About Me
I was born and raised on a survival farm near Custer, Washington USA. If a job needed to be done, my father figured out a way to do it. His tenacity set the tone for my approach to life. The old saying where there is a will, there is a way, is my motto.
Cable logging is risky business. Tenacity needs to be informed by safe practices. Over the course of my 40- year career I have developed many systems and approaches to keep me and my crew out of harms way. I enjoy sharing what I know with other loggers and the companies that hire them.
A little personal history...
I was raised on a 70 acre "farm" in northern Whatcom county, Washington. Pulled my first log with an Allis Chalmers WD farm tractor, skidding firewood out of our wood lot. Mostly Birch and Alder. First used a chainsaw at the age of 14. Graduated Lynden High School in 1968. Graduated from Oregon State University College of Forestry, in Forest Engineering in 1972. Worked for MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. out of Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada, for 3-1/2 years as a Forest Engineer, doing logging layout, road layout, supervising road building crews, and doing long term logging planning up and down the west coast of Vancouver Island. "Promoted" myself to choker man on a 009 Madill high lead operation , working for Eric Netzer of Thunderbay Logging. Moved back to Oregon in 1975/6 and went to work for CR&K Logging out of Springfield, Oregon.
Chased on an 046 Madill, and ran an 071 Madill. When CR&K retired, I moved to Dallas Oregon and went to work for Fallon Logging, out of Lincoln City, Oregon. Worked up through the rigging and was hooking on a BU-98 Skagit in 1979 when I decided to go back to Oregon State for a Masters Degree. Instead I got a job, teaching Surveying in the School of Forestry. Four years later I left the University for Tasmania, Australia, with my Masters of Forestry Degree in hand. Five years of setting up cable logging operations and training crews on an 071 Madill tower, a 122 Madill swing yarder, two 171 Madill towers, a 739 Skagit tower and a 199 Skagit tower kept me busy. In 1989 at Christmas, my wife and two kids returned to Washington State. I went to work for S. Madill out of Kalama, Washington. Worked as a salesman and customer support person for 3 years, until Pat Madill died in a plane crash, and the company changed hands. Since 1993, I have been consulting to the cable logging industry doing crew training, running cable logging courses in New Zealand, Australia, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Colombia, South America. In the middle somewhere, I ran a cable logging operation in New Zealand for couple of years. I currently reside in south central Washington near a little town called Bickleton, where I continue to consult and do training for cable loggers around the world. I would be pleased to assist you in any way that I can with your cable logging operations.
Here I am relaxing at home with my dear wife, Kristi, in front of our chicken coop and next to our garden.
