S.1 Ep.7: Making Every Tree Count

What does it take to grow a logging business from a chainsaw and skidder into a modern cut-to-length operation? In this episode of Wood & Iron, Jim Wilson of Wilson Forestry joins us live from the cab to share his journey from forestry graduate to business owner. He discusses the importance of management, merchandising, and making the most of every tree in today's challenging markets.

Jim also shares lessons learned from growing his company, investing in equipment, training the next generation of operators, and why combining forestry knowledge with hands-on logging experience is key to the future of sustainable forest management.

Transcript

S01E07 Wood & Iron

[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 mill yard 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.

[Jared Schroeder]

Today, we're lucky to have Jim Wilson of Wilson Forestry. What's really exciting is he's actually in the cab harvesting as we speak.

[Jim Wilson]

Yep, I'm in a cab up by Hazelhurst, Wisconsin. We're doing an aspen coppice cut, so it's going fun. We got a little bit of deep terrain that we're tackling, but keep us busy through spring.

[Blake Manley]

So Jim, for our listeners, we have listeners all across the whole nation, why don't you give a little rundown of what you're actually doing, you know, what machine you're running, maybe the entire operation, you know, it's a ground-based operation, what does it look like?

[Jim Wilson]

Yeah, so we're a cut-to-length operation, but we are, we run a hot saw, I currently, I have a TigerCat hot saw that I'm running right now, laying the trees down in front of my crew. I have two Ponsse Scorpions on this job that are following behind, they're on a different part of this cut, and then we have two forwarders following them, picking up the wood and getting it to the landing, so that's what we're currently doing on this project.

[Blake Manley]

So does that mean that your one hot saw is cutting for two sides?

[Jim Wilson]

Two harvesters, sometimes at different times this winter, my hot saw will keep ahead of three, so we add an extra harvester on in winter, I have a guy that comes on and works this winter and he goes back to construction in the summer.

[Blake Manley]

That's interesting. For our listeners, Jim, they can't see you, right? 

[Jim Wilson]

Right.

[Blake Manley]

Why don't you give us a little bit of your history, you're probably, I'm just going to say it, you're probably the youngest of any of our people that we've had on so far, and if not, you're close to it, I'm going to say that, Jared, he's younger than we are. 

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah, probably. Yeah.

[Jim Wilson]

Yeah, sure. So, I'm only 38, yep, I graduated UWSP in 2010, from there I did some forestry work between Minnesota, I got hired on as a forester for another logging company in Wisconsin in my early days, then I kind of branched out from there and started doing private consulting, and from there I decided to buy my own machinery and start doing some of the projects myself, and that, I started with a chainsaw and a small single bunk skidder, and grew from there.

And now, like I said, I have three Scorpions, the hot saw, and we got multiple forwarders following us, so.

[Jared Schroeder]

Wow.

[Blake Manley]

That's success right there, ladies and gentlemen, that's straight up, but a lot of work, a lot of work. I was just going to say, why don't you talk about that a little bit, like, okay, you just laid out your successful, you know, plan that you have executed, what's it taking to survive right now?

[Jim Wilson]

It's a lot of management, we definitely, the industry has taken a pretty good hit in the last handful of years, so just knowing all your different markets, we have a lot of different sorts, we do lean on some of our primary mills that we developed as we were growing, when the markets were quite a bit stronger, but we have been cut back, but I give it to my crew, they do a great job on getting the products sorted right, get cut to length right, and there's times on jobs we'll have 26 to 30 different sorts on one job, because you got to go where you can sell it and make money, so if you're limited on certain products, it's just not 100% about sheer production, you got to know what you're cutting, what you're sorting, to utilize the most out of the trees that we are cutting.

[Blake Manley]

Jim, why don't you talk about that a little bit? So I know what the sorts are over here in the West, I live in Idaho, and when I get on a landing, and that landing, there's 13 or 20 different sorts, you know, same thing as you're experiencing, you know, I know what the sorts are, why don't you, you don't need to go through 28, please don't go through 28 sorts. But maybe your couple highest sorts, your middle end sorts, and maybe a couple of your bottom sorts.

[Jim Wilson]

Right. So I mean, there's multiple different tree species, so some of that 20 some sort has to do with every tree species has to be sorted, and they kind of fall into the same categories type stuff. But so we'll start on our hardwood log, we'll start our high end veneer.

And then we start our, like number one, number two, saw logs, and then we start our lower grade saw log in that order. And then those are just our saw logs, which is roughly our 12 inch and bigger on the small end wood. And then then we have our bolt sort, which is a smaller saw type material, we can take that down to about seven and a half inches in diameter as long as it's straight.

So that's kind of our medium grade product. And then we have our different sort of pulp, and that can range in how many sorts we do depending on which mills we're feeding. Some of it we can mix more, more different species together than other mills.

So that that's included in those different sorts.

[Jared Schroeder]

Are you merchandising those from the cab?

[Jim Wilson]

Yeah, not in the hot saw, the hot saw just all gets laid down. Mostly what I'm doing in the hot saw is trying to mitigate the unmerchantable, get that underneath where the machines are operating. But the harvester guys that are going through and cutting it to length, they're merchandising that and sorting it that for the forwarder to follow.

And then the forwarder from there is also looking I always kind of give my guys a 20% rule. If everyone screws up 20% there's not much left at the end to be missed kind of angle because you can't get everything I haven't met a perfect person yet. You know, I try to say I am and my guys will laugh that I always claim that I am but I get it wrong enough to but if they're doing due diligence, you know, they're getting it pretty much 100% sorted before it hits the truck.

[Jared Schroeder]

Wow. 

[Jim Wilson]

And then the trucks can just just move real fast. It's real efficient that way.

[Blake Manley]

How many tons a day is your operation doing?

[Jim Wilson]

It depends on the hauling but we're trying to keep five trucks roughly three to five trucks busy and they make between three and four turns a day and we're putting about 30 ton of wood per truck on a per truck load. 

[Blake Manley]

Yeah, awesome. Good work. Well, awesome job. Great work.

I know what the West Coast says. So I'm going to throw myself under the bus a little bit of those guys up there in the Great Lakes and Wisconsin and Minnesota. They don't they don't do that.

I mean, they do some forestry. We see it, you know, but they don't do that much. And I think Jim, you just dispelled all of those.

[Jim Wilson]

Well, when we were when we were at our peak, when for some of the mill markets got tight, the most wood we ever hauled off a job in a single day was 70 loads of wood when we were at our peak. And we were sustaining close to 30 to 40 loads on average a day. When we were at our peak.

[Jared Schroeder]

You see what you can do, Blake? When there's no topography, things come down a lot quicker.

[Jim Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's when we didn't have to store it as much.

We were we're a primary aspen supplier. So that we were just on a coppice aspen clearcut, good timber, 33 to 44 to the acre timber, all flat ground. And yeah, we could talk.

We also had four harvesters following us at that time behind this one hot saw.

[Blake Manley]

You know, there's there's places like that that are left in the West, guys, I promise you, right? But that's one of the challenges that we have, Jim, is is over here.

The easy ground was cut and it hasn't all grown back yet. There's there's flat ground out there. You know, I've I've worked on it, but it's a lot harder when it's, you know, when you're hanging out 4000 feet from a yard or right and you're trying to do 15 loads a day, a lot harder.

[Jim Wilson]

Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean, even we get some.

Well, we definitely call it deep country and Wisconsin here and up in the north. There's very few areas that get pretty steep. They're short stints.

But I just had a project that got done down in Vernon County, down in the driftless of Wisconsin. And that was a little bit different challenge trying to climb the hills and cut that timber. And we definitely didn't make much progress down there in time.

So the hills definitely slow you down. 

[Jared Schroeder]

How much of the state do you cover? 

[Jim Wilson]

That was more of a specialty project for a family.

But generally we cover kind of the north central third of the state.

[Blake Manley]

And whose land are you working on right now, Jim?

[Jim Wilson]

Right now, it's a large private landowner. We've been on this into this specific property. This is our third entry.

And we have about 10 more to do on this property during spring break up on this property for that landowner. And pretty much every year he keeps us busy during our road limit period on good ground. So he's a very large landowner, private.

[Blake Manley]

So like, I'm full of questions, just because I'm fascinated and I love logging and all that. So you're working on large private. How often do you work on agency wood, whether it's federal, state, whatever that looks like?

[Jim Wilson]

I would say a lot of it is our county wood. I spend a lot of time on some state projects, mostly, mostly county. So I'd say 80% of my time is on county wood as of now.

And then 20%, really almost 20% is the private. The state, we have some projects we do for them, but it's a very small average percentage.

[Blake Manley]

And that county wood, both of you, this is for you guys, for our listeners, because I don't know either. I know what some counties around here do, but county makes the money on that. What does that service?

[Jim Wilson]

I don't exactly. I know a bunch goes back to schools. I don't know how they really 100%, how every county files the money into their general fund.

That I don't 100% know how they handle it.

[Jared Schroeder]

Is much of that BCPL land that you're doing?

[Jim Wilson]

No, it's literally just county owned land. I know there's a percentage that does go to the rural schools, but I don't know how the rest gets funded for road. And there's a percentage that goes to the forestry department and the rest I know goes into more of the county's general fund for their budget.

So for road maintenance and snow plowing and everything else, but I know a certain amount is supposed to be allotted as far as I am understanding to the schools. And then the rest goes to the general fund.

[Blake Manley]

In the state of Idaho, we don't have the county land quite the same. It's mostly state land. Idaho Department of Lands runs it.

And last year we cut a check to the state pot of money for schools for almost $65 million. 

[Jim Wilson]

Awesome. 

So great work.

[Blake Manley]

I know that happens to a certain extent in other states, but I also know that some states, we won't mention the ones to my west because they don't deserve mentioned. That's not true, but they might be cutting a lot of those programs. And now the schools are in a budget crisis.

My question is, you guys living in Wisconsin, is are the schools under that same budget crisis right now? And is it supplemented from what you're doing?

[Jim Wilson]

I think that definitely the timber does supplement some, but I think the schools in general are always under a budget crisis. Always seems at different board meetings for the school or whatnot that there's definitely a funding issue. Again, I think when there's a bigger chunk of change that goes into the slush general fund of government, it can get festy where it goes.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah, Jared's not allowed to answer that because he works for a school district in your state. No, no. We appreciate that feedback a little bit because I know one of the things that we're trying to communicate within the school systems here is how valuable timber harvest is, the dollars that directly comes off of that.

And what you and I were just talking about, Jim, was the direct dollars. You sell timber, mill pays for that timber to the county, county gives it to the schools. For example, what about you pay taxes?

Your truckers pay taxes, the mills pay taxes, all goes to the school as well. 

[Blake Manley]

Right. 

[Jared Schroeder]

But not all of it.

[Jim Wilson]

Yeah.

[Blake Manley]

Not all of it.

[Jim Wilson]

Not all of it. Percentages of it. I mean, yeah, when you're paying taxes, when you got land-based taxes, yeah, there's quite a bit that continuously goes, not just directly from the harvest, but yeah, the people you employ and everything else.

[Jared Schroeder]

So the school forest system that we have in Wisconsin, that was set up for those forest areas to provide funding for schools when they got harvested. And those have over time sort of fallen out of fashion for how to manage those for profit for schools. Mostly, I think the cost of schools have gone up so high that a 40-acre plot is not going to provide a lot of funding for a school district.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. Unfortunate. You know, it's the price of doing business in today's world.

Jim, let's get back to logging. It's more enjoyable, right, than that. Almost political talk, but we don't want to talk politics.

[Jim Wilson]

We don't want to get too deep into that. 

[Blake Manley]

Right. Right.

So you're relatively young in the industry. If you were giving some advice to somebody that's trying to, you know, get into the industry, I have people ask me that all the time. Hey, how do I get in?

How do I get in? How do I afford to get in? Kind of stair-step us.

You don't have to give the dollars, but kind of stair-step us. You said you started with basically a chainsaw and a skidder, and you've worked up to owning the equipment and the operation you do now. Stair-step us how that took place.

How long between each step?

[Jim Wilson]

I guess a lot of the big thing is, you know, I started with the forestry background based. I mean, that was probably one of the biggest steps for me to break into this industry. It wasn't a family industry.

It wasn't, you know, my father didn't do this. I know down the chain, I had a great, great grandfather that logged, but, you know, that's the ways back there. So I definitely broke into it.

I'm going to say my first thing was the schooling I got from Point. And then the next thing, you know, it's definitely, it was a lot of hard work and it was, you know, stemmed from the passion of doing better for the timber. I always kind of had that feeling you can manage someone from the side, but it never always works the way you want it or look the way you want it.

So how can you tell someone how it's going to look if you don't do it yourself? So again, that's how I started. Started getting a lot of private clients with the chainsaw and the small skidder.

It didn't take me long to start getting people that wanted to work with me and hand cut. And then as I grew with one employee, I bought a machine, a bigger machine. Some of the steps that took to get into my first harvester was I had an accident, had a tree land on me.

So that steered me to my first harvester, which I bought a 1990s low Como timberjack harvester for like $40,000. And that was definitely another education in maintenance and repair work and finding people to build parts that didn't exist or you couldn't find anymore, which was a huge learning curve. But it also got me to be able to grow once I was able to start affording the newer, newer machines.

And then another big kind of kick out is we I switched from that timberjack. I had two timberjack machines at that time and we had some issues with John Deere. And that's when we got a relationship with Ponsse and the relationship with Ponsse equipment and the guys at Ponsse is what really helped me grow my business because of the service support there.

And a lot of times they would teach me how to fix things over the phone so that I didn't have to call a service tech. They were willing to stay on the phone with you and teach you how to do it and diagnose stuff and repair stuff. So, I mean, that was a huge, huge challenge that I was able to learn and overcome to take care of some repairs when I really couldn't afford the higher cost of calling a mechanic in on the job.

[Jared Schroeder]

I feel like we should have a today's episode brought to you by Ponsse North America.

[Jim Wilson]

Right, right. And then, you know, as we grew and developed, we bought other equipment that we didn't didn't necessarily like. But now we've landed pretty much Ponsse equipment and the Tigercat equipment that is really stuck.

[Jared Schroeder]

Man, you must have rotated through that equipment quick because you've got, what, 15 years in?

[Jim Wilson]

10 years in of actually cutting, 10 years of owning the logging business, of actually doing logging. So, yes, I.

[Jared Schroeder]

That's like an exponential.

[Jim Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. So I, like I said, I made some good contact.

I took some very big gambles. Got to thank my wife for putting up with me for a few years of not making any money. It all went to the business.

And a lot of time I spent grinding and building. And I can also say I had some really good employees right off the gate. So, you know, that was also a big kick.

[Jared Schroeder]

So what does that look like for you in terms of employees? Have you had a consistent crew or do you find that they kind of rotate through regularly?

[Jim Wilson]

We had a very consistent crew for actually up for seven years. We had a very strong, consistent crew. And with the downturn in the market, things kind of started to change.

Whether hours got cut, less work, so payroll wasn't necessarily the same for them. So then we started losing some guys due to that aspect of change. And now we have struggled to actually find qualified candidates to fill seats when needed.

So it's actually definitely in this industry. And I'm not the only one. The employees coming in is definitely a big challenge.

But it's a huge hurdle to train new people into the equipment. It's not cheap equipment. And it expects pretty high production rates to pay for themselves.

And so it's hard to start new guys into this equipment and have them keep up and learn everything they need to know, from the sorts to the tree species to what we're doing out here civil culturally, what they can and can't do for ground disturbance and everything else. So it's a lot to train.

[Blake Manley]

It's challenging. Hey, it's not just you either. Like, hey, you can come all the way to the Pacific Ocean with me and I'll have the same complaint.

[Jim Wilson]

Right. 

[Blake Manley]

It's really challenging for you operators. And we know it.

My dad's an operator. My dad has his own little logging company. Very challenging.

Very challenging to put somebody in a half-million-dollar piece of machinery that doesn't know what they're doing.

[Jim Wilson]

Right. There's not enough room in these cabs. You're looking in this cab.

There's enough room behind my seat here. I can crouch in there if I'm training someone for an hour or two. But I got young knees, but I don't got that young of knees all day, you know.

And if you look in some of the other cabs, like the Scorpions and stuff, there is no room. So, you know, there's some simulators and stuff out there. You can get them in, but a lot of it's trial by fire.

And you just got to watch and cringe and correct over the phone. You know, a lot of times I train my guys a lot just over the phone and talk because I'm sitting next to them in another machine. Not yet, don't do that or don't do this or here.

I'll show you how we do it with another machine sitting right next to them, you know. And it's either they get it or they don't. But a lot of loggers, and it's across the country, I'm sure, that we don't have a lot of time for them.

It's either you get it, get it fast, everyone screws up, but you get told once, you get told twice. At the end of the day, you start becoming a very high expense if you're not catching on.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. You know, I have a problem with that. And not with you, with that scenario, right?

When I started in the woods, so my first year in the woods was 99. I was a knot bumper for my dad. You know, in 99, we went slow and sure wins the race.

I didn't have to jump in a piece of machinery. I had a chainsaw cutting off limbs, bucking logs. You know, it was pretty simple when my dad pointed at it, he gave me the 33 with his hands.

I knew, okay, he wants me to buck a 33 out of that, you know, large pine or whatever it was. 

[Jim Wilson]

Yep.

[Blake Manley]

 You don't have the time to start somebody slow where they're still producing for you, but it's at this slow, like, where they're starting in machines, you're starting with such a high overhead, that's complicated.

[Jim Wilson]

It definitely is complicated. You know, and like I said, there's a lot of things to learn. And again, one of the things that I credit, I'm working with UWSP and trying to get a training program down is, you know, I started as, I went to UWSP as a forester, and that's where I'm kind of looking and seeing that there's a better base of people to possibly start because you're starting with a base of silviculture.

You're starting with trees that, you know, they can identify tree species. They understand product as a general. If you ask them what a log is, or a bolt is, or pulp is, they got a basic knowledge.

You ask them what an aspen tree or a spruce tree is, they have that knowledge. So you take a lot out. And I've tried to train, and I have trained guys that have zero knowledge of it, but it's a huge curve for them to grasp everything at one time, much less just focus on the machine.

So what we're trying to work with with Point is to try to get some of these graduates that are in the forest as foresters to look at the equipment as, you know, you're actually here. You're passionate about it. This is the management because you're doing it.

[Jared Schroeder]

So you have a unique experience because you participated in the Forestry Center's Forest Operations program that we ran. You got to see what, how quickly students were able to catch on if they use the simulator. Do you see value in having that simulator type exercise before getting in the actual machine?

[Jim Wilson]

Well, I definitely think simulators help. If you can get away from guys stopping and having to look at their hands before they actually get in the machine, it helps. So they know the buttons because once you get into a machine, you know, you're bouncing, you're tipping over stumps, you're moving.

So it's a whole different feel again. But if they don't have to be focusing on their fingers, you know, to figure out where they got to click stuff to get wood processed, it definitely helps speed it up. Like I said, it's the same thing as having the base knowledge of what different trees you are cutting for species wise, the terminology for the different sorts, having those bases where you already know what it is without trying to learn on site while you're trying to get comfortable in the machine is a big, is a big difference.

[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.

I live about half an hour north of the University of Idaho. So one of the premier, I would say, forestry programs in the West, I'd put it with, you know, top two or three. They're placing 100 percent, 90 plus percent, better said, of their students into forester jobs.

So there's not a lot left over. Are you finding, and Jared, this isn't a knock at all. It's just, are you finding that there's a little bit of a couple of students here and there that aren't being placed or aren't finding a job as a forester to where you're able to kind of look at that and grab who you need out of that program?

[Jim Wilson]

I don't know. On the forestry side, I haven't seen too many that aren't getting placed. I think Point has a pretty good placement rating already for the forestry side.

But I know when I kind of went there as a student, if there were better options or, you know, for a logging training, I think a lot of students would have gone that route. Again, to get new people into logging and be operators, it's not an easy job by any means, but you have to have a passion. And I think, you know, that everyone that goes through Point for a forester already has that passion to want to be a forester.

And again, real forestry happens in this machine versus necessarily on a management plan or on a management side. You know, we have foresters come out to these jobs once a week, maybe on different projects. While they're not directly seeing what happened, they might give you a slap on the wrist if something bad happens, but they have no context to how it happened or why it happened.

And some of it is because of how they set it up. Because they don't have the machine experience, not to knock on necessarily foresters, because they're my colleagues as well. But before I started the machine, it looked a lot different than when I started doing the cutting because of operational experience.

And on this cut alone, where I started in this cut, there was a cut road through a hill, a four-foot embankment, and that's where the boundary for this cut line was. This property landowner owns another 40 to the south. He could have moved it another 30 feet to where it was flat to get up into the start of the cut, but the cut ended right on a four-foot embankment that you had to climb up and out of.

And it's like, how do you start here? How do you get here? Where you could have gone to the flat 30 more feet.

So, you know, it's just things that if it doesn't impact you, they never learn because they never have that. It's not a challenge to them. That's just where they flag.

You know, it's just because of the experience level that they never get by not being in a machine.

[Jared Schroeder]

But yeah, so there's, I definitely can see some value in cross pollinating those skills, right? So you have loggers that have a little bit of forestry understanding and foresters who have some logging understanding.

[Jim Wilson]

 Right.

[Jared Schroeder]

And Susan and I were just in a freshman level forestry course here at UWSP. And we had mentioned that this winter we're going to be offering this forest operations course so they can actually get in a machine and see what it's like. And you should have seen the number of eyes light up in that classroom and like immediate questions.

When is that going to be? When can we take that? What's a special fee going to be?

So the students here are excited to learn that side of the forest industry.

[Jim Wilson]

And that is awesome. And like we've talked before, you know, even if you're not, maybe you're not a machine person, but you get that feel for what it is to drive a 60,000 pound machine through the woods and it doesn't make 90 degree corners or it doesn't drop, you know, they can't climb those embankments or, you know, you got a summer job. And, you know, I like to see foresters that paint 30, 40, 50 yards out into a swamp on a summer cut.

You know, you got to think about what the machines are capable and timeframes that the job could be done on. So operability is a big disconnect that we do see currently. And I think a class like that, you know, not only makes the forest forester that's managing crews better, but I think a lot of those kids that are going to school as foresters are going to look at the equipment and go, hey, that's a job for me.

And you're going to get a more educated greenhorn to start in a machine. And they have that drive and knowledge of forestry that's going to push them to do very well in a piece of equipment.

[Blake Manley]

Boy, that just sums up like everything. So on that note, hey, it's great knowing you, Jim. No, it really does.

Like, so Jared and I are very passionate about the next generation bloggers. It's one of the reasons that we started, you know, doing this podcast was we see a whole lot more like, you know, other people we've interviewed in this podcast that are between 55 and 70. 

[Jim Wilson]

Right.

[Blake Manley]

And a lot less that are your age. And so it's always been the conundrum of how do we get more? How do we do more?

And I think you're spot on with young people that are in colleges right now, universities right now that are learning forestry, but maybe don't want to be a forester. You know, they love that machinery type. The other stuff is the exposure at the high school level.

The more we can expose, you know, those those fence sitter. I like to call them fence sitter kids where they could go any different direction if we can expose them to how cool this is. Maybe they don't want to be a forester.

Maybe they've only seen that. But when they see what you do, maybe that triggers them to want to go to Stevens Point to college to learn to be more of an operations type person. And then we're just filling that pipeline.

You know, we just got to keep filling that pipeline. And I think what you're doing is filling the pipeline.

[Jim Wilson]

Yeah, I definitely think that's, you know, 100 percent. You know, I graduated college and like I said, I got into the consulting forestry, you know, just pushing the pen and writing plans and doing the more of the sitting at the office type kind of job. Let's say, you know, that wasn't for me.

Before I went to UWSP, I had some heavy equipment background and, you know, I like the machines. I like I like cutting. I like the timber, you know, and that's what more drove me to get get into the actual logging side of it.

So and I think there's a lot of people out there that are that are like that. We just got to find them.

[Blake Manley]

I used to joke that I loved playing God with a saw. Maybe it was inappropriate or I'll be struck down by lightning at some point for that. But there was a certain amount of it, though, like when we were cutting big timber out of a stand and we were taking out the peaches and leaving the stuff to grow, every single thing you were doing was impacting the directly impacting.

And that motivated me. Like it wasn't just cutting logs and we're putting up four loads today or eight loads or whatever it was. Right.

It was taking this tree out, leaving that tree and making it connect all those dots really motivated me.

[Jim Wilson]

Right. Yeah, me too. I love to see how the timber grows.

And, you know, as I cut different trees and there's different aspects and you learn kind of that basic sometimes the different things about managing trees. But as you look in a different woods and I'll just take like we have hardwood, especially maple that likes to grow in clumps after it was cut once, then it grows in a clump. Our oak does that to some extent.

Well, there's kind of been a philosophy to either take all or leave all. Well, as you get into the woods, you start to find out that there's different aspects to the clump, whether it's on higher ground, there might not be rot spreading through. So you can thin the clump or, you know, there's different things that you can start managing on a micro basis.

And that's definitely what I get a kick out of is, you know, managing the timber as best I can, you know, for each small minute aspect of ground and everything's different. Yeah, one thing that I hate the most is to walk into a sale that's getting bedded out and it's completely, in my opinion, mismanaged. And most of the time I just walk away because it's not, you know, not going to do sometimes what people think it's going to do because I've cut that ground, I've seen that happen.

And, you know, definitely the management, seeing how the wood redevelops, it grows back, is awesome.

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah, because you're leaving your fingerprint on the future of that land. How often have you gone back to like some of those first cuts you've done to see, you know, how it's regenerating and how you help guide that process?

[Jim Wilson]

Quite a few times. I've actually already gone back and done a second harvest on some of the stuff that I started with. 

[Jared Schroeder]

Oh, that's cool.

[Jim Wilson]

So we've, you know, even in my short career here, I've already gone back. I have hardwood stands that we're managing on a seven-year harvest rotation on real high quality hardwood sites. I have other lower quality hardwood sites that we've done clear cuts on and we won't be back for outside of my career.

But it all depends on what, you know, the ground wants to grow and how it wants to grow. And, you know, sometimes I like to go into old cuts on properties with landowners and, you know, you wanted this or, you know, a lot of times what I do see is don't cut any oak and you go into a stand that was cut that was primary aspen or whatever, and you can just see the pocket of less growth and the oaks that they left are either dead or they didn't do anything and they're half unsalted and dying.

And the landowner is like, well, that looks like crap. I thought it would release. And it's like, yeah, but it doesn't, you know, and you start actually showing them why different things and that you're trying to pinpoint to actually fit what they want instead of just a blanket wording for management.

You're doing it on a on a more direct basis on it's not all or none that you got to actually pick and choose the right one if you want it to work, you know.

[Blake Manley]

And it's always based on aesthetic, like so many people look at it and it's what it looks like. You know, I used to get that when I was because I had kind of a similar role than you with my family company before I took the jump into something else. And it's what it looks like.

People are like, man, I want to look a certain way. And, yeah, we want to help you make it look a certain way. But if you leave your example of oak, you know, in X stand in 10 years, it's going to look like dog crap.

You just don't know it now. So we can't leave that. We have to leave the pine.

We have to leave the aspen, whatever it is. The aesthetics is not always the answer.

[Jim Wilson]

Right. And you got to you got to look long term picture for each individual. You know, we do on this on this aspen cut that I'm on right now with this landowner.

Again, he's a very large landowner. He buys and sells land. We do leave a heavier amount of what is there for oak and some pine in the areas because his secondary income, if he doesn't hold the property, is to resell the property.

And on his aspect, on some of that, it is higher saleable with some stranding timber, even though he's losing some growth yield on his aspen, which is important to him. But the fact that he could sell it for a higher dollar if it's not 100 percent clearcut, you know, is also a different aspect that he looked at. But you got to look at every landowner differently and then devise the best way to manage the timber for their outcome outcomes as well.

[Blake Manley]

Do you see a lot of that right now where people are managing it to sell it or is it you know, here we see a little bit of that, but for the most part, that's not the case. Do you see that happening a lot more?

[Jim Wilson]

No, it's more of a specific to this this individual landowner that I work with. He owns, I believe, around 16,000 acres in Wisconsin himself. And then he owns another roughly 15 or 16,000 with a business partner.

So it's a business, every piece of land he owns is a business transaction and he has really nice timber. But everything in the back of his mind is, you know, the financial gain, what is he going to gain more in his lifetime? And he's definitely an older gentleman that owns this land, but his kids will take over the different properties they want to keep and manage.

And there's other properties they cut to sell. So it's more specifically on a large landowner basis that I see that. The private landowners, I'm not seeing that.

You know, they want to do what's best for their grandkids in the future, you know, for the timber. And that's where, you know, you got to really steer what looks the best for now versus what's going to do the best for their longevity of ownership for multiple generations.

[Blake Manley]

I get really encouraged, Jared, when we get to talk to some of the loggers out there because, and I'm going to say it as a loving anecdotal, but the dumb logger, I'm just a dumb logger. There couldn't be something further from the truth. And the same saying of loggers don't give a crap, right?

They just slash and grab, right?

Holy cow, you're the opposite of all that. 

[Jim Wilson]

Right. I have that conversation with multiple other loggers, you know, and, you know, that's, you know, yeah, the dumb logger, he doesn't know anything.

And it's like, well, you start nitpicking and it can go everybody in every part of the industry. You know, again, you see mismanagement, even from, you know, the forestry staff. Why?

They're doing it right, but they're not doing it right. Why? Because, you know, us in the woods, we see every little thing, you know, we know what actually works, what doesn't work more than just the base, you know, everything's a base.

And then it goes from there. Nothing grows the same. Nothing's equal.

It doesn't matter what ground you're on, you know, aspen on high stand ground grows different than aspen in wet, wet swamp ground. It does, you know, and it's got to be managed a little bit different, even though it's the same, you know, it's tweak. But when you're out there living it every day, and again, if you have the passion for the timber, which a lot of the guys that are logging, you know, do, you know, we're trying to do what's best because I want this to be a generational company.

I got two young boys and a young daughter and all of them like the equipment, especially both my boys. You know, I want this industry to be around for them and this company to be around for them. But it takes, you know, the passion of the operators to keep that going, because a guy that shows up at a job once a week doesn't really dictate whether the job is screwed up beyond repair or not.

The guys have to be passionate in the wood, you know, to do it.

[Jared Schroeder]

So kind of leaving off that. So what's your sales pitch then? What would be your sales pitch for this career path or, you know, the younger generation?

[Jim Wilson]

You know, the sales pitch, I think, if you're passionate about the timber, about trees, about timber management, being the guy that does it, the cutter, is the best way to ensure that the management that you want done in timber is done the way you want it to be done.

[Blake Manley]

That's a slam dunk.

[Jim Wilson]

You got it. Sometimes you got to do it yourself. That stems from passion.

And then you can make other people passionate with you to develop a good team.

[Blake Manley]

Well, Jim, I super, super appreciate you, not only because of the passion and all that, but you're doing your job as we as we distract you. And you haven't killed anybody. And I haven't seen any, you know, logs dropped on the cab, you know.

[Jim Wilson]

Right. I haven't hit the cab. I didn't even hit the cab today. So that's a good day.

[Blake Manley]

Right. Right. Anybody that's ran Buncher or been around a Buncher enough, holy cow.

Like you never know what's going to happen, but I super appreciate it. I don't have any more questions for you. Love what you're doing.

Appreciate you to death. Jared.

[Jared Schroeder]

Yeah. No, this is a fantastic conversation and a really, a really cool perspective.

[Jim Wilson]

Oh, thank you. And thanks for having me on. It's just really cool.

[Blake Manley]

Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Hey, we appreciate you.

This is Wood and Iron signing off. So 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 slash 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.