S.1 Ep.3: Failure Is Not an Option

Join us as we discuss the essential skills of resiliency, respect, and a strong work-ethic necessary for ensuring economic viability and longevity with Jody Hendrickx of Hendrickx Logging. 

Wood & Iron is a podcast that explores the needs and challenges of today’s logger. Join our hosts as they explores business operation, policy navigation, and the future of logging with loggers from the Midwest to the West. The goal of Wood & Iron is to promote a successful and sustainable logging workforce in our forested states by offering relevant and timely information that you can listen to during your time in the cab.

Produced by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Wisconsin Forestry Center and is hosted by WFC’s High School Program Manager Jared Schroeder and Manley Jobs host and WFCA executive director Blake Manley. Wood & Iron is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, and many other platforms.

Transcript

[Blake Manley]

Welcome to Wood and Iron, the podcast for loggers by loggers. We dig into the real stories, hard-earned lessons, and iron-sharpened wisdom that keep the wood industry moving. I'm Blake Manley with the Western Forestry and Conservation Association.

[Jared Schroeder]

And I'm Jared Schroeder with the Wisconsin Forestry Center. Together, we bring you the voices of the people who live and breathe timber. From the forest floor to the millyard door, from chainsaws to forwarders, we're talking shop, celebrating the craft and tackling the issues shaping forestry today.

[Blake Manley]

So grab your coffee, fire up your equipment, and settle in. This is Wood and Iron. Let's get to work.

Big thanks today for our sponsor, Manley Jobs, promotional educational material for all groups. 

Welcome everybody to this episode. We're so excited today because we have a guest that's going to talk about the business of being a logger, some of the details of how he got into it, the challenges that exist.

And it's a true honor to have an Idaho logger here. As you know, I'm from Idaho. Love that state, love the forest there.

This guy's born, raised, his blood runs Idaho, and it shows every time we talk. So without further ado, hey Jody, thanks for being here.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Absolutely.

[Blake Manley]

So Jody, I guess one of our main questions we want to ask today is kind of how did you get started in logging and, you know, maybe tell that story a little bit.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Well, I guess it kind of goes way back to 1986 when I was a freshman in high school. Me and a buddy of mine were driving around town looking for a job. And so we come up to this shop just out of St. Mary's and the guy in a coveralls and little mechanics hat, he was running around there. And Fred Gunther was his name, owned Two Rivers Logging and took our names down and left and then, I don't know, weekend come up there and I got a phone call from him. He wanted some help with the shop. So I went up to the shop and, you know, he, I didn't know much of anything being a, you know, what 14, 15 year old kid, you know, single, single parent home.

So he kind of took me in and showed me how to mechanic and showed me some pretty good work ethic, which I had some work ethic from my grandparents. But anyway, just kind of evolved around the, I guess, you know, Idaho kind of a nut buster shop, you know, person for sweeper, kind of clean up, you know, grease monkey. I just done that through high school and he had logging trucks and he had a couple line machine that had grapples on the, on them for loading logs and piling brush.

And, you know, I'd go out and hang out with him on the weekend and kind of see how things run. And any chance I got, I jumped on a piece of equipment with him and he kind of taught me how to run, run equipment. And it just kind of evolved from there, graduated high school, you know, kind of one of them types of things, you're a young kid and you think, you know, everything.

So him and I kind of went nose to nose and kind of jumped to another company and started hauling logs for a little while, hauled logs and kind of, you know, decided, well, that really wasn't what I wanted to do. So I went back to work for Fred again. And at that time, he'd kind of been into some demolition things, tearing down few mills and doing different things.

And he had some end dumps, so we'd done some rocking and just kind of an all around, you know, pretty broad perspective of things to do from truck driving to loading, you know, loading trucks to loading rock to running a front end loader to a forklift, you know, and just kind of got into the shop end of it first and then kind of dabbled into the, like I said, the truck end.

[Blake Manley]

Jody, that was back, though, when you didn't need every single certification that lives in order to jump in and start doing some of that stuff. Right. So was it a little easier, do you feel like, than it is today?

[Jody Hendrickx]

Oh, yeah. Oh, tremendously. A heck of a lot easier.

You know, back then, I think we, the Idaho law back then, you could get your chauffeur's license at 18. You know, you just studied for the test, went down, took the test and passed it and you could start driving a truck. And that's what I done.

And then they kind of grandfathered that into the CDL later on, you know, but as far as running the equipment, it was just like, that's that's how you learned as a young individual, young adult or young kid. You just hung around those types of things and was able to pick up on how it worked, how it maneuvered, how to operate it. How to become, work the thing slow and not jerky.

And then pretty soon that speed comes later. If you were smooth and fluent, you know, as you started progressing, then that speed would come. And then pretty soon, you know, you were, you know, kicking it with the big dogs and doing just just as good as an adult would.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. Jared, don't you agree, like we struggle getting kids like Jody, 1986 Jody. We struggle right now because we see there is so many hoops to jump through.

I'm not saying that we don't jump through them, but you've been in the classroom, you know, getting those type of kids interested is difficult, right?

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah. I mean, there's not only the difficulty of getting them the idea of wanting to go into that field. But now I think it's even harder to, you know, go down your Main Street and find a place that's going to be hiring that can give the students that kind of experience.

So now it's a little bit more difficult, I think, for students to know, who do I ask to get into this and how do I even know I want to get into this?

[Blake Manley]

And then, Jody, from the owner's point of view, you know, that 18 year old kid that has zero experience and we haven't allowed them to touch anything fun for the four years between 14 and 18. Right. Hard on you as owner.

Right?

[Jody Hendrickx]

Tremendously, because you know what it takes when you tried to break in on a piece of equipment, how much stuff you broke. And then, of course, you know, you're starting to look at things and like, hey, whoa, don't do that because this is going to happen. You know, you have to be right there with them if you're going to do that.

And it takes a lot of time and effort. It takes your time away to oversee them so that they don't break anything, you know, catastrophic and things like that. So it's, you know, it's a it's a tough deal.

And some kids get it. A lot of them don't. You know, I think, you know, like myself, for instance, I feel that I kind of pick up on a lot of stuff, a lot of different pieces of equipment pretty easily.

I noticed my son has gotten that trait and he can jump on anything. And just within a few minutes, he's he's doing fairly good at it. But then again, you know, it's kind of got to be in your blood.

You kind of got to have that interest in things like that. To me, that's the problem that we have is these kids are not exposed to the opportunities that are out there. And so that's why, you know, I'm pretty adamant about this live in the woods show that we had last year that we put together, Blake and I, and a lot I can't tell you how many volunteers come together to make that thing happen.

And I think we had a total 500ish kids that went through there, 250 of St. Mary's students the first day and 250 of, you know, outside districts come there. But, you know, it was phenomenal. And, you know, to me, if we've reached one or two kids out of that 500, we've done something, you know, to try and get them interested in the workforce or into the timber industry.

[Jared Schroeder]

Can you guys just take a second to expand on what that event was a little bit more?

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. So Jody had this harebrained idea about, I don't know, a year ago-ish this fall to try and get kids into the woods and to see the occupation, mostly with logging, right? We expanded it to forest products, the whole sector, but mostly with logging.

And it's hard to get an individual school up to a job. So we said, okay, there's this thing that they do at the Pacific Logging Congress over on the west side, it's called Live in the Woods. And they bring young people out to the woods to their Live in the Woods show.

And they actually walk them through and show them as the operation's actually happening, right? Now it's behind fences, it's a long ways between things. And they've been doing it really great, but they do it every four years and it moves locations up and down the west coast.

And so what Jody and I said is, why can't we do that in Idaho? Why can't we have something here? Now, I guess one of the things we missed is Jody not only owns Hendrick Logging, but he's also on the school board at St. Mary's, St. Mary's School District, and he's the vice president of the Logger Association here in Idaho. And so there's a lot of connectivity between, you know, what Jody does, not just as Logger Jody, but that bigger, expansive look. So when we came together, we said, okay, we need to do something. And so we started planning how we can bring all the local schools in this entire region to a location and walk them through a day in the life of a logger, so to speak.

So we called it Alive in the Woods. It wasn't live this past spring when we did it. We didn't have them actually cutting down trees, but we did have it as though we just shut down operation.

All the operators were there. And so then the students would start with the bunch here, cutting what it took to cut it, skid it, process, load. And then in the center of our area that we were using it at, there's a great YouTube video on the Manley Jobs YouTube page that does it shows it a little bit, though.

It was a beautiful day. In the middle, we had all the manufacturers. So Bennett Lumber, mostly a stud mill.

Well, they do an everything mill. PotlatchDeltic was there with Veneer. We had IFG, Idaho Forest Group.

We had all these different people there that kind of is the not logger and not foresters, but everything else in between. Les Schwab was there for changing tires. So we kind of have that in the middle.

And then at the end, theoretically at the end, we had tree planting because it kind of completes the cycle. And so that day or those two days, we planted almost 500 trees. Every kid got to plant a tree that kind of showed, OK, we're harvesting.

It gets manufactured or the product. And then we're replanting at the end.

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah, so here in Wisconsin, we've got something similar to that in the Great Lakes, Timber Producers Association puts on what's called log a load events. And so they will basically log on a school forest and make an event out of it. So that school district can come in and learn a lot more about the logging process.

I brought our Ponsse Harvest Simulator there so students can see what it's like to actually sit in the cab of the machine they just got to watch operate. So very similar to that.

[Blake Manley]

Awesome. Jody, did I miss anything there?

[Jody Hendrickx]

No, I think, you know, I guess kind of the icing on the cake was Thursday when we done there. We had EMS there. We actually had Life Flight Helicopter come in and sit down and then we've got to we're connected with another long line rescue helicopter out of Kalispell, Montana.

Two Bear Air, I believe, is what it is. And so they will fly throughout the state of Idaho for us to be able to pick a person out of out of the woods with a long line and then transfer them to the Life Flight Helicopter to get them to the hospital. I actually got that connection started, I think, I don't know if it was 2016 or 15 or something there, but I had an individual, my Sawyer got pitched down the hill.

Oh, 70 feet. He flew about 30 feet in the air and broke his femur in two places. Anyway, so Idaho is unique that way.

We have a radio or a system down in Boise State Com that we are able to call down there. If it's a logging accident, we take priority. And so they're able to get that helicopter dispatched to our landing zone, which we pre-register as we start starting our job.

We have a helicopter landing spot. And then you call back and request a long line helicopter. So Fairchild Air Force Base is in Spokane, and I thought that that's where that long line was coming from.

And when I went and got the nurses out of the helicopter and we were packing the litter and stuff down to the guy, he told me this helicopter was coming out of Kalispell. And I'm like, oh, cool. All right.

So then he started telling me about Two Bear Air and I said, well, who funds this thing? Because I got a neighbor that had a helicopter and I knew stuff wasn't cheap. And he said, oh, the guy from Google, everybody's, you know, everybody's is volunteer and everything.

And I'm like, you know, well, that's the helicopter isn't cheap. But anyway, so the guy from Google, I think he lives on, oh, I'm not sure what lake is up there by Kalispell, but anyway, on the west side. Anyway, so, you know, that was pretty significant with the kids.

I don't think a lot of the kids realize the access that we have. And of course, you know, logging is dangerous and a dangerous sport. But from the time that accident happened in the morning, I think, and I was up the Coeur d'Alene River, you know, 60 miles, which as a crow fly would probably be from Coeur d'Alene.

I don't know if it'd be maybe 60, 70 miles, if that. But anyway, from the time that accident happened to where he was sitting at KMC in Coeur d'Alene was two and a half hours.

[Blake Manley]

You know, as we talk about the evolution of logging, you know, I started in 99. It's so much safer, period. But then we've done things like this that now, especially in the state of Idaho, and I think that's very unique to Idaho.

You know, we've had this conversation before. It's very unique. You can grab your radio, boom, you're on state comm.

And like you said, in two hours, they're at the hospital. Hell, I've been on accidents before where it's not. We're not even even to the truck in two hours.

So really a great kind of evolution of the industry, so to speak.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Oh, absolutely. You know, it's it's by far because, I mean, if you get cut with a saw or, you know, I mean, a guy gets hit or you break an arm or break a leg or whatever happens, you know, you've got that access. And I realize, you know, times of the year that, you know, into the winter, you know, we they can't fly.

The ceiling's too low for them. But then so with that said, state comm is able to dispatch the closest ambulance to us right away. And they they really cautious about calling nine one one because nine one one, you have to go all through all the channels to get there.

And they might dispatch an ambulance from, you know, two or three cities away from you when the one is right there close and they skip over it. So that's kind of one of the the advantages of having state comm and have this program with them for the loggers in Idaho.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah, it's so great. Hey, Jody, why don't you kind of talk about why you stuck with it? Because let's be honest, being a logger is not easy.

You know, that's where I come from. My dad's a logger. My little brother's a logger.

I was a logger for a lot of years. It's not easy. And I don't mean that like in one sense.

I mean that in like every sense of the word.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Right.

[Blake Manley]

It's it's not easy, period.

[Jody Hendrickx]

No, it's not. You know, I guess it just kind of falls back down to your work ethic. You know, I like I line skid.

I like what I do. You know, I have done everything from down there to fall in the trees, to setting the chokers, to running the machine, skidding the trees, to processing in them, to loading, to hauling, you know, and I'm the mechanic. So, you know, I've been I've stepped in every shoes set of shoes that there is there.

And to me, it's it's kind of rewarding, you know, for your hard work. There's days out there that you look up and you think, oh, my Lord, what am I doing here today? You know, and then pretty soon the sun breaks out.

And I mean, you got to you can't ask for better sunrises or sunsets out there in the woods. I've watched a lot of them, but slow down, pay attention to them. There's very few, you know, the you're out there with the wildlife.

It's so rewarding to me to be able to get out there, the fresh air, the you know, the atmosphere, the smell of fresh cut trees is unreal. I mean, talk about the best air freshener that there is. That's that's what it is.

Besides link belt grease.

[Blake Manley]

Right. You know, and Jody, part of our goal here is not just the next generation. You and I have that or that all three of us, we're always thinking about that next generation, next generation.

Part of the reason that we started this podcast and Jared and I have hooked up for this is giving advice to loggers that are out there. You know, maybe it's younger guys, maybe it's guys in the middle of their career, whatever that is. If you can think about, you know, one or two things you wish you would have known 20 years earlier in your career that you could kind of pass forward.

What would that be?

[Jody Hendrickx]

I don't think we have enough time. No, you just need to put your head down and keep going. You know, at times, times you get slapped down so many times and so often.

And it's just like, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. But, you know, persevere, get up, get up, keep pushing, because, you know, failure is not an option, period. And that's kind of one thing that Two Rivers, Fred Gunther taught me.

You know, he said, you know, he wanted the job that couldn't be done. And that's how I've kind of approached a lot of things. And so, you know, you learn a lot of different things as you go through life and you apply them and this and that.

But, you know, perseverance is huge. You know, I mean, it's kind of like you put on your boots in the morning, you know, and you pull hard and you break your bootstrap and you think, well, oh, my gosh, how's this day going to go? You know, what do you do?

You reach down, tie a knot, thread it back through there and away you go. You know, you just you improvise and keep moving. You know, there's failure is not an option, I guess, is the biggest thing.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah, you know, I love the movie Apollo 13. It's one of my favorites, right? And they get there, you know, they're trying to calculate how to get the guys home after they go around the moon.

And he goes up on the board and he looks at it and he starts making the line. He's like, failure is not an option, right? The guys are going to die if we don't make this line get all the way in.

Right. Well, I think what you've created is you create your own niche in logging by having that mentality that you'll take the toughest job that's out there. And by having the mentality of we will find a way to do this job.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Yeah, exactly. You know, and well, like I said, you know, failure is not an option. I mean, you just, you know, lead, follow or get out of my way.

[Jared Schroeder]

Right. So then, you know, that resiliency is a really powerful skill to have. And that's amazing.

Are there more, you know, other soft skills you find have been extremely valuable in your success besides resiliency?

[Jody Hendrickx]

To me, it all kind of falls all together. But, you know, the work ethic, the work ethic and the respect, you know, you need to have that work ethic. It's like, you know, you walk in there and it's just like, oh, that's not my job description.

That's not my job description. Well, when you're a logger, your job description is pretty much everything that happens out there. You know, you walk across the yard and you're looking at something, oh, pick it up and put it in the trash or oh, gee whiz, you know, you walk here and oh, man, that's about ready to fall off or that's broke.

And, you know, you're constantly looking around at things and, you know, just yeah, it just there's a lot of a lot of different components that that go to that, you know, and and and it's hard to teach that. It's very hard to teach that without having the person right there at your hip pocket. You know, I've walked up on my crew and I've been standing there looking at stuff and I don't talk a lot when I'm there.

You know, things are getting done with minimal damage. It's like, you know, we're going all right. But I kind of point, well, geez, hey, you better look at that.

That's about ready to fall off. Well, you got a loose bolt there. Well, this is here.

That's there. That's there. Well, how do you notice that?

I said, well, when I'm standing here, I'm not just staring off in space. I said, you're constantly looking. And kind of a side note there, my son, he'd watched me do that for years.

And so he went on a couple of years ago, he went on a side by side ride with my daughter's husband now, but they were it was a bachelor party or whatever. So they went up in the woods on side by sides and he walked by a side by side and he could hear the air leaking out. He said, well, somebody is getting a flat tire.

And and oh, geez, how can you hear that? He said, how can't can't you not hear that? Well, well, that's about ready to fall off under there.

So he got it for me. But we pack a little four inch crescent wrench in our pocket and he's out there fixing it, you know, and these younger kids that are his age and and a little older, they are just mesmerized of what he knows, you know, I mean, stuff that's common knowledge to us there. But the normal person doesn't have it.

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah, I think that sort of speaks to a phenomenon we see here in Wisconsin, too, with the fall of the family farms, right? Kids who are raised looking for that stuff, who are constantly problem solving, who are, you know, they're breaking the tractor and they don't want to yell that against. They found ways to fix it as soon as they could.

We don't have that population anymore. So trying to figure out how to communicate with the new generation who don't have that background puts a lot more strain on business owners to train them.

[Jody Hendrickx]

I sit on several workforce development committees, councils, whatever you want to call it there. But, you know, I try and we were going through some curriculum one day in a meeting and and I raised the question, you know, and it was kind of like some hard skills, like maybe running a chainsaw and or, you know, doing different things like that. And I said, well, we need to build the work ethic back into into this thing.

Well, those are soft skills, I was told. And I'm like, you better make them hard skills, because if we don't do that, we're not going to have the other portion to follow it. Simple.

I mean, it's just, you know, people nowadays and I'm not saying everybody, but you run into it. But, you know, people, they got a sniffle or, you know, they can't go to work because of this or that. You know, the classic one I've heard is my cat's having kittens.

I can't come to work today.

[Blake Manley]

You told me that one day I was like, oh, my hell.

[Jody Hendrickx]

You know, just just crazy things like, you know, it's kind of like every excuse not to go to work. And it's just like, well, how can you survive, especially with things the way that they cost now? I mean, you know, the work ethic, you know, let's let's get resilient and move forward and come on, people, let's make things happen.

[Blake Manley]

You know, Jody, I think they I think they're they're essential skills. I think people like to use hard and soft skills, you know, and I think those are interchangeable for what they are. We know we know what a soft skill is.

OK, it's all the things that you're not actually doing. But that doesn't I think we need a whole new category of essential skills. And I think some of those soft skills, especially for loggers, but but in your profession, in the profession that we're talking about, they're essential skills.

If we if you don't have them, you're you're pulling dead weight.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Exactly. We're back to the the issues that, you know, the older generation and I guess I'll just go through the generation deal. But, you know, the baby boomers, look what they went through to make things happen.

You know, the first part of my generation, what what am I, Gen X?

[Blake Manley]

I know you're older than I am. Yeah, it's Gen X.

[Jody Hendrickx]

So, you know, I feel the first portion of the Gen Xers still have some of that that old baby boomer school in their lead follower, get out of my way and let's get this thing done. And then somewhere in there, halfway through there, I don't know where or how we lost it. But then because you look at the kids now that are coming up and I mean, there's there's no opportunities.

We cannot have opportunities to the kids because we're you know, they're they're it's too much risk or too much liability. Well, we can't we can't keep them in a bubble wrap forever. You know, we've got to have the blue collar workers.

Everybody's preached college, college, college. And look where we're at now. We have to get this work ethic turned around to where we've got some people that are that are working, get something done.

You know, and I my mission when I started some of this, well, when I started this thing and helping Blake, you know, I was don't get me wrong. I'm still pushing the forestry, too, but I'm more about the worker, whether it's a logger or whether it's a plumber or whether it's a mechanic or whether it's an electrician or whether it's, you know, whatever it is, you have to have that work ethic. If you don't and you don't implement it, we we're in a world of hurt, bad.

[Blake Manley]

Jared, you can talk about this a little bit more than we can, but I would say pushing that work ethic is also a very, very good thing for a college kid.

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah, it definitely is.

[Blake Manley]

We talk about it as though it's just those kids coming out and doing the blue collar work. But having that outstanding work ethic translates, right?

[Jared Schroeder]

But I think the challenge here, we can get into a real rabbit hole. But the current generations need a reason now for why they're going to work harder. And if they don't see a purpose and how they benefit from it, then they're not going to spend the time doing it.

I've got an eight year old and man, can I see that very prominently. So I think that it's the opportunities aren't there the way they used to be. We can't do things in schools like we used to.

We can't do the job training like we used to because of the risk element to it. And a lot of schools, not all of them, but in a lot of them and with kids not growing up having to work every single day on the farm or whatever, yeah, you're going to see a different opinion in what work is. I guess the follow up question, again, for you as a business owner, if you're looking at, you know, do you do you risk hiring someone that you know isn't going to work to your level or is it better to just not have someone in that position at all?

[Jody Hendrickx]

Well, at this point in time, you know, I mean, it depends on the individual, you know, over time, you know, you can see whether that person's going to work or not going to work, you know, and is it worth spending the time to train that person? And I hate to use that word because it sounds like you're circus animals, but, you know, but, you know, to put forth your effort, what you're trying to do, because I can't tell you how many how many individuals and how many people in the in this valley here where I live have trained truck drivers. And I'm talking guys that are 80, you know, pretty near 90 now have trained truck drivers over the years to work for them.

And then pretty soon they jump ship and they go somewhere else. I've trained, you know, people to set chokers and try and do different things, you know, and pretty soon, oh, well, so-and-so is paying two cents more an hour or however that goes. And away they go, you know, pretty lucky now.

I've got pretty loyal, loyal employees now and they're darn good crew. My hat's off to them. And I'm able to do a few more things, you know, where I don't have to be there day in and day out.

But but yeah, it's just it's it's that's a very tough deal because, you know, how much how much expense do you want to put out and not get nothing in return? Yeah, I guess it's kind of like the new generation, you know, what are you going to give me to work, you know, or why should I work harder and make more do more? But to me, it falls back on a self-reflection of, you know, when you work hard or when you sweat blood, sweat and tears and you turn around and look what you just got done doing, don't you feel a little bit better about yourself?

Or if I work harder, by golly, I can make this job complete by sundown, but it's going to take me two or three more hours longer to get it done. But by golly, tomorrow I'll be able to do something different or I'll be able to move on to something different. You know, that's, you know, what's that old saying?

Don't put off tomorrow what you can do today. You know, there's a lot of those old school sayings that are true, that really need to come back around and people need to think about things. And, you know, and I get, you know, you can't work your life away either.

I get that. I've watched that time and time again with people. But still, in order to survive and do anything, you need to work hard.

And there's days that you're going to have to put in, you know, I joke with people, I've found a cram 29 hours a day into 24. Then there's times like, OK, well, I got a little bit of downtime here. I can I can slack off a little bit and do something with the kids or the wife or whatever.

[Blake Manley]

Support for this podcast comes from the Western Forestry and Conservation Association. For over 100 years, WFCA has delivered trusted forestry education, professional development and workforce leadership across the region. Learn more at WesternForestry.org.

You know, Jody, I'd like to not necessarily switch gears completely, but there's one question that this is a national podcast, right? So we're going to be reaching, you know, Jared's in Wisconsin or in Idaho. There'll be people in Oregon.

There'll be people in Alabama that are listening to this. I don't think everyone's had a chance to understand exactly what you're talking about when you're talking about the way you log. Would you kind of break that down for us a little bit and talk about your operation?

You know, why is it a little bit different? What's your niche? You know, why do you why do you keep going out there?

[Jody Hendrickx]

Well, I guess I'm still kind of the old school way of doing things. You know, we have a hand follow. We are on, you know, steep ground, steep slope grounds to where the the tethering machines, it's too steep for them, too much rock bluffs type thing.

And it depends on where you're at, what the prescription is. So I've got a hand sawyer that goes down there and falls the trees. And then, you know, I've got a couple choker setters that pull the skyline down and hook it up to a stump.

Or if you've got to hang a hook, flat lip hook in a tree and then go go back to get your get your deflection for your skyline. And then you've got the kit. Then it's a it's a glorified crane is what it is.

It's a 108 link belt made for line skidding. So then you hook your carriage on the line machine on the skyline. And then you've got your main line that runs through there.

That's motorized carriage. It'll clamp that carriage on wherever the guys want to on the on the line. And then it'll kick out the slack.

So you got a motor in there that kicks the slack out from the carriage. So it pulls it from the machine to the carriage and then down. And then it's got a clamp for the main line as well.

So you can pull it up however close to the carriage you want, run up the hill. So, you know, and then we swing it over into a landing. And then I got a processor that pulls pulls those trees away and then processes them into a deck and then then you log loader puts them on a truck and then you truck out of there.

So it's it's all still the manual labor other than the landing. You know, the landing is evolved into the processor, which is good. It gets the limbs off and and, you know, the measurement stuff is all, you know, getting better and better every day.

But, you know, now that they're they're pushing this tether tether system, you know, moving into it. And but there's a point in time to where that's the ground is too steep for a tether. I was on a job last winter where the rock bluffs were.

I mean, there's no way they could have tethered that. So you're back to the old school logging to where, you know, a line machine. And it's it's it's hard work.

It's very hard work. I mean, you go down there and you're watering through the brush. You know, when I got people knew that they go down there in the woods, I I tell them the best way I can explain this thing to you when you're down there setting chokers is you better keep your eyes open and your head on a swivel and pretend you're in a tank of rattlesnakes because you're going to get bit.

You just don't know how many times and when. And that's not a lie. You let your guard down one little time and there's going to be a sweeper or something that comes back there and swat you and you're going to think, wow, where'd that come from?

You know, I've been hit. I've, you know, it's not fun, but, you know, you've got to learn to anticipate those types of things. And granted, you're not going to catch them all the time there, you know, especially in the wintertime, you know, when there's two or three feet of snow on top of that stuff and you're down there working and you can't see what's underneath there, but you just do the best you can.

[Jared Schroeder]

That sounds expensive as hell compared to the stuff we deal with here. How do you how do you make ends meet?

[Jody Hendrickx]

Well, it's it's tough. It's tough. You've got to try and figure out, you know, what your overall cost is for the day, you know, with your machines and your expense and everything and plug that into, OK, well, how many how many loads a day or how many tons a day am I going to produce?

And so you try and get an overall average of what you're going to do for the whole job. And then you, you know, you work your numbers and hopefully they come out. But, you know, there's days you might you might skid, you know, figured on a five load a day average.

And, you know, there's days you might skid one, you might skid two at some point in time you need to get, you know, seven or eight or maybe even nine loads a day to help that average because it doesn't take much for the average to go down, but it takes a heck of a lot to get it to come up.

[Jared Schroeder]

How many people do you have working on a single job then?

[Jody Hendrickx]

So what do I got? I got one, two, three, four, five, six, six. And then I have a contract truck.

So, you know, if you want to call him, that'd be seven.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. So you're looking at, you know, doing five loads a day. Let's just say that's the average, right?

You're doing five loads a day with seven people, give or take. You got to bust your butt.

[Jody Hendrickx]

And I don't know how the rest of the world is. All I know is north Idaho here, because that's all I've ever been around. But we got this term.

What do we call it? Gyppo, a gyppo logger. You get paid for what you do.

If you work harder and faster, you make more money. And that's been that way here for, I don't know how long, you know, and everybody's kind of going away from it because it's tough, you know, especially getting paid by the ton. That was back in the day when they got paid by the scale or the piece, how many pieces a day you skidded.

But there's so many variations, you know, I still implement kind of the gyppo wage. I pay by the ton. So we got to move X amount of tons a day.

If you guys bust your butt, you know, you get your tons for the day and, you know, you made your money. If you don't, you know, that's kind of your fault. If you get there and you show up and you want to talk for an hour before you go down the hill or something like that.

But kind of an incentive type thing is, you know, you get paid for what you do and gyppo.

[Blake Manley]

Dad's a gyppo. It's in the blood.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Well, exactly.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah, Jody, maybe for everybody else to where are you logging mostly like whose landownerships because people that aren't in Idaho, you know, they don't they don't know.

[Jody Hendrickx]

So I do a lot of federal ground. So a lot of my job is in the Coeur d'Alene National Forest, which is north I-90, just outside of Coeur d'Alene, just east of Coeur d'Alene there. I do a lot there.

You know, we're actually on the south side of the freeway now. That's a it's federal ground. But we got this new thing there now that they're trying called the GNA.

It's a good neighbor authority. So it's for service ground. But IDL, the Idaho Department of Lands, administers the sale.

So it's supposed to be put in place to help get rid of some of the red tape, you know, moving forward on selling the sales and that sort of thing. I can't remember how big a sale this is. I heard one just sold and it was like 16 million, which is an awful big sale.

You know, there's different prescriptions per different units on how they want it cut. You know, they they come up with a prescription. But yeah, so I do I do IDL ground, state of Idaho ground.

You know, I've been on some private pieces. But the most I do is federal or forest service ground.

[Blake Manley]

I think that's just so unique to where we live. North Idaho and eastern Washington, the Colville National Forest, between that area, there's more federal timber moving than people understand. Like when people say, well, you can't do anything on the federal ground.

We're doing it. We're doing it. You're a testament of that.

You're doing it right now.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Since I went to work for Idaho Forest Group in 2009, I mean, for the most part, I've done federal ground. You know, it's just that Coeur d'Alene National Forest. You could put you could probably put all the loggers in North Idaho up that drainage, you know, in different areas and never, never cover it all in 20 years.

There's so much ground up there. It's unreal. It's it's kind of scary, really.

[Blake Manley]

Now, Jody, again, for for people that maybe haven't been to Coeur d'Alene or or up here, what's your species composition? And maybe a good like you started in 88, 89, 90, right? Officially.

[Jody Hendrickx]

No, it had to be after after high school. I graduated 90.

[Blake Manley]

So, OK, 90. So species composition. But then the size of the logs, I think, is important to note, because what that's done is, well, you can talk about that.

But smaller logs, more pieces, more work, all that kind of thing. Talk about that a little bit.

[Jody Hendrickx]

You know, and I'm just going to speak to the Coeur d'Alene National Forest because different areas up here are different. But the stuff that I do, you know, it's it's a lot of white fur, red fur, cedar that we're in. Of course, the areas are going to depend on, you know, dictate, you know, how much what's there.

But your you know, your DBH might be anywhere from 14, 16, you know, you know, we're getting into some oversized stuff now and oversized up here is anything over 27 inch. So IFG likes 41 foot logs. So most of the timber, I'm not going to say all of it, but the majority of it is, you know, two and a half, 41.

So you've got what, 82 and then a 20 foot, six, you know, you're 100 plus tall trees, you know, and then, of course, depending on where the top breaks out and how it breaks out. But the timber is pretty tall. And that, you know, I've had quite a quite a learning experience coming from St. Mary's, which is south of Coeur d'Alene, you know, to where the timber down there is just basically about a log and a half. So you figure a 35 and a 16. When I started working for them in 2009, I can't tell you how many decks I had crapped out because I was decking on trees and then pretty soon you'd hear the deck crap out. And there's there's a lot of rock up in that Coeur d'Alene drainage.

And that's why we're able to, you know, have our operation go when it's raining and when it's snowing, you know, in kind of the wet time of year, because the rock is porous and the road holds you up and different things like that. So you can, you know, you can work a little bit more up there than you can anywhere else.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. So, you know, Jared, compare that to your neck of the woods.

[Jared Schroeder]

I can't give you precise measurements, but I know that we're not pulling very many 27 inch trees for DBH, that's for sure. I think.

[Blake Manley]

120 foot tall trees?

[Speaker 4]

Not really. No, no, not really. I mean, you know, we get some good 60 footers, you know, I mean, don't quote me on that.

But some of the ones I've seen good size, good 60. And not to mention that we do have topography.

[Jared Schroeder]

I mean, we got we have a mountain. Some people call it a hill, but it is labeled a mountain.

[Blake Manley]

So, you know, I've been to Minnesota one time, never Wisconsin. And when I was driving up to Duluth, when we first met, I'm driving up to Duluth. There's there's about three inches of topography, you know, as you're driving up there.

You know, I think I rose a little bit between Minneapolis and Duluth, right?

[Jared Schroeder]

Okay. Duluth itself, that's got quite a bit of topography. You got to admit there's a lot of roads that are pretty steep.

[Blake Manley]

That's true. 

[Jared Schroeder]

And that's probably the best example of an extreme case in this area.

[Blake Manley]

Jody, I make that joke just to kind of say it's so different. Like the logging practices per state. And I'm not talking about practice rules or anything like that or BMPs.

But just just the fact of what you're talking about is slopes that where the landings at. You're at, you know, you might drop a thousand feet in elevation. Hanging out 4000 feet, 5000 feet, right?

Maybe talk about that just a little bit, because I don't think people understand how steep you're actually talking about.

[Jody Hendrickx]

You know, back, I think IDL's got a Idaho Department of Lands has a structure in their minimum safety book or their BMPs. You know, they can't, they shouldn't be taking machines over. I believe it's 45% ground.

And so, you know, it was kind of rewrote, redone, maybe provisions put into place for these tether machines. So, you know, they're getting, you know, 50, 60% there. I think, you know, I've cat skidded 60% with a little John Deere 650.

And boy, I'll tell you, you know, it's a little nervous when you're going down the hill. Of course, you know, you don't need any brakes because if you have a big enough drag behind you, that's your brakes. But the wintertime, that's where you got to be careful, because if that thing starts taking off and sliding, those trees come underneath the cat, lift the tracks up off the ground and away you go.

Just hold on hill, Mary Deerfield. You know, here we go.

[Blake Manley]

People don't understand. My grandpa started in the late 40s and logged all the way through, you know, the 90s, the early 90s. And they used to use a D7, D8, whatever it was.

They had four big chokers or five big chokers. They had a quarter load or more of logs coming down a 60 or 70% slope. And they'd just go clear to the top and then find a good place to turn around and then hook up.

And then here they came, right? Those type of things, we're not doing that anymore.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Well, it's the erosion control for one. You know, when you've got those big drags behind those cats, they're like that. You know, back when I started running a cat for a contractor here in town, I think it was 94.

Anyway, we were working just out of St. Mary's here and up to St. Mary's River. And there was an old boy that was around there and he talked about these skidding pans. And we're like, what are you talking about?

He said back in the day, they had them, you know, whether it was a D6 or D8 skidding cat, but they didn't have any arches or anything on there. So they had what they call a skidding pan. So all the one end of the logs got into this pan and they somehow tied the pan to the logs and then headed right straight down the bottom of the draw, the creeks and right down to the river to a landing, you know, is to kind of help keep from the erosion type thing.

But, you know, so many things have evolved now to help for those types of situations and whatnot, you know, to try and keep the erosion under control and all kinds of different things.

[Blake Manley]

Jody, I think one of the questions that we had on our list of questions that I was supposed to send you and failed on, one of them was a misconception about loggers. And what you feel like is one of the misconceptions out there. I think you just answered that.

But by all means, talk more about it. You know, a lot of people have this misconception that the logger gets out there, cuts down the tree, throws it on and they're running this and they're trying to destroy that. And they're just trying to get a dollar.

You just talked about the exact opposite of that. Would you expand on that, please?

[Jody Hendrickx]

We go to first aid training course every year. It's about a four hour training course. And in this thing, you know, we're kind of talked about the BMPs, the best management practice act for the state of Idaho.

So that kind of tells you about and that's a rule book that we have to follow. So, you know, we really are looking at erosion control on the roads, you know, not muddy, not hauling during the when it's pouring down rain to where you got nothing but milkshake running down the road. You know, we don't do that.

Some of the places to where if you got water running down the road like that, and, you know, you've got a cross ditch that you get the water off the road, you know, we'll put straw bales there to catch the erosion, those types of things. You know, it's been raining the last couple of days. Well, I went out and loaded yesterday morning before it rained.

But today I didn't because it's been raining all night and all day. So I'm not going to go tear the road up. Just it looks bad for us.

But we are under so much scrutiny being the bad guy out in the woods that I guarantee you we are probably one of the most environmental people that are out there right now, period. I'll argue that with anybody, you know, from the fire mitigation to, you know, being out there, you know, lightning strikes, you know, just everything about it out there. You know, we're out there.

We want the forest to be around as well. We're some of the companies that you work for, you know, dictate how your prescriptions going to be in. And we have no control over that.

But so you got to do what you got to do because you can't bite the hand that feeds you. But but still, we're under a lot of scrutiny. And, you know, when the roads are built, they try and put what they call the brush and stuff for a filter windrow right underneath the cut slope.

So that catches all the sediment. You know, we're not out there all the time, rip, ram and ruin by any means.

[Blake Manley]

And Jared, I would say that that's a nationwide problem is there's a misconception out there.

[Jared Schroeder]

Yes. And I'm trying to figure out where exactly that takes root at what age, because it's it's prevalent and trying to shine a light on that and show it as a misconception is definitely a goal and a struggle anytime that I'm dealing with students.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. For whatever reason, the loggers always catch the worst of it. I'm in favor of us thinning some more national forests around the whole United States, like like I've been through them and I'm I'm in favor of it.

And every time I talk to somebody that's not in favor of it, which is fine, please, let's continue to have the conversation. Right. But when I talk to somebody that's not in favor of it, they always point the finger at the logger.

Well, loggers suck at this and loggers. And it's like, why do we catch all the hell?

[Jody Hendrickx]

And I know why we catch hell, because when you when you log for the first little bit after we log and into the, you know, the first fall and the summer there, you know, it's brown. It looks bad. You know, I'm not going to lie.

Yes, it does. But give it a little time, you know, places to where, you know, you know, I'm not sure how you guys back there deal with your brush piles or that. So, you know, but we were able to burn them out here and burn our burner strips, you know, for the unders or the yeah, the understory.

But anyway, you know, once that stuff burns and gets rid of that, then, you know, the following year you start seeing the green or maybe the two it's two years, but you start seeing the green buds come up through there, the grass. The best way I can explain that to you, Blake, is tell them is OK, so you're familiar with the fires in the in the fire season. You're you know, you're June, July, August, September.

Do you want that smoke all the time or would you rather have a little bit of smoke in the spring or the fall and then be able to, you know, have your green, you know, your vegetation come back like that? That's one thing that I'm I don't know how we get across this, but, you know, like these fire lines, what they're building and the Federal Forest Service, they won't let you go build a fire line. If they do, they've got to have it out there a mile ahead of you.

Well, look how much timber that they burn in that mile. But get out there and build a fire line in front of that thing. I don't care whether it takes a mile fire line.

You can plant that back with grass, vegetation, trees, whatever it is, and it's going to come back in a year or two. Or would you rather look at that burnt scar on the ground forever and ever and ever? Amen.

You know, that's that's the types of things that that I think are being not publicized that well is, OK, if we log people, we can kind of keep from doing some of that stuff. But, you know, let us log. Let us get in there and take care of the fire lines and not sit down on your your meeting until 10 o'clock.

And then, OK, well, then we can go out and fight fire when the thing is the pressures are just right and it takes off again. Get out there when it's daylight, when it's when it's settled down and then you can put that thing out.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah, I think there's a again, you said a misconception out there of what's best for the forest. And, you know, I'm all for wilderness areas like we're not talking about going in and logging a wilderness area or something like that. But there's there's a lot of acreage out there that needs a little bit of treatment.

You just said it. You know, there's the misconception. People think you're just a smash and grab.

Right. And here you're talking about, like, heavy details of a forest ecosystem and how to make it healthier.

[Jody Hendrickx]

The best way to me to explain a forest to an individual who's never never had any experience around anything, you know, are they familiar with a garden? That's all a forest is, an oversized garden. If you go in there and you take the disease, the dying out, let the young ones grow and and leave a few mature ones to throw good cones out, pine cones, like pine cones.

[Blake Manley]

That has context.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Throw the cones out there, you know, to get some good, healthy, you know, good trees growing. You know, it's it's a cycle. And so a garden is the same way.

You know, it's just all that forest is an oversized garden period. And if you don't take care of it, you're going to have weeds or trees growing everywhere. I can't tell you around in St. Mary's here. I can take you anywhere here there is. And there's stinking trees growing up everywhere. Everywhere.

I'm out behind my shop there. I've got great big basalt rocks back in behind there, and they're growing up in between the rocks. It's just, you know, if you don't take care of them, they'll take you over.

[Blake Manley]

Jared, anything that we've missed, like this has been an awesome conversation, Jody. We super appreciate your time and appreciate your hard work. Many, like I said in the intro, you know, Jody is not only just Jody Hendrix of Hendrix Logging, but sits on the ALC board as vice president, sits on the school board at St. Mary's. But you've also served as the president of the School Board Association for the state of Idaho.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Idaho School Board Association, yes.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. And so Jody believes not only in good logging practices, but the next generation. And I just super appreciate it, Jared.

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah, I want to thank you for coming on. You brought up some really good points that I'm happy to hear and learn from, you know, people like you to have a better understanding of your role in maintaining the sustainability of such a renewable resource that has so much value and so much use.

[Jody Hendrickx]

One thing I want to touch on, something that doesn't get promoted in the state of Idaho very well, is that the Idaho Department of Lands has endowment lands that certain portions of those endowment lands fund education. You know, not all the IDL lands fund education, but a certain portion of them do. So any state sales that are put up, you know, on those endowment lands, that money comes back for public education in the state of Idaho.

Last year, fiscal year 25, 63 million dollars come from IDL, Idaho Department of Lands, into public education. Fiscal year 26, they've jumped it up to 68.2 million. And 27, 72.4 million dollars is supposed to come to public education. And I've been preaching about that for seven or eight or ten years now, trying to get the education to be able to collaborate with the loggers in the state of Idaho, it goes hand in hand. And so, you know, I'm finally getting there. Our superintendent of public instruction, Debbie Critchfield, is a phenomenal supporter of things like that.

You know, so yeah, I can't express that enough to our Idaho people.

[Blake Manley]

I would go one step further and say, hey, it's not just, you know, between 60 and 70 million. That's the actual cash money from the sales going into public education. It's also the taxes.

Yep. All the loggers, all the log truck drivers, all the mills that process that wood pay taxes that go into public education. If you were to take that 63 million, 65 million or whatever it was, out, completely out and just shut off and go zero, it's not just that 60 million that you'd be losing, but you'd be losing all of the loggers and their taxes that they pay in those communities, the lumber mills, all of that.

I just, I don't think that gets talked about around the nation enough. Like, Idaho is trying to fund their schools by doing something, not by saying, give me, give me, give me. It's a phenomenal thing.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Something else, too, you know, a person I don't think realizes is the dollars that we spend into the economy are new dollars. They're not recycled. They're new.

And that needs to be put out there, too. You know, look how much revenue we generate into this system that's new dollars.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah, that's a great point. Last thing, kind of in closing, if you could pick one thing about a new employee that you want them to have that you haven't necessarily talked about. So we talked about the soft skills.

Is there anything that a new employee, I'm not saying a kid coming out of high school, right? They could be 35 years old. But a new employee, one skill that you would value more than anything else, if they had it on their resume or if they said it in an interview or whatever, one skill that you would value over anything else.

[Jody Hendrickx]

If they were good loyalty.

[Blake Manley]

Don't look at my resume. On that note, no, no, no, shoot.

[Jody Hendrickx]

Well, well, there again, you know, if they're, if they're a good employee and you want to take the expanse of training that person and you know, there should be some loyalty there.

[Blake Manley]

100%. Jared, anything else?

[Jared Schroeder]

No, I think I think that hits everything that was on our list.

[Blake Manley]

This is Wood and Iron. We really respect and appreciate Jody for coming on. Thank you.

[Jared Schroeder]

Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Blake Manley]

That's going to wrap up this episode of Wood and Iron, the podcast for loggers by loggers. Big thanks for joining us out here in the woods in the air today. We appreciate you making us part of your day.

[Jared Schroeder]

And be sure to subscribe and share. And more importantly, send us questions and stories. We want to hear from the people who keep this industry running.

[Blake Manley]

So until next time, stay safe, stay sharp and keep the woods working.

[Jared Schroeder]

Wood and Iron is brought to you by the Wisconsin Forestry Center. The WFC is dedicated to promoting vibrant, sustainable forests and forest based economies. Learn more at uwsp.edu/WFC. Special thanks to those that brought Wood and Iron from the studio to the cab. Editor Joe Rogers, producer Susan Barrett and theme music by Paul Frater, Todd Hornick and Sammy Mead.