and started going to Porcupine up where you know Joe had her cabin up there claim and all that, and started going up there doing stuff, and uh that summer, early summer there, did went up and me and Bob and this other guy did some gold, you know, gold mining, you know, very crude, but I remember getting some gold. I had it for a long time. Well, I actually still do, you know, little nuggets, but the gold didn't grab me. I didn't, I like it. I didn't I didn't like man, that was that was great, that was cool, man. I gold mined in Alaska, but it wasn't like I was gonna, you know. I mean, uh gold fever is a real thing. I've seen it. I have seen it. Uh-huh. Holy shit, you talked about scrambled guys brain up bad, worse than females. Yeah. Like, oh my god, but I did that didn't happen to me. Thank God, that didn't happen to me. Then what yeah, then when uh one of the guys and we went and went trapping for had uh oh god, yeah. The first year we went down there. We went to St. James Bay, you know, thought we had this thing all figured out, you know, took all what we thought was a lot of food, that ran out real fast, spent most of that winter like half starved to death, you know. And but made it back out alive.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

And did you just have somebody drop you off then? Or did you have a boat?

SPEAKER_03 14:44

We just had somebody drop us off and fucking it well it would. I don't know whether whether you remember this, but do you remember the when the Roths had that boat called the oh god, what was it?

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Uh that feral cement boat?

SPEAKER_03 14:59

No, it was a whole rickety wood boat, real rickety boat boat. I mean, if I'd have known anything about boats, I'd have never got on it because we got on it on the stormiest day you could ever have, like October 2nd, 1986, and headed for St. James Bay. And oh man, what was the name of that damn thing? I'll never remember it trying, but it was it was like in dangerous sinking every minute the whole way. But we got dumped off on the beach, and there you go, and got back out in the middle of January.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

So did you just was that kind of the plan at the beginning? Say, hey, come pick us up on this date? Because you didn't probably have a cell phone with you, or how are you communicating with people?

SPEAKER_03 15:45

I had a date like uh I want to get picked up, and I went to the I went to the airport or called, maybe I called the airport. I had a float plane that was gonna come get me on, you know, like January 10th in Boat Harbor.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

And so I knew that, but Brian, he just stayed there, and I think Frank Treciano finally went and got him out of there in March sometime. Oh, jeez. And I remember he was down to eating, trying to eat popcorn, and he said I boiled it for like 24 hours, and it still wasn't that whole. He didn't ever repork your finding squirrel within uh 10 miles of St. James Bay.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

So you didn't think that we didn't you didn't think to let somebody know that they might want to go down and drop them off some food when you die in January? I knew he was there.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

He said he was fine when we left. Okay. All right. See ya. I'm getting out of here. I don't know what you're doing, but I'm leaving.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Was that another one where you just got a lot of experience but not a lot of money?

SPEAKER_03 16:52

That's exactly what happened there. But we went right back the next year. Way more well prepared. The next year was kind of comfortable, like uh. We kind of cruised through that, but that first year it was pretty rough.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

So what were what was it mainly just Mink and Martin that you were getting down there? Were you getting some wolves? Wolverine, beavers?

SPEAKER_03 17:11

Um wolverine. There was wolves around, but we didn't even try to do anything with them.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

So you must have made a little bit of money the first year.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

I mean, I I'm just drawing from a saver. I want to say that in the three-ish months that I was there, three and a half or whatever it was, maybe I we had fifty or sixty Martin and thirty or forty beaver, and I remember we got like three thousand dollars for the furs. We sent them out to the you know, fur auction and blah blah blah. And you know, three thousand dollars in nineteen eighty-six was kind of a lot of money. It wasn't too bad. Not like now, yeah, but I didn't go down there for the money. I got down there because I wanted to, you know, be uh live in the wilderness and blah blah blah. And like I did that. You did that? Did it three times? And almost starved, not quite, but I think about the guy that went and starved in the bus and ate mushrooms and they made a movie out of him, and fucking I lived through it.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

So where's the where were they gonna make a movie? Okay, like maybe the right producer or started here this TV. There's the guy that did it and lived. So what do you did?

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Well that was just commercial fishing, so that came to an end.

Skagway Dock Railroad And Quitting Boats

SPEAKER_03 18:56

So that found that spring of 87, after getting out of down there and coming back here, I get a call from Skagway from the guy Ed Hanasak that I had worked for on the highway up there in '85, and he was rebuilding the white pass dock, and it was still wood at that time, but we were putting, we put a like a seven or eight hundred foot extension on that dock to accommodate cruise ships.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

And so I went over there in the summer of '87. No. 87, summer of 87, and worked on that, and then ran into this guy, old time Haynes guy, and I didn't know that at the time, you know. I put off so Stan Redacop. Have you ever heard the name Stan Redacop?

SPEAKER_01 19:52

No.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

He was here working for Schnabel back, you know, in the 60s. In fact, he was Schnabel's superintendent for a while. And uh he had he was commercial fishing at the time. Well, he was old at the time, you know. Of course, everybody's old when you're like 23, right? And uh what was the name of his boat? The Tacan. I don't know whether you called it the Tacan or the Tacan. T-A-K-A-N big wood troller, big, you know, big forty, fifty-foot wood troller. And finished a job in Skagway that summer and then went out to do another another derby. I think it might have been the last of the derby days, actually, to tell you the truth, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

I uh I remember it was close to it. Spring of 88. I went out fishing, and it was still derby days in the spring of 88, so 89 or 90, I think was the first year. It was close to it.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Yep. But we were out in the we uh uh I remember, you know, leaving June o and we got all the stuff on the boat, and you know, no, we're not bringing no alcohol, there ain't no drinking on the boat when we go fishing, and okay, well, whatever. And we pull into Elfin Cove and he runs up the dock and goes to the liquor store and comes back with two bottles of whiskey. I go, does that mean just the boat between Juno and Elfin Cove? Head right straight out into the open gulf for the beginning of the opener the next morning, uh-huh. Hung over, and I'd never been on the outside waters. I've been on the inside, and they didn't bother me too much because d this kind of thing. But as soon as we got, you know, out through those straits and and like hit the Gulf itself, or you know, I you know, whatever. Yeah, man, I got seasick and it was probably the most horrible Couple days of my life. Anyway, by the time that whole thing was over, I was done with boats, fishing, sailing. I'm not that guy.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

You're gonna stay off the water.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

Although there was a little bit of tugboating that came a few years later, but so that was my fishing, and I was done. Other than back, if you rewind back in the fall of 1985, when I got done on that road job, I came back and I begged Bubba to take me fishing with him. Yeah. And he had that little tiny gill nutter called the sailor.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Sandpiper. The sandpiper. Oh, those before his other boat, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Yeah, before the sale. Sandpiper. And we go out, it's October, they were still open that long. Uh-huh. We're out there, it's a beautiful night. And we're out fishing out on the uh Chilcat side. And I mean we fished all night, maybe that day or something. There wasn't nothing, but we caught a television. What? Well, it was night. It was a beautiful night. And we're he reeled it in eat and a television. A freaking television is in the net. And he gets the spotlight and we start looking out. It's perfectly calm.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

I mean, it's a gorgeous fall night, just perfectly calm. And we're looking out, and it's dead calm, high tide, and there's shit floating everywhere. There's couches and and refrigerators and fucking somebody upriver threw a whole shitload. Everything in there, and the whole bay was covered with stuff. Really? Yes. I've never heard about that. Well, it wasn't. Until you I was there. I didn't pick it.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Did you pick the net up and stop putting it back there?

SPEAKER_03 23:55

You could have furnished your house. There might have been one or two coho in that thing, but that was my entire guild netting experience and like check that one off the list. Not doing that.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Not doing that. You didn't need to be fishing any more televisions and I just like ain't my thing.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

But I got to say I did it. There you go. But oh man. 88. Go to Skagway again. Went to St. James Bay again. Got out of there in the spring of 88. Went to Skagway. Did some odd jobs, and then the railroad hired every young guy in town in the spring of 88 to open the railroad and and because it had shut down in 82.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

So everything was growed up and had to work on all the bridges and the tunnel and got it open to the actual border at the summit. Because there's a siding up there right at where the border crows across the railroad at the top. And uh, I mean the actual border, not Frasier, but the actual U.S.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Canadian border.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

Right. And Memorial Day 1988. I was there, and and the year before we had put the extension on that white pass dock, you know, and then this is stuff I didn't add up till later in life either, but you know, right then and there was the beginning of the Skagway you see today. Yeah. Because we opened the railroad, and that was the first day of the new era where a cruise ship went to the dock, the railroad came down, and then took them on a tour. And I was there for that. For whatever that means, I was there for that. But in that moment, I would say that was the beginning of what Skagway is today.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

So anybody that doesn't like that, they can blame you.

SPEAKER_03 26:01

I was a witness. You're a witness to like forest gunk. I was just there.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

You were there. I wasn't the cause of it or well you your story so far has a lot of forest to it, you know, just kind of take it whatever. Take it whatever.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

It gets better. So all right, let's hear it. Uh we go trapping back down there in the in the fall, that fall of 88, and um get back to Haynes in '89. And I don't know, bounced around town that like in the spring of 1989. Oh no, 88. After I left Skagway that year, didn't go trapping. I went logging. That's the first time I went logging. I was here, Schnauba was logging up the highway, and I logged there for a little while, then went to Huna and finished out the season.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Were you falling trees or what were you doing? Just working in the rigging yarders.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

And uh spring of '89 went to Huna to go back to camp and I was going to stay there the whole season. Was there about two weeks, and I get a call from the guy, the Ed Hanasak, that was up on the highway job and over in Skagway on that dock, and he is now working for Lyndon Marine or Alaska Marine Lines running tugboats.

Working The Exxon Valdez Response

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Yeah. And he's in Valdez, and the Exxon Valdez just hit the rocks. And man, you gotta get here. So, you know, like 300 bucks a day and blah, blah, blah, blah, and 300 bucks a day in 1989 was a lot of money. A lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:49

Where you just get on a tugboat. And I mean, there was no scrubbing rocks, there was none of that. It was just be on a tugboat. Engineer. Go check the oil once in a while.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 28:01

And so I remember that I flew in to Valdez, got on a float plane, a beaver. Um, it could have been beaver or an otter. It was a big float plane. I think probably it was an otter. But we flew out into the in into the Prince William Sound, and so this is like if it happened March 20 something, this was just couldn't have been maybe 10 days later, if that. But I remember flying and looking out on the, you know, there's the whole thing spread out below. All the fucking boats, and you can see the oil Exxon Valdez is sitting there on, yep, that's a big boat on the rocks there. And we found the tugboat and then flew down and landed next to it, and I got off the tugboat onto the, or I mean off the airplane, onto the tugboat, and then started the summer up there, was on that tugboat all summer. But during that time.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

So what were you guys doing on the tugboat?

SPEAKER_03 29:03

Well, we had a pretty cush job, really, so uh Exxon, the company, had hired, you know, all of Lyndon's tugboats and barges and whatever. So there was, I think, two tugboats and two barges of Linden's in Prince William Sound. But they had built a whole entire man camp on one of the barges, a full full-on stacked up entire man camp. And there was another barge next to it with a big giant crane. And what it was is the the distribution center of of like everything that Exxon, all Exxon's operations, all the all the high mucky mucks came to that to that camp, and and all the freight and all the enormous amount of every day there was barges and tugboats showing up, and we would unload them, and then people would we were just moving stuff on and off and back and forth. But you know, because it was the it was the executives, it was pretty cut. I mean, we had like we had it, we had it really good.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

So you were staying on the same camp.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Yeah, I was staying there on the tugboat, but we're tied up to it. I mean, our job was to tender this operation. Yeah. So every four days we would run to Valdez and get water and fuel and groceries and then come back. Okay. So we had it like, man, we had it made. But in one of those deals, in one of those messing around, and the barge moved from this cove to that cove a couple times. We had to take something. I can't remember, I want to say it was a big giant pump, and I'm guessing, but it was a big giant something. It was on the deck of the tugboat, and we we tied up next to the bow of the Exxon Valdez, and there was a deck crane, you know, and I hooked up the line and they took the but I remember standing on the gunnel of the tugboat and you know, like putting my hand on the Exxon Valdez and looking up and seeing Exxon Valdez on the side of it. Yeah. Like, I was there. You were there.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

What was was I've had a couple other people tell me that worked up there. They were mainly scrubbing rocks and everything. And they said for them, did not do that. They said they said for them it was real, it was after a while it got really depressing. It was really hard to go out there. But since you were just on the boat, was it just kind of another job for you or were you?

SPEAKER_03 31:48

It was not difficult. It was it was a great time. And in the end, Hazelwood bought me a house. I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

Not saying that's good or whatever, but in the end, like he bought me a house. Oh, yeah, kind of, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I would say that like the short story is exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yep. Nice. So what what you get back from Valdez, Prince William Sound, another touch point in world history.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Uh landed in Juno, spent a couple days, got to Haynes, decided I was gonna go logging again, and I walked into the fog cutter bar, imagine that, and sitting on the corner was this guy that I'd seen before in town, just knew, you know, okay, and so I kind of sat down there and we started talking, and it was Leo Smith.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

And the whole Chucoot Lumber had just bought a big timber sale up the up the up the valley, and he was gonna start on it like in three days, and so I started got a job with Leo Smith.

Logging With Leo Smith In Kelsall

SPEAKER_03 33:18

And like three days later, we were up in the Kelsaw.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

And spent all the way till Thanksgiving. Up there.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

So you're gonna go you're up in the upper Kelsaw with Leo Smith.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

Yeah, okay. Cutting timber. No, no, no. You weren't cutting. He had a little yarder. Okay. Timber was already cut, you know. He had, you know, you just yard it out and we were just putting it in piles. And that lasted till Thanksgiving, like I said. Yeah. Got, you know, a good I and all that I did, and you know, working for big corporations and all the things that I ever did, and the absolute best times of my life were working. Those two summer, that was the first summer, and then there's gonna be another, but those two summers working for Leo Smith. Yeah. They were the best ever. The best. Why was that? I don't know, just because it was uh everything that you don't get when you're working for the big outfit, and it's just two guys working together, and and I guess I was young, real young, and he was real old, you know, and learned a lot from him and just enjoyed the whole the whole scenario. Like it was just all good.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

So if you're if you're just doing the yard and the sack, and who is who's doing all the falling for those trees?

SPEAKER_03 34:51

Well, like in those big scenarios like happened back then or still happened somewhere in the world besides here, you know, some big outfit will buy something like that, and they send fallers in and all the timber is failed, and then they hire contractors to log it and put it in piles. Yeah, and then somebody else goes and trucks it. Okay. And you just get paid by whatever you put in the pile and you brand up brand all your log so you get paid by what you do.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:20

That's why we weren't involved in the fall on it all. It was already just there.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Everything was down, and you just had to yard it up to the road road and stack it up, and then somebody else came. Did you uh load it into the truck so when they came out, somebody loaded it?

SPEAKER_03 35:34

Yep, that was all the mill their LePerry did all that. Okay. Or the other, whoever he hired.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Uh-huh. So there's two summers of that.

unknown 35:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Is that when you decide to go on how how close are we to getting to the formula of the stump company?

SPEAKER_03 35:50

Well, not well, well, so let's see, the next summer. The next summer we finished up, we finished up what we needed to do in the Kelsaw that fall, and then moved everything out, and then the spring we went to the top of Sunshine. In between then, I went back east and spent uh that winter with my with my parents and got back here. And of course, like when when I first got back here, like the very first of April, that was White Fang year.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

So I got in on the White Fang there. I'm in the White Fang movie for like about, you know, like there I am, walking across the street.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

See, you are like Forest here. Yeah. You know, that's there. Like three cultural events here that's got some major that's got a touch point to it.

SPEAKER_03 36:45

I was there. I was there, I was in it. And then then we went, then we went up there and went went to work.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Did you do anything with special effects or were you just there as an extra tour? That was your motor.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

Three days of you know showing up, getting your getting your costume, and go over there and wait, and wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, everybody, and then everybody getting a you know, and then there'd be but okay, well, you know, what go over and wait. You go over and wait, and then they'd you know, for three days, and they got like maybe a two second, maybe three seconds. Let's give me uh three seconds of fame.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Yeah. So you still got 12 seconds coming to you. Or is it 15 minutes? Everybody's got their 15 minutes of fame? So you still got quite a bit coming to you.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Isn't that Andy Warhol that said everybody has their 15 minutes of fame?

SPEAKER_03 37:42

Yeah, I got quite a bit on the way then.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

So you're back you're back up with another season with Leo.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Yeah, that was so that was just now the summer in 90, and I'd bought a house where I'm at now that spring. Somewhere in there. Early that spring. And into the fall of ninety. That ends. And logging again. Cluckwon. Upper Chilcat uh they call them the Jocko allotments, but they were four native allotments up there of 160 acres. And we worked on that. That was Kluckwon. And that was uh two years, two winters, that winter and the next winter, both up there. So I guess did you like that kind of work? I I did, yeah. Yeah. I mean by then I was operating equipment by then, you know. That was that was not yarders. That was all, you know, cats and skidders, like ground equipment dragging the logs directly versus a yarder. None of that was none of it was done with yarders.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

So what what do you think that what was it that drew you to that? Was it the paycheck or did you know? I mean, I grew up, you know.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

I mean, I worked in the woods when I was a kid, like when I was growing up on the farm. I mean, nobody can understand this, but there's at New York and Pennsylvania has an enormous amount of logging.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

Like way more logging in New York than there is in Alaska. Even the big, even if you add in, it's like everywhere. Everywhere you go, there's you know, it's mostly small stuff, but it's everywhere. And so I had done it as a kid. I mean, I had that that was and working in the woods was always better than any of the other farm work I ever did.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

So I was already there. So in New York I just got introduced to West Coast logging versus east coast logging, which is you know, it's both fruit, but apples and oranges or however you want to look at that, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Bigger timber here.

SPEAKER_03 40:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:10

But a different kind and a different, you know, there's just like just lots of difference.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

So is most of that like second-third growth where they got tree farms back in New York?

SPEAKER_03 40:22

I wouldn't call them tree farms. I mean, sure there's them, but I mean the whole East Coast has been cut over five times since you know. Uh-huh. That's you know I mean, you could it goes a ways back. I mean, absolutely. Yeah, just a totally different thing.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

And so after doing those native allotments, where did that lead you?

SPEAKER_03 40:47

Well, I was here. I pretty much stayed here. I didn't uh there was a thing in the Akatat in the spring of ninety one. Oh no, so well, somewhere in there I did uh uh 91. 1991, summer of ninety-one, chocano construction, worked on the big boulder and little boulder bridges. The ones that are in there today. Took the old ones out and put new ones in. So that and that. And then the following summer I went with Tucano to Pelican, put a bridge in Pelican. There's only one place to put a bridge, and we put a bridge in Pelican. I'm pretty sure it's still there. But uh I think that was the last time I was ever on a payroll. So that would have been 92, so that would have been the summer of 92 with Chicano construction putting that bridge in pelican. And then I came home and there wasn't much going on because the mill had shut down. The mill had shut down in that in like a year ago, the year previous to

Firewood Hustle And Ferry Deliveries

SPEAKER_03 42:06

that. And I had a big truck and I started selling firewood. That's when I started selling firewood the fall of 1992. And I guess that's where it started.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

So you just go on when you when you started with that, are you just getting the um through the four service sales?

SPEAKER_03 42:24

No. No? It was all just when it very first started, I started up at Turner's Pit.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

When that was, you know, growed over and started like just and it was all by hand, just follow the trees and throw them in the truck, and everything was just like two guys, uh, two chainsaws and a truck. And there was uh you remember, I mean, back in the nineties there was beetle kill everywhere. We had that, you know, in it. So for years I just drove either the old Porcupine Road before it washed out or over the top of sunshine to get to Porcupine up by Glacier Creek where I've been logging now for the last 20 years, and it was just like hundred thousand dead spruce trees. I mean, they were just everywhere. We just, you know, you just anywhere along the road, you just start falling trees into the road and load them up and drive away. And for years we we did that.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

They just in the big truck chainsaws just cut it up.

SPEAKER_03 43:34

Yeah, for years. Took me a while to smarten up.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Did it too way too long. So how did you just have a regular hydraulic splitter then that you're splitting that or you just did it?

SPEAKER_03 43:46

I didn't even split it back then. It was just uh throw it in the truck. Throw it in the truck and just sell all the truck. Uh huh. Lift up there and throw in the back and did it that way. Then so ninety three comes along and Kluckwon is here. They bought a big timber sale. And I worked for Roger all that year. That's where I kind of got in with Roger Schnabel. Just logging his pri his private property, which he has a bunch of it everywhere. And because the market was real high and all that was going on, and Kluckman was here, it was a place to sell it, so I spent that summer using his equipment, but working by the thousand board feet. And then everything that didn't wasn't good enough to go on the ship was firewood, so that was all that winter. I cut that firewood up and sold it. And back in them days I really didn't sell a whole lot of firewood in Haynes. Most of the firewood I sold was in Skagway and Juneau. Really? And for all of the 90s, my whole my whole winter was uh Juno once Juneau and Skagway once a week.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

You just load up the truck and head over there and load up the truck and go.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

I mean, uh the ferry was a whole lot more reliable back then than it is now. Yes. Number one. But there was a all through I mean the entire decade there was a ship. There was a boat that would arrive here on Sunday night. Mm-hmm. And it would leave and get to Juneau in the a.m. of Monday, and there was another one coming north that same day, and I would hit, I would go down, run around Juneau and deliver the wood, and then catch the next ferry coming back, and it all happened in 24 hours. Every week all winter for all of at least from 92 to 98.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

So how many cord would you get on a truck?

SPEAKER_03 46:16

That truck was five.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

So you do you take five cords of Juneau, unload it, head home. How much are you getting a cord of wood back then?

SPEAKER_03 46:27

Oh in June. Not enough. Oh, I think maybe in Juneau.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Two hundred dollars a cord. So thousand dollars a week.

SPEAKER_03 46:53

Plus a trip to Skagway.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

Plus trip to Skagway. Same thing, five quarter to Skagway, too.

SPEAKER_03 46:59

That was the winter. There was just not that much, you know. I mean, fuel was a dollar a gallon back then. Maybe even 75 cents. And the people that did burn, you know, there was still Tom Ward was still around and he had his customers, and there was Leo, so there was those old guys that, you know, and so that and and the market was real small anyway. So there wasn't a lot of, you know, it was just a random occasional, very occasional. And that just kind of that kind of built over the years. I remember thinking, boy, I can't wait till I can sell enough wooden panes that I haven't got to do this all the time.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

But that's kind of crazy, because so you're you're delivering 10 cord a week between Skagway and Juno.

SPEAKER_03 47:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

And you're hand loading the truck and you're unloading it.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

Yeah. Well, if that truck was a dump.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

That was a dump one? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:55

That helped. That's what I was also in my 30s, 20s, 20s. Like it didn't matter. You don't think about shit like that. No. We're indestructible. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Yep. So six six years of doing that, going to Juno. And is that when you finally started getting some more people to buy firewood and hanes?

SPEAKER_03 48:21

Kinda, more or less.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:23

I kept the Skagway thing going for quite a many years after that, just because it was, you know, when things slacked off or something. That was a kind of a get out of town for a few hours or a half a day or whatever. But I quit doing that about 10, 12 years ago just because the ferry got so unreliable, I couldn't like. Are you gonna be there? And then get out there and it wasn't there or get canceled, and so I just gave up. But I didn't, you know, I don't need to anymore either.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

So at the beginning, where you're just cutting rounds and everything, what's what's the process now?

Building A Fast Homemade Wood Machine

SPEAKER_03 49:03

I've mechanized, I have a firewood machine where you load logs on and firewood comes out. That's oversimplified, but that's what happens.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

And it's so you set the lock, you set the logs on, it feeds it, cuts it to length, and splits it. And then you got the chunks coming out the other end.

SPEAKER_03 49:20

It falls into the truck.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

Pretty much, yes. The I mean, I know it's entirely homemade. I bought it from Don Turner. The base in down in there is the is what I bought from Don, you know, like twenty six years ago. But over time, you know, you reinvent everything and rebuild and all, you know, because he never really ran it, he just built it. And so, you know, all the all the weak points, and you gotta engineer through everything, so it's not even really the same machine as it was in the beginning, but it is down in there somewhere as the original thing, and it'll do what you have to you have to spend like a hundred thousand dollars to get a machine with that'll do what that will do. I mean, it's you know, it's powered by an old excavator, and it's got, you know, it's all homemade, but it will puke out wood when things are good just fine. A friend of mine in Tok bought one for eighty-five thousand dollars a couple of years ago, brand new, and it's shiny and painting and and it cuts wood, but it doesn't do it anywhere near as fast as mine does.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

I mean, uh how how how many quarters an hour can you if that thing's running everything smoothly?

SPEAKER_03 50:46

If everything is perfect, it'll put two cords an hour in the back of a truck.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

That's good.

SPEAKER_03 50:53

That's a lot. I mean, you see how you when you start looking up, you know, you'll look on the internet and they all have advertisements and they all, you know, whatever, and the the cords per hour claim is a very variable like you can come up, you know what I mean? I mean, like it's you can come up with a lot of ways to come up with your version of cords an hour, you know, and it takes a lot to get two and that's pretty fast. I mean, that's pretty fast.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

That's pretty fast. Yeah, you're looking into eight-hour day, you got 16 quarts of wood.

SPEAKER_03 51:28

That's that's but there's all the other stuff that has to happen in the whole process, so you don't get like just a straight No. I mean, I could know you. There's people that make firewood where they just run it through a processor and then make this giant pile, maybe, or stick it in a barn or something, and then somebody comes in and then they load trucks maybe with a loader or something. But mine is like when you're ready to make it, you take the logs and make it into wood, put it in the truck and go deliver it. So you got delivery time and you gotta load the deck, and there's always endless stuff that needs to be done. So, you know, four four cords a day steady is is is a lot of work. Yeah to get four cords a day and and make that happen on a you know every day for two weeks. Hey, you gotta have a shit pile. Most people don't understand how many logs it takes to make a cord of wood.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:23

It's a lot, way more than you think. It's not just a couple of those little trees over there, it's like 10 or 12 of them.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

And most people don't understand that or whatever. Or not a not a cord of wood, but like a load of logs or something. I mean, it takes a lot. And then, and and if it you get it to the point where you need that day after day after day, you have to supply the you have to have something coming in to feed the beast that's eating the wood.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

So how do you how do you do that? Is there like a prime time where you're out in the woods, like in the winter time you're out collecting the wood? It allows it.

SPEAKER_03 53:03

You buy it, buy a timber sail and log it all and put it in a pile and make house logs, saw logs, firewood logs, and DR comes and and scales them and pay for them, and then make them go wherever they need to go for somebody to pay me. And you just keep repeating the cycle till I get stuck in the dirt at Jones Point. At some point, at some point in the future. Some point far in the future. Absolutely, that's the finish line.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Yeah.

Timber Sales Sorting And DNR Scaling

SPEAKER_00 53:35

So when you're out there, how do they what what's the definition or how do they determine which ones are going to be saw logs, which ones are gonna be cabin logs, and which ones are gonna be firewood? Because you're paying a di you're paying the state DNR a different rate for each one based on the quality, is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 53:53

Well, I they do to I do to a point and they do. I mean, I I go out there and here's the chunk of ground and I log it and put it into the piles, sort it out as I guess I think it needs to be. And then they look at it, and if you know, if there might be some or things over here in the firewood pile that then, you know, they scale them and it goes to, but in the end, it's their decision.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

They used to go out and scale every individual tree, and that took a lot of time. And I remember some going back and forth, going, like, you know, I mean, you guys can do this, but if everything's out here on the landing, like in these piles, you can actually look at it and like there it is, and then then do your scaling, you know, instead of doing it that way. Plus, you haven't got to spend days out there doing it. And finally, we work the thing out where that is pretty much what we do. But in the end, it's their decision. Like, what is what? And how much is that? Is that based on how many knots are in it, how frequent they are, what kind of every single thing has its has its own, you know, specs of what what it needs to be. Uh-huh. And that can vary from time to time.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

And is the majority of what you're getting is spruce and hemlock?

SPEAKER_03 55:25

Yeah. Yeah. There's some birch out there. There's some cot there's a lot of cottonwood, obviously, but um I don't I don't go looking for cottonwood. It happens occasionally, but it is what it is. I mean, you can't sell it pretty much. I mean, there's a f some hills buy a little bit of it now and then because it it has a it has some uses, but um pretty much I just avoid it altogether. There's birch, but birch is great, but like I don't go looking for it because what is it? You can work all day long in a patch of birch and you can cut a hundred trees and put them in a pile and you still got nothing. And they're crooked and they're bent and they're all up all the time, and they fucking don't go on the truck right, and they don't there's nothing good about it from a logging standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Yeah. They're great for burning.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

And plus, it's kind of random. I mean, even in the places that birch is thick, it's really not.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 56:33

You know, I mean, there's an occasional real nice tree, and there's some here, some there, but like to go make like a five a log truck load of birch, that you're you're in for days of looking because that doesn't happen like you think it would. And so I just don't like it's it's random and it happens, but I do not go looking for it. It's great firewood. Yeah, there's no question about that. But to try to make money off of going chasing birch, it would have to be a thousand dollars a cord. Because it just like humpies all day long.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_03 57:15

Birch is the humpies of the or or sockeye this big or something. I don't I don't know quite the analogy if to fishing for that one, but so what percentage of the wood that you're logging would you say goes into firewood?

SPEAKER_00 57:31

How much how much of your time is firewood and how much uh cellular?

SPEAKER_03 57:34

What patch of timber you want in it in a given year? Man, I mean um I mean, any patch of trees gives you the good, the bad, the ugly. Every once in a while you'll find this patch somewhere that like has just what you want, and that's it. But not very often. There's always there's always something. There's there's big ones, little ones, short ones, fat ones, skinny ones, living ones. They come in and you you know, like so probably 50% firewood, 20, 30%, 30% saw log, and 20% house log. Did I come up with a hundred dirt? You did pretty close. Yeah. So did you and that's a general that that's not everywhere all the time, but maybe over a period of years, it would probably it would probably come out, something like that, probably.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

So, and are you selling that all locally, or do you have people from out of town that are from up north

House Logs As The Export Edge

SPEAKER_00 58:47

that's the city?

SPEAKER_03 58:47

Everything goes locally pretty much except the house logs. The house logs are something that evolved over time where in the end, somehow, Haynes, Alaska is the only place that any of these guys in the Yukon or Alaska Alaska that are building log scribe fit log homes, I'm talking about, that they can buy a sickka spruce tree connected by road.

SPEAKER_01 59:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 59:29

You can make a case for seward once in a while, but not very often. And so I kind of got that's my ace in a hole. And over time I've sold enough up north and well the Yukon and Interior Alaska, where it is a fairly small client, you know, uh group of guys that actually do that kind of work, but you know, they just can't up in the interior, you can't get a s uh a 60-foot log with a 20-inch button and and a 12-inch top. Yeah, you might get a 60-foot log somewhere, but it's gonna have a three-foot butt and a twenty-inch top, and look like a poop. So I kind of got that edge that this is the only place they can get them. Because it's the only place connected by road and with a state forest system that uh, you know, uh accessibility to them and blah blah blah blah blah. So I've been capitalizing on that for a lot of years. But that's like that's like my export. But if I had to do, you know, if I was like the firewood business, I gotta keep that. That's the that's the something that can keep me going if the other stuff doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

So firewood's the main meal and the rest is dessert.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:06

Kind of deal where that kind of puts it, tops it off at the end. Yeah. So you when you're doing that then, are you are you hauling these logs in and stacking them as much as you can so when you get ready for firewood, you just got a huge supply, or do you have limited space over there?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:24

No, I have I have unlimited space. Usually it's just uh you got firewood orders and you got like uh a supply of logs, and and you're also selling uh uh loads of firewood logs to people, so you know you kind of catch up as much as you can over there and keep as many people happy, but then you gotta stop and haul logs to the mill. So, yeah, I gotta get a big pile of logs. Like, if I got this many orders, I gotta get like X amount of logs sitting there to sit down and start doing wood day after day after day to satisfy these people, and that ebbs and flows back and forth. Hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:07

How many people do you have working for you?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

Well, we have this deal where nobody really works for anybody. It's reached a point where these these young guys in town that have mills and they need saw logs. So they come and help me and get paid in logs. Okay. So nobody's really working for anybody. We just everybody's working for themselves, but we all need each other to accomplish the goal.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:37

So even for the even for the firewood, you're doing all that yourself?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:42

One or the other of them helps me. Helps you stack it and stuff, and but oh, my skitter's broke down, so I'm over there helping Davy take the transmission out of his skitter so he can send it out, and it's all work trade, pretty much. Okay. I mean, money changed his hands now and then because it has to, but pretty much it's just three guys that have worked something out as a mutual need and benefit. And so far it's working. We might squabble a little bit now and then, but not not actually too much.

What People Get Wrong About Logging

SPEAKER_00 1:03:19

What what do you think is a common misperception about the logging industry? What do people get wrong when they think about think about loggers? Because that's a that's a big problem. I don't even know where to begin with that. I like uh I know I kind of threw a grenade into the middle of this here. Like that could go many ways.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

Probably everywhere. The first thing anybody envisions, if you mentioned logging, is a 200-acre clear cut on the side of a hill right there. And it's not it can be that, but it's not necessarily that. I guess that's the that's the biggest misconception. Because when you go in I think, but there's lots of others, I guess. If I had time to really think that out, I could come up with a lot more answers.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:21

But so because when you're going there, as you're going in, you're you're selecting only certain trees, right? Well, yeah, you're leaving alone. I mean, you're not clear cutting the area, necessarily.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:31

Any individual half acre could be something different. I mean, I'd it's it's all of the above. I mean, there's places where you look at this space right here, and there's no trees. Oh, that's a clear cut. But right over there, there's a whole bunch of leftovers, and so it's it's it's uh it's it's all the above. It's not any uh one or the other. Does that make any sense?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:56

Kind of, sort of.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:58

I mean it's it's all mixed together. It's not but I think like you talked before, it it depends because if if there's much cotton there, it depends on birch or it depends on the the DNR, also how they're managing a certain area. There might be a certain area where, like, for whatever reason, but we're gonna clear-cut this and plant it into Sickka spruce, and that's what it's gonna be, and because of blah blah blah, but over here we're gonna thin out this and it's gonna look like that. So in the end, that's kind of their that there uh they have a lot of say in how that plays out. So it's not necessarily your choice, they're telling you to an extent, but uh in the end it's their call on whether it's everything or partial.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

Parcel. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:49

But it can be either or at any given spot.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

And it's so when you fall the trees and cut all the limbs and everything off, do you have to stack those? Do you just leave them where they look? Hey, what kind of cleanup do they require you to do that? Does that depend on the parcel as well?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:04

As long as you cut it to spec, which is cut the tree down and limit to six inches and cut the top off, there's no cleanup.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:21

And is that because that as that's decaying, that's fueling the next growth of trees, right? Is that the way the biology works on that?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Uh yeah. Yeah, you're kind of getting into the out of my wheelhouse. But yes, yes, that is for sure. Yeah, that that that's part of the, you know, and we don't have so much like I mean, down south in a lot of places, you know, like they require loggers to pile the brush and burn it in the fall and blah because they have fire danger, and it's a whole different environment in Montana or Idaho or eastern Washington or whatever than it is here. But with what we've got here, the slash laying out there, yeah, decays and makes the little trees happy.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:16

There was a what did you think is several years ago they had that plan to put in a wood wood boiler and use that slash and everything to heat the school and stuff?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:25

Did that well using the slash wasn't ever gonna happen. That that was somebody's that didn't understand anything about anything. Come up with that. If you ever did that, you would have to be cutting trees specifically for they're gonna go through the chipper and go into that thing. Yeah. It just wasn't gonna be enough. Like I said, it's just something somebody no.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

Well, maybe they would have had you more cut cutting more trees.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:55

But you still have to have a market as it's all you know, it would have been that had to be the market. It wasn't gonna pick up stuff of a leftover from another market. From another market. That was gonna be the market.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

Have you pretty much tapped out the market in Haynes for the number of trees that can be cut in a year? Or do you think there's growth for that industry?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:19

Not even close. I mean, but who, you know, according to who? There's some people who says you can't cut a single tree.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:27

Well, no, I mean what I was doing. Do you have when you get done cutting what you're cutting, do you have a ton left over, or do you just the amount that you get every year, you're able to sell it all?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:38

I got about a half a million feet a year. It varies a little bit, but half a million board feet. Half a million board feet takes care of what I do most of the time. Okay. Maybe a little more, a little less, you know, but it's it's in there. Yeah. In that zone.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:59

I mean. So 250,000 board feet's going to firewood every year in Haynes. That seems like a lot of firewood, Scott.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:10

Well, 250,000 board feet would be all of it being firewood. Well, you said you two cords.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:16

You said you did about half a million board feet, which is 500,000, and before you said 50% goes to firewood, so is that not a cord of the five years?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:23

Oh, I guess it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:26

Did I do my math?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:27

Yeah, no, no, you did your math right. I was doing my math wrong. That seems that's yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:33

When you when you think of that at that number, 250,000 board feet of firewood, it seems like am I wrong, or is that a lot of timber going into firewood?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:44

I mean, what's a lot? I mean, to some big logger somewhere, that's like one week's production. One week's production. To me, that's a half a year. So I, you know, it it is and it isn't. I mean, I I I would say the town of Haynes, and this is just like I'm not I there's no way I could prove this, like, but I would imagine that the the town probably burns fifteen hundred cords a year. And so, you know that's the fifteen hundred cords is seven hundred and fifty thousand feet. So it's like twenty twenty say every year Haynes burns twenty-five, thirty acres of wood. Just in firewood.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

Just in firewood. Twenty-five to thirty acres a year. Pretty much. Dang.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:09

Maybe a little more, maybe fifty. And there's say thirty to fifty acres a year in the whole of Haynes. And that's counting everybody that burns wood, no matter where the woods come from. If you took everybody that burnt wood and you fucking took it from one spot, one spot, it would be at least that.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

Dang. That seems like a big number. I know it's not.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:35

I know there's a lot bigger. It is and it ain't. You know, it's just some people don't you until you really understand, you know, like well, that's what I'm saying. When you when you put all of that together, it's not like a few trees out there that makes it happen. It's acres that make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:51

No, that puts a whole different spin on it. Because when you're thinking of your own, that, oh, I broke I burned three-quarter, I burned five-quarter, I burned seven quarter, whatever a person's thinking, you're just thinking in your own little deal, and you're like, yeah, Scott's busy. But to think 30 to 50 acres of timber.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:08

But on top of that, what you have to when you start talking acres and trees, not all acres are created equal. Yeah. So there's a huge, you know, there's the acre that has a you know, a few trees, and there's an acre that has lots of trees. So, you know, when I say that, I'm just talking like the average Haynes State forest acre is 20,000 feet. That's their number. Like when they like draw out something like it, are just estimating. And all trees are estimate, all all you know, measurements of trees are estimates until you get to the very, very end. I mean, they're estimating how many trees per acre, how many logs per acre, how many board feet. That's all a guess. It's not an exact measurement. There's no way to get that exact measurement till that thing has been down the line and processed to a certain point where it can actually be measured exactly. Yeah. So all of forestry is just averages.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:17

All of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:21

And you hope you're on the high side of the average.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:25

So what's the biggest from when you first started doing this, besides the change in equipment, what how have you gotten more efficient over the years? Besides.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:37

I mean, obviously getting the just being mechanized in the right way.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:42

A grapple skitter, you know, when I first got a skitter, that was a huge thing. Not only is the skitter faster, I did it with a little cat for years, a little bulldozer, it's really slow. But it worked, and I made it work, and blah blah blah. And then but when I skitter with lots more horsepower and wheels, and you just grab the log and then took off with it, I was like, wow, why didn't I do this years ago? Oh my god. And then the log truck, I think the log truck was probably the thing that that turned the you know, flipped it more than anything, is just having that ability to button a self-loading log truck versus just a log truck where no matter where the log was, as long as I could drive out and get a hold of it, it could go wherever it needed to go for it to turn into money. Because logs always have to be somewhere else to be money. Where they're at, they're never money till they're somewhere else. Like all resources, right? I mean, that's a resource thing. Like wherever the resource is, it's uh valueless, but it has to be somewhere else. And can you get it somewhere else and have anything left over? The log truck made that possible. A self-loading log truck that made that scenario, probably that more than anything, change my whole game. I should have done that at least ten years before I did, but I guess you can always say that about everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:08

Pretty much. So when did when I'm trying to remember here, thinking back, it's been a few years, but when did the log truck also become one of the highlights of the fair or that of the parades?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:22

Because you got Scott, you got the log truck that I completely wore out that's sitting over at the mill, and I use it to load the mill, and then there's the new log truck.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:32

Is that the one?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:33

And it's it's a 1994, mind you.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

But it's new.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

Do you?

unknown 1:15:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:38

Now is that when you got that one? Is that the one where it started to become a fixture in the parades where you got all the girls on the back?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:44

That was three years ago.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:46

Three years ago? What was the impetus for the third time? What was the impetus for loading up the back of the load truck uh log truck with a bunch of women and going down Main Street? It's I like the parade, Scott.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:58

Women log truck. I don't think you're not. Why not the explanation? Every time it goes by, better. Every time it goes by, no matter what, I won. I don't care what they say, I won.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:14

Every time it goes by, regardless of who I'm standing next to during the parade, like, how's gotta get all these women on the back of his lockdown?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:21

I have no idea. I have no idea. Why do you know? I don't have no idea why women do anything. I have no clue. I'm just glad they decided to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

So did you just have a call out to anybody that wants to run on the lock truck?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:35

You know, I have some, you know, there's I have connections. You have connections throughout the column?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:40

Yeah. No need to divulge the connection.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:43

Yeah, no, no, that's that's understandable. Figure it out on your own. I had to.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:48

So yeah, you've you've done well.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:52

Yeah, I yeah, yeah, I must say I give myself a one for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

Yeah, you should.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:02

I I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:04

It was awesome.

Annexation Politics And Borough Assembly

SPEAKER_00 1:17:07

We're in the 2000s and you decide to run for Borough Assembly. Oh man. What what what what prompted that? Come out of the woods and start being a local government official, politician.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:22

Oh, okay, so I was sitting out there on small tracks, you know, for a long, long time, and then all of a sudden one day came along, and he said, Oh, well, uh we're gonna annex you. I'm like, annex? What the fuck is annex? What are you talking about? You're gonna annex me? And so pretty soon I was annexed. Like, well, you're in the city. Oh, okay. And my taxes went up, and I'm in the city. Okay, and uh I also remember being at a meeting where prior to that annexation, they were like well, uh hey, uh, did anybody go out and talk to Roger? Does Roger want to be annexed? Uh oh yeah, I went out and talked to him. He he doesn't want to be annexed, so we'll put that line right there. Right there at four mile corner. Well, of course he doesn't want to be annexed. Well, did he wait a minute? I was at the meeting. Well, I wait a minute, I don't want to be annexed either, you know, and so time goes on, and then the consolidation thing comes, you know. Same thing, and you know, there were several people that were on the city council after the annexation, but before, and I was going to myself, fuck that fucking guy's fucking making decisions for me, and I fuck, I'm gonna he's an idiot, I can go fucking do it better, so I'm gonna go fucking do it. And I think that's what started it. When I got annexed and started sitting back and paying more attention to politics, I go, okay, if this I gotta do something about this. So I did. And you had whatever it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:31

You had one term or two terms?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:32

Two.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:33

Two terms. I thought you did a really good job. You were you were there too. I was there with you. You were you were there. I was there with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:39

You were you were there, yeah. We were there, we were we were there on the front line. Ever contact. But what about learned is like you don't have anything to worry about your political enemies. They already know what they're to expect out of you. Your political allies, every single one of them expects something specific, and that's where the fucking problem is.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:02

You can never make them happy.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:04

Because everybody, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:05

Yeah. You ever think of doing it again? Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:14

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:15

I thought you did a good job.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:16

Well, thank you. I don't know if that makes any I don't know if you care, but well, I have heard people say that, and I think that maybe I did because I've heard that a lot. I'm not really a guy that does a lot of, you know, like self-promotion, so if I hear that, okay. If you think that, then I'll go, yeah, okay. I hope I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:41

I thought you were I fought the good fight. Yep. In my mind, or in what I thought.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:49

Well, that's all that's what it's all about, is just bringing your own perspective and being able to share that perspective with the greater group. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Oh, yeah. But just kind of getting the thoughts out there from a different perspective than ever you were.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:01

It was educational. It is. Just like those other times we were talking about. Yeah. Good God. That's unbelievable. I I after a while, I just couldn't believe how you could sit down at a table with six people and and read a line of code. Anything, just you know, something that said that's a double door leading to the back room. And six people could read that and come up with something different and tell you that that's not exactly what that says. It's the every it was crazy. And then yeah, oh my god, and I pick up a newspaper right now, it's the same goddamn thing. I pick up a newspaper and it's the Heli Ski Map and the Lutec Dock and all this shit. It's the same as it was 20 years ago, 25 years ago. What's wrong with us? Oh, we can't go into that because that'll take all night. So we better we better back off the politics right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:21

Back off of politics, go back into logging. So going in going back into logging, you you look right now where your fleet is of equipment and stuff, and how much how much easier it is for you compared to 10 years ago, 20 years ago. What's like a dream item that you're like, man, if I had that, that'd make my job so much easier. I'm on the downhill side.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:45

You're on the downhill side to go downhill side. Just make what I got, go until it's all over. Oh, good with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:53

You're not buying any new equipment?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:55

I'm not buying. I did just buy an excavator, an old excavator, but two months ago, three months ago. That's it. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:02

I'm like, you don't want to leave a yard full of equipment for the kids?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:09

Oh, I'm gonna leave them a big pile of junk. Not as much as Kenny's gonna do, but are you gonna try and come close? No, I'm I can't even put it like I'm not even, I'm not even, I don't even like I'm not even in the same universe as Waldo.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:35

He's got a diverse collection of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:37

Oh boy. Oh, I mean he's a valuable asset. Um we gotta have a Waldo. We gotta have him. We gotta have him, man. I mean If you need a part for something, he's probably got it. I uh from 1952 made, you know, blah blah blah, yeah, yeah. Or 2010.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:59

So how much longer are you gonna be logging? Uh till I till I'm dead. Are you gonna be Leo and train the next generation?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:11

I think that's what I'm doing right now with these two that I'm working.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:14

Yeah, getting them dialed in. They are. That Chad and Dave?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:26

Do you see similarities between them coming up here and your story and how that's shaping out?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:32

Uh no, not even close, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

Nope. Um. No, they tell you for different reasons. And in here.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:47

Yeah. Do you ever see yourself going back to New York?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:53

Nope.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:53

Staying in Haynes.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:54

No, when I left, I left, man. I'm not. I'm Allegheny County, New York is stuck in time. Well, all of New York. I mean, I didn't I hate the politics of the state. I'd I'm never going back. I knew that when I left. Mm-hmm. But I mean there was 37,000 people in Allegheny County, New York when I left. And there's 37,000 people there now. That's how like everybody talks about this place they grew up. Oh, I went back and it's all strip malls, and there's blah blah blah, and I couldn't find, I had no idea, blah, you know, where I, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, because things have changed. There's people everywhere, and houses and subdivisions. Allegheny County is not that. Believe it or not, like it is stuck in time. I go back and I drive around, and uh, yep, that's exactly the way it was 40 years ago. Exactly. I remember that right there. So, no, I'm not going back.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:58

So, what what stories have we missed out of Scott Rossman's life?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:05

There's plenty that probably shouldn't be told here, but I left them out due to some, you know, political incorrectness or something. Oh, I pretty much uh yeah, and then here I am, yeah, we're here. There was women and kids and divorces and blah blah blah blah all the way along the way, but uh I'm here. You're here. You've avoided all that yourself. So far.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:40

Navigated uh well no, but I I think I think the reason a lot of people wanted to hear your story, Scott. Is you seem like you're always you're always friendly with everybody, you're your your customer base is wide-ranging around across the community. You're you're providing a resource for everybody. And I mean you just have the you have a personality that draws people to you. Well, I guess that's good.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:22

Depends on the people. Oh well, maybe that's why they were all on my float on 4th of July.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:35

Could that could be it. Could be it.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:37

Let's just go with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:40

Magnetic personality.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:41

Magnetic personality. Scott Rossman, magnetic personality.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:46

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:49

Yeah, so you st you start your day in the morning at the rusty compass and finish it at the brewery. I see it seemed to see. But you seem to see your truck in both locales quite often. Is it the same crowd at both? There's a kind of a different one that starts episodes.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:11

There's a few, you know, like crossovers, and then there's some major differences too.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:20

I don't know if that was just everybody's reporting back. They lay out their plans for the day in the morning and then check back in the afternoon. Mention what happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:31

That actually does kind of happen, yeah. When the per you know, when there's a flow of the right for a while.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:39

Right people there.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:40

You know, it ebbs and flows and changes and glad you came

Why Haynes Became Home

SPEAKER_03 1:28:54

to Haynes? Oh yeah. 41 years. Little bit in Skagway, like I was talking about. But you know, like I I think when I uh well I do know on that trip when I hooked up with those people, and I and and so we came through Skagway on our way to here that very first, you know, after fixing their truck, and then we came down White Pass, and you know, I'd been across the whole continent for the first time by then, through the Rocky, you know, Canadian Rockies and whatever, and they were like, oh my god. And then when we, you know, left Fraser and we came down the path, and still to this day, you come down, you leave the border, and you come down, and the road kind of goes around before you get to Moor Bridge. Well, Moor Bridge ain't there anymore, but there's a turnout where you look straight down the valley at Skagway and you can see the bay, and we pulled out into there, and I remember walking out to the guardrail and and just, you know, farm boy from New York, and I'm just looking at this, you know, you got the railroad over, you know, like cutting the hillside over there, and it's it's a gorgeous day, and I'm just like I was just like, couldn't believe it. I mean, I was what I was seeing, and I think that moment in time right there, I knew I was here for life.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:34

Right then. That that sold you.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:38

Pretty sure that I knew that right then. Right then, looking at that, because I just couldn't believe it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:47

Did you have did you and Clint ever talk about that on how he was responsible for bringing you to Haynes?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:53

Oh yeah, we I think he's gonna show up this year.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:57

Well, he keeps talking about that, but then I never see him.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:00

Well, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:02

He's been saying he's gonna be coming up for the last few years. And then he doesn't make it up.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:07

Five years ago?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:09

Yeah, I think it's five, six years ago he's up here.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:11

Well, he's the reason. Better or worse.

Closing And Like Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 1:31:21

All right, well, I I'm I'm out of questions. Unless you unless you have something else you want to ask in here or throw in here.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:30

Oh, we won't go there.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:35

Maybe maybe that's somewhere we should go. Yeah, yeah. If we get that kind of a laugh from you. Here's the rest of the story. Here's the rest of the story.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:48

Good stuff and there.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:49

We'll just leave that a later. We'll we'll let you tell those stories at the compass in the room. Yeah, we'll we'll leave those. People want to hear the rest of the story, they've they've got to hit you up on their own time. Well, thanks for joining us, Scott. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:07

Uh that was that was fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:10

Hope you get two viewers or two likes or two. Two likes. Like is that how this works, or something?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:18

Like, well, see, we need we need likes and we need likes and subscribers. Yeah, all of our videos. So see, Scott's doing my job for me. He's telling everybody like and subscribe so you can follow the rest of these. Get a bunch of them off of you now.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:33

Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:35

Whole new audience.