TROUBLESOME WATERS: Rains mire timber business

TRI-LAKES AREA — Logger Randy Lobb of Bauxite is out in the forests of Saline County cutting timber just as fast as he can. He and his equipment were idle through the heavy rains of late October and then waited for the logging roads to be dry enough to use.

“I am working right now,” Lobb said last week from his cell phone, “from daylight to dark. It has been so wet I couldn’t work - too wet to cut and the mills were shut down.”

The West Fraser Timber Company lumber mill in Leola shut down 12 days in October because rains kept loggers from cutting, so there was no wood delivered and the lumber yard was empty, said Steve Bolin, procurement manager for the mill.

“During the week of Oct. 19-23, we were out of logs,” Bolin said. “After the big rains late in the month we only got in enough to operate one day from Oct. 26-30.

The Canadian-owned mill needs 70 loads of logs a day to run effectively, or 350 loads for a 50-hour work week. During the rains in October, Bolin said, the plant received only 199 loads. When the mill in Grant County is closed, 118 employees are out of work and filing for unemployment benefits.

So far in November, the West Fraser mill, which cuts lumber into 2-inch widths in sizes from 2-by-4s to 2-by-12s, has operated every day, but has been limited to a single shift.

Weather is not the only reason the lumber mills are not operating at capacity. In April, West Fraser curtailed operations at the Leola mill and at two other sites in Florida and Alabama for two weeks “in response to the weak lumber market,” according to a company release.

The timber market remains weak across the country and is expected to remain down for months to come, said Ken Bragg of Resources Management Services in Sheridan.

“I don’t see things changing right now,” said Bragg, who heads Resource Management Services’ forest land management operations in Arkansas. “The demand for new houses has not picked up, and there is plenty of finished lumber built up. We could be well into 2010 without any improvement.”

In addition, Bragg said the housing slump has also kept timber prices limited and he did not expect the shortage of logs at the mills to bring prices up.

Resources Management Services, headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., has more than 1,000 acres of timberlands available for logging in Grant, Dallas, Hot Spring and Saline counties. Bragg said the reduced demand and problems in harvesting the wood has not reached a critical stage for RMS.

With the market still depressed, the rains didn’t have a real impact on us,” he said. “We are in it for the long term. Our resource continues to grow, they are not a static asset.

For those who harvest the logs and saw the lumber, things are already critical with little relief in site, said Caroll Guffey, an extension natural resources program associate for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

October is usually a boom time for loggers, and the mills get as many logs as they can to store for the winter.

“November usually starts the wet season with the ground saturated and the trees going dormant,” Guffey said. “It could be the end of spring for it to get back going.”

A timber expert at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, Guffey said it would take an extremely dry winter to allow any logging in those months. With 2009 already one of the wettest years on record, that seems unlikely.

Guffey agrees with Bragg that the trees have not been harmed by the heavy rains.

“The trees are adapted to wet weather, especially this time of year,” he said.

Guffey said he would guess that the timber industry is one of the top five employers in Clark, Garland, Grant and Saline counties.

“With the downturn in housing, the industry is already scaled back, so it is hard to say what the impact is specifically from the weather, but it is not going to be good.”

Back in the woods, Randy Lobb is focused on his work and survival.

“Working alone out here can be very dangerous, but I am skilled out here,” he said, “Now I need some luck and prayer, a lot of prayer.

“Me and some of my friends have been thinking abut doing something else, but this is all I have done for 35 years. It is all we know. What do you do?” - wbryan@arkansasonline.com

Tri-Lakes, Pages 59 on 11/19/2009

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