All Week Long

FSmith, both 46, their fate was decided when Mike was just five years old. See, Mr. Smith was a pulpwood mechanic and young Mike would often follow him around to the logging woods to work. There, Mike was exposed to logging and quickly found his path in life. Fast-forward to high school, and Mike was still obsessed with logging. He started his own company in 1994. He worked small private tracts on the weekends with a chain saw, a tractor and his dad’s winch truck.

Andrea was also exposed to logging at a young age, as her father worked on a crew in the woods. But the logging bug didn’t bite her until she fell in love with the senior class valedictorian, Mike Smith. “When I met Mike I was so head over heels in love with him I found out real time, I fell in love with it, too.”

She went into the woods each weekend alongside Mike when they first got M.C. Smith Enterprise started. “We started out with just junk,” she says. “We took baby steps. It took years to build us up to what we are now.” The business has survived crashes, vandalism and mill closures and still hung on.

Logging became even more important in the Smiths’ lives when they lost Mike’s father to pancreatic cancer over five years ago. As he passed, Andrea says he told them, “Whatever you do, don’t stop what we started.” After that Mike really threw himself even more into making the logging venture a success.

That humble beginning and the tenacity required to make it through by the Smiths has not gone unnoticed by others in the industry. In 2021, Texas Forestry Assn. named could have been anything he chose to be and he chose logging,” she says with pride.

Making A Home

From 1994 to 2003, the Smiths lived a fairly “typical” logging lifestyle. They worked for various companies, cutting tracts, working on equipment and traveling home each night from wherever they were working. As with many, the Smiths bounced around a little as mills sold their landholdings in east Texas. At one point, they were working up to 200 miles from their house, traveling back and forth from Louisiana to their Texas home. Then the equipment started getting vandalized. And the Smiths noticed some thefts.

So, in 2003, while working in Louisiana, the Smiths made a choice.

of further vandalism.

Moreover, it allows Andrea to see more of her husband, who often puts in 14-plus hour days. “Mike works 24/7,” she laughs, noting with pride that their crew (just Mike with two employees) is able to move the same production as many larger operations do. That’s only possible, she adds, because of the hours he puts in.

Thanks to a combination of Mike’s never-quit work ethic, his “no stick left behind” mentality and their ability to be nimble, M.C. Smith has the edge on certain specialty tracts. Currently, the crew works exclusively for WestRock, and therefore spends 99% of their time in pine plantations on first thinnings. “We are often appointed to designated tracts because of the way we work,” Mike says. “We make sure everything is gone before we go on to our next set—even if that means paying a contract driver to haul a full load when the trailer only has a half load—everything gets to the mill. We merchandize it plumb up to the stem. All you see is a little bit of trash, no cut offs.”

The crew averages 1,000 tons per week of pulpwood, with an average of 40-50 miles haul distance, typically on 50-100 acre thins. While Mike will sort out everything possible, cutting for WestRock means getting all the pulpwood possible for them.

Manpower

The three-man operation is like a family, Mike says, while Andrea acknowledges that they all spend more time together as a unit than with anyone else. The crew has always been small, with very little turnover. That tightness is evidenced by the company’s untarnished 28year safety record. Marcel Riley was the employee who had been with M. C. Smith the longest, working here 17 years before retiring at age 76. His own son James stepped into his spot in 2016. While the hands are like family, they do travel back and forth from the job site to their own homes, not electing to stay out here full-time as the Smiths do.

While the crew has always been small, there were times when it was not just three men in the woods, plus Andrea hauling set out trucks and running parts. The Great Recession hit M. C. Smith hard, slashing production from 65-70 weekly loads to a quota of 30-something, with the crew only consistently getting 20something of those 30-something. “We almost starved to death,” Andrea says. In addition to what she does in the woods, she also handles all bookkeeping for the enterprise.

In 2010, the Smiths were working in Louisiana and according to Andrea had to liquidate old, paid for equipment in order to get the needed cash flow to stay in business.

“Everybody is jumping up and down about how bad it is now,” she waves. “If you lived through that, you’re prepped as to what we’re going through now. Logging is not easy by any means.”

Mike’s key takeaways from that time were efficiency-based. More machines and more employees is not always necessary to keep wood flowing to the mill for their operation. Instead, they run one skidder, one feller-buncher and two loaders that Mike rotates depending on what wood he has decked, mill needs, driver availability and other factors.

“When we are in good enough wood and close to the mill, we can move a good amount instead of having all that excess overhead,” he says.

M.C. Smith Enterprise uses three contract haulers to handle production. Though the company does own its own trucks, they don’t run full-time because of the cost liability associated with them. Andrea describes Mike as acting like Mickey Mouse, hopping between both log trucks to haul a load after work- ing the day in the woods. “He’ll hop in one of them, go to the mill and then come back and hop in the other to go to the mill, and loads them back up for the next day,” she explains. “Depending on how big the wood pile is, he might end up hauling all day long. Mike’s pet peeve is he wants lots of wood in the set. We’re always shorthanded and in case of a breakdown the wood is still there.”

Mike hears this explanation and laughs, agreeing with his bride. “I’m a little bit of a stickler for how my job operates,” he adds.

Moving Wood

Aside from a few things here and there over the last few years, Smith hasn’t acquired much new logging equipment recently, citing the rising cost of insurance as one of the variables he factors into equipment purchases. That cost is made even worse by the rising cost of equipment. When he is in the market, Texas Timberjack, Tejas Equipment and Suttle Equipment all take good care of his equipment sales and service needs.

The complete equipment list for M.C. Smith includes a 2017 Prentice 2484C loader, ’14 Prentice 2384C, 2020 Tigercat 620E skidder, ’13 Caterpillar 525C skidder, ’21 Tigercat 724G cutting machine, ’96 Cat D5H dozer, ’78 Galion dozer, ’98 Mack RD 688S log truck, ’20 Mack Pinnacle log truck, and a 1978 Chancey Equipment lowboy.

“We’ve got some of the best equipment made,” Mike says. “All the manufacturers make good equipment. It is 100 times easier than when I started running choker skidders pulling pulpwood. Everything is so much better.”

He explains that his view on equipment is simple enough—take care of it well and it will work if they weren’t living on the job, with Mike able to do all his own mechanic work and working in the “off” hours, the couple wouldn’t be able to make it. All profits are returned to the business.

As with many of his peers, Mike is cognizant that rates have really never increased in a number of decades, and lots of loggers in his area are going out of business. He says that things have changed so much from what it used to be, he’s not sure what the future holds. “I honestly don’t know what is going to happen,” he admits. “If something doesn’t change, there’s going to be a lot more going out of business. If we didn’t do things the way we do them, it would be time to mash ‘flush’ and shut it down.”

The couple remembers when you could overcome a bad day or a bad week with hard work and determination. Obviously that is not the way the game is played today. Andrea says now if you get behind the eight ball you will never catch up. “When the hands decide to retire, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she confesses. “We’ve been blessed with a good crew; we have always been blessed with a good crew since we started. Those guys are getting harder and harder to find, daily. And it takes a team to be successful at what we do.”

Her husband shares similar sentiments: “You can’t bring someone out, and because everything moves at such a fast pace now, you really don’t have time to be teaching. And it is sad. I don’t know what the answer and solution is going to be in another five years about help and trucks.”

One thing is certain: If Mike and Andrea Smith can find a way, they are sure to keep on logging. SLT