Southern Stumpin’

By David Abbott • Managing Editor • Ph. 334-834-1170 • Fax: 334-834-4525 • E-mail: david@hattonbrown.com

Meet Pat Weiler

The first time I saw Pat Weiler was at the Mid- South Show in Starkville, Miss. in September 2018. The President and CEO of Weiler, Inc., along with his Vice President, Bill Hood, were there to introduce their company to the logging industry, their future customers. They’d announced a month earlier that Weiler would be purchasing Caterpillar’s purpose-built forestry division, though the transaction would not be finalized for almost another year. I’ve hoped to get an interview with Pat Weiler ever since, but it never worked out.

Then one afternoon in January, I get a call from Sean Doyle, forestry sales manager at Puckett Machinery in McComb, Miss. I’ve known Sean since I first started at Hatton-Brown 17 years ago; I met him on one of my first trips. He and his dad Pat had their own dealership here, DM Equipment, before they sold to Puckett in 2010. Even earlier, when I was a teenager in the ’90s, I had actually been to DM Equipment with my own dad when he considered buying a Prentice loader from Mr. Doyle for Abbott Logging Co.

Sean has set me up with stories on several occasions over the years. On this day in January, he tells me he’ll be taking Mr. Weiler to see some customers for a few days. This is something, I understand, that Weiler and Hood both do frequently: meet personally with customers, find out what they want and how they can make a product better able to meet their needs. Sean tells me he thinks they’ll be able to make time to have a meal with me, if I’m able to fit it in my schedule. Without hesitation, I drive right on down to McComb.

We meet at the Mallard, a restaurant just outside McComb, near Dixie Springs Lake. As I walk in, I hear Tom Petty in the background, singing about that last dance with Mary Jane. Introductions are made, hands shaken. I recognize quickly that Mr. Weiler, 65, seems to have many of the character qualities I admire: down to earth, modest, soft spoken; keenly observant and intelligent in his analysis of what he observes; focused on getting the job done as best as possible; eager to share credit with others.

Our waitress approaches. She and Sean seem to be first-name familiar; he’s probably a regular, I surmise. After shrimp appetizers, Sean orders a burger. Mr. Weiler had ordered the filet, but changes his mind, opting for the burger as well. He’s decided to trust the judgment of a local guy familiar with the place, someone who knows what’s what from first-hand experience. That seems to be a pattern for Pat Weiler: listening to and learning from others.

Pat Weiler

Forestry

Background

Pat Weiler, I learn, grew up on a farm in northwest Iowa, in a town called Remsen. After college at Iowa State, he went to work for Vermeer Corporation. In 2000, he left Vermeer to start a small company: Five Star Industries, based in Knoxville, Ia. Later, the decision was made to change the name to Weiler.

It was just shop work at first, until they bought a paving product from Caterpillar, just a small piece of equipment for the paving industry, something that wasn’t really worth it for the big company to make. “Vermeer didn’t do anything in paving, so it gave me a chance to get into an industry without competing against my friends,” Weiler explains. “I thought over time we would learn what contractors in that industry needed and start developing product.”

His approach to an industry in which he’d had no prior experience emphasized actively seeking customer input. “That’s the fun part,” Weiler in sists. “Learning new stuff and listening to what people want. It’s really not that hard if you just listen to what people tell you they want and build it.”

Weiler and his team seem to be applying to our industry the same philosophy that was successful for them in paving. It’s the same mindset I observe from him at dinner: trusting those who know more than he does about a subject.

“We don’t run the equipment, so why would we build what we want?” he points out. “If you’re not gonna operate it yourself you better do what other people want to do. I find that works pretty good over time: try to do what people are asking you to do. It’s early on yet to tell if we’re succeeding, but I think if you look at the things we have changed and modified over the last two years, it shows what we are trying to do.” Even before Weiler took on forestry, the Cat dealers were already selling Weiler paving equipment. Given Weiler’s history with Cat, it makes sense that the dealer network was behind the offer in 2018. “We had a good relationship with the dealers,” Weiler tells me, “so they encouraged Cat to seek us out because of what we had done in the paving industry.”

Sean was part of that process. “We had a meeting with Pat and Bill, and they basically said if this core group of dealers is not on board, we’re not interested in pursuing it. They had to get the buy-in up front, and the dealer principals were interested in doing that.”

I’m curious how logging compares to when he took on paving. “With forestry, we were really lucky that we could do a lot of due diligence beforehand,” Weiler points out. “Pretty much everything we did with paving, we started ➤ 43

Rapid Growth

■ Young Greg Adams gambles big on logging. So far, he’s playing his cards right.

By David Abbott

LISMAN, Ala.

Maybe slow and steady doesn’t always win the race. Greg Adams, 31, only started his company, Greg Adams Logging LLC, in May 2018. That hasn’t stopped him from implementing tremendous expansion of the operation in the few short years since starting up the logging side. As of early 2022, not quite four years into the venture, Adams already has six crews in total—five operating full-time and another in reserve, ready to jump on extra jobs as they come up.

“People asked me if I was scared to get into logging,” Adams reveals. “I say a scared man can’t play poker. Logging is a gamble.” The business, he says, is not unlike a lot of other games: you can be ahead the whole time but you haven’t won till it’s over. “I have made it so far, but to me, I haven’t been successful in logging until I get ready to retire. There’s a chance you can go broke any day. You haven’t made it until you get out.”

The town of Lisman is right on the Alabama-Mississippi line, and Adams cuts and hauls in both states. He grew up just under 30 miles west, in Quitman, Miss. He moved across the line when he got married six years ago, because his wife Heather had a hair shop here. “It was easier for me to move my business than it was for her to move hers.”

While Greg was growing up, his dad Bill logged part-time, hauling loads around his day job as a shop foreman working on busses for Quitman schools, and full-time from 2007 to 2009. When Greg told his dad he wanted to log, Bill was against it, but once he saw his son was going through with it, he quit his job to come help. He now oversees one of the crews.

Greg Adams and wife Heather with children Annalee and Rhett

Rough Start

Although he’s relatively new to running a logging company, Adams has been in business for himself a little longer; he started Greg Adams Trucking LLC in October 2014. It took him a while to get that first enterprise going. He ran a cutter for a logger who let him use his truck to deliver extra loads at night to Alabama River in Monroeville,

which was open 24 hours a day. Adams saved that extra money to buy his first used truck when he was 24.

For $20,000 he got a truck, trailer, tires and scales, all in good shape, except the engine. “I had like $7,500 left to rebuild the motor, so I bought some aftermarket Cat parts and me and my dad rebuilt it in the backyard of his house.” Once they got the motor running, he ran the truck for two weeks before the transmission went out.

He had the truck but couldn’t afford the insurance; his aunt and uncle, who have also been in the trucking business, graciously offered to loan him $3,500 for the insurance down payment.

He ran that truck six weeks in all before a wreck one morning took both it and him out of commission; the truck went in the shop for another engine rebuild, and Adams went under the knife for shoulder surgery, keeping him out of work for three months. After that, though, that first truck ran with only minor problems for almost three years before he replaced it.

Aggressive Expansion

By 2018 he had two trucks, and he was putting in insanely long hours. Looking to improve his quality of life, Adams told his wife he’d like to try logging. Heather’s re sponse was similar to his dad’s: no. But her husband was confident. “I think I can do it,” he told her. “I won’t know till I try.”

After she’d had some time to mull it over, Heather told him, “If that’s really what you want to do, then I support you.” She was even willing to give up her hair salon business to help him run the logging office. “It takes a good wife, and I have a good one,” Adams affirms. “She stands behind me.”

With her blessing, he got going. In its first week, his first crew hauled 37 loads with two trucks. “I thought man, we’ve done it,” he says. After two weeks, he added a third truck, and six months later, replaced that one with a new model. Going into summer of 2019, he says, the crew was doing pretty well and was in high demand. With more work than he could handle, he added a second crew to keep up.

He realized he had no spare machines and what a problem that could cause him if something broke down. So later that year he picked up spares of each. But then another logger, someone Adams knew, shut his company down. “He needed something to do, and I had people calling wanting us to cut their timber.” So he hired that logger to run a third crew using what had been his spare ma chines full time. Pretty

Adams is a bigtime fan of John Deere machines.

In some conditions, trucks need a little help getting under the loader or back out of the woods.

Adams uses a wide range of equipment across his six crews, including Barko loaders.

Left to right, Greg Adams, Bill Adams, Don Gordon, Thomas Moss From left: Austin Grice, Donald Grantham, Wayne Grantham, Chad Turner, Chris Turner, Greg Adams

From left: Corey McLaughlin, Cory Moffett, Michael Coody, Blake Fleming, Joey Sawyer

soon he up graded the equipment on that crew and put the spare stuff back in re serve. Adams kept repeating that pattern: putting spare equip ment to work to tackle a job and then upgrading it to newer ma chines. He had plenty of work to do and plenty of people wanting to work, so why not?

Crews

“There’s a lot more to running a logging business than just knowing how to run the equipment,” Adams cautions. “You’ve got to figure out what numbers you need to hit: what you need to spend, how much wood this crew can move versus the equipment payments they have, and what their goal has to be. And you can’t just cut anything and everything; you have to have decent timber to cut. If you take trash timber, you’ll go broke.”

One other essential key, he says: “You have to have good help. And I think I have some of the best guys around; they all do a good job.”

Adams believes keeping good employees is largely a matter of treating them with respect. Quality of life has to be considered, too; what are you working for? “We get what we get done from 6 in the morning till 4 in the evening.

We try not to work every weekend because people get burned out. These guys have stuff they need to get done at their house; they have a life, too, besides just working out here. They want to go hunting or fishing, they want to spend time with their family, they got to cut the grass or fix the shingles on the roof, and they can’t get it done during the week.”

Staff forester Chuck Smith buys timber for some of the crews. Two crews contract for mills (WestRock and Westervelt) and one works exclusively for a private landowner.

On Crew 1, foreman James Davis (running a 2019 John Deere 843L cutter), Michael Abston (’19 John Deere 648L skidder), and Brent McInnis (’19 Barko 495B loader) mostly tackle first thinning jobs.

Greg’s dad Bill Adams supervises Don Gordon (’19 Deere 648L skidder), Thomas Moss (2021 Deere 843L cutter) and Ronald Franks (’21 Deere 437E loader) on Crew 2, which does clear-cuts and first and second thins for a private landowner. Everybody on Crew 2 is over 60 years old. Bill is 63; Franks is 66 and loads 12 trucks a day. “Some of these guys, you just can’t stop,” Adams says.

Crew 3 specializes in swamp jobs with Frank Moffett supervising Michael Coody on a 2021 Tigercat 635 bogie skidder, Joey Sawyer on a 2020 Tigercat 845E track cutter and Ron Beasley on a 2021 Barko 595 loader.

The equipment designated for Crew 4 is currently parked in reserve, with the operators temporarily moved to other crews. Spare skidder drive Austin Grice, Donald L. Grantham and Paul Simon all float where needed.

Crew 5 does clear-cuts on chip-nsaw size wood mostly, with foreman Chad Turner manning a 2020 Tigercat 234B loader with CSI 264 delimber, Chris Turner driving a ’21 John Deere 748L-II skidder and Donald W. Grantham running a ’21 Weiler B670 cutter.

At Crew 6, John Goodman operates the ’21 Barko 495B loader, Colton Abston mans the ’20 Tigercat 620E skidder and Willie Ruffin handles the ’17 Tigercat 720G cutter to do clear-cuts most of the time.

Adams also has several spare pieces, as well as bulldozers, motor graders and crew pickup trucks. On all his wheeled fellerbunchers, Adams uses saw heads well suited for bunching in smalldiameter thinning jobs (FD55 on

John Deere and 5500 on Tigercat).

Aside from equipment payments, Adams says, fuel is currently the biggest component of operating cost, while he says that insurance is not that bad on logging equipment. Trucking insurance is high for everyone these days, but he says he has as good a rate as he can get. Insurance Risk

Managers of Brook haven, Bitco and Liberty National provide insurance coverage for Adams

Logging and Adams Trucking.

Don Chennault of Southern Safety

Solutions comes out to each crew once a month for a safety meeting and ensures all the employees are

CPR certified and up to date on

PLM requirements.

Adams’ wife Heather and em ployee Katie Linder work in the office several days a week, taking care of all the paperwork, mill receipts, payroll checks, profit and loss statements, and so on.

Adams pays production bonuses; for truck drivers, it is set up on a percentage. In the woods, every time a crew hits 50 loads, the men on that crew get $100, and another $10 a load after that.

Machinery Maintenance

“I like a Tigercat, I like a Barko, I love a John Deere,” Adams says. “They have all been good to me.” He buys John Deere from salesman Craig Hare at Warrior Tractor in Monroeville, Tigercat from Doug Bates and Justin Webb at B&G Equipment in Philadelphia, Barko from Fred Fulton at Trax Plus and Weiler from Shaun Padilla at Puckett Machinery in Meridian. “All those guys have been good to help me, and all three places have real great service,” he says.

Other than bulldozers, Adams never ran Caterpillar logging equipment. “I was scared to buy

this Weiler cutter,” he admits, but he needed one and no one else had anything in stock, what with supply chain delays and order backlogs of the last year or so. “I said I would give them a try, and so far we have been pleased with it,” he attests. “I like the service I get from the places I deal with and that includes Puckett. The warranty was what really sold me on trying it. Travel time and mileage were covered; you couldn’t beat it.”

Weiler is earning a reputation for being responsive to customer feedback. Puckett wanted Adams to try a skidder. “I sat in one, it had the joystick steering,” he says. “I am a pretty good size guy and I had no room; my knees were in the dash. They took that info and said they would make the cabs wider and deeper as a result.”

Since he’s running newer equipment, Adams makes use of the manufacturers’ telematics systems (JDLink and Tigercat’s RemoteLog), and most of his equipment (90%) is under warranty, so dealers handle major repairs. For instance, when SLT was on-site with Adams in mid-January, Deere dealer Warrior Tractor had a service truck on the job working on his bogie skidder. Adams had just taken delivery of the brand new 2022 768L-II the week prior, and it had just a few bugs that needed to be worked out.

Adams has two full-time mechanics, Cory McLaughlin and Blake Fleming, at his 40x60 shop. “I figure I can pay them per week cheaper than I can go have all this stuff done,” he explains. They pack cylinders, do spot welding, tire changes and brake jobs there. In the woods, operators do routine service at 250 hours on Deere and 500 hours on the other brands, adhering to the manufacturers’ recommendations. They grease twice a week, at least.

Adams took a chance on Weiler and hasn't regretted it.

Greg Adams Logging crews haul a variety of products to outlets in Alabama and Mississippi.

Trucking

Greg Adams Trucking has 19 trucks (mostly 2020-2022 models, and mostly Peterbilts, a couple of Western Stars and a Kenworth), 22 log trailers and two lowboys (FMI, Magnolia and Pitts). Saleswoman Rachel Fitts at Dobbs Peterbilt in Meridian has his business. “I’m very satisfied with their stuff,” he says. Adams has had great experience with FMI Trailers; he has nine of their log trailers and two lowboys. “If I need something, they jump on it and get it done for me.”

Company truck drivers include Joey Redmond, Venci Wilcox, Travis Diamond, Rodney Dailey, Eric Fitch, Albert Nelson, Ron Johnson, Mike Stevens, Craig

Boswell, Cordarius Pringle, Jeffrey Evans, AJ Gatlin, Melvin Blakely, Rodney Howard, Jimmy Mitchell, Ryan Jones, Jeremy Grice and Dexter Daniels. Contract haulers are Markell Smith, Greg Reynolds and Derrick Williams.

Adams keeps his logging and trucking entities legally separate for liability purposes. When he first expanded into logging, he initially kept his logging operations under the existing company, Greg Adams Trucking, LLC. But, after attending a PLM business class, he decided to split them up on paper. “There is so much liability in trucking,” he points out. “Even if it isn’t the truck’s fault, they’re gonna get sued.” To try to help prove when a truck driver is not at fault, he runs Samsara GPS/dash cam systems on most of his trucks.

He also has SI onboard scales on every truck. “We try to stay legal,” he says. “For the most part in Mississippi we’re gonna haul 84,000 with a harvest permit, and in Alabama we’ll haul 88,000, because most of the mills are getting to where you can’t haul in overweight anyway. Only problem I run into is if I have an Alabama tag, load up in Mississippi and haul to a Mississippi mill, I have to get a permit that is $25 per truck.”

Markets

With all those late model machines and trucks, Adams has a large investment; at least $12 million, he figures. Equipment cost, he figures, has tripled in the last 30 years, while logging rates have not changed a lot, $1 or $2 more. That makes logging a game that requires high volume, he says: “You have to produce loads; there’s no way around it.”

Prices are coming up a little bit, he says, at least in some places. “They’re getting a little better, but…trucking,” he sighs. “Trucking rates need to be higher. If you’ve got a brand new truck and trailer, you have almost $200,000 in equipment. On a 0-50 mile haul, they pay maybe $7 or $8 a ton; that’s just $200 or a little more to go to the mill. If they get four loads that day, that’s $800. By the time you pay the driver and fuel, there’s not a whole lot left.”

He continues, “The trucking kills us. You’ve got to have nice trucks because if you don’t you won’t get good drivers, and you’ll be broke down all the time. But on a minimum 0-50 mile haul, a truck really needs to make at least $300 to make it worth our while.

There’s no way to do that unless the rates go up. A truck needs to make a little over $1,000 a day to pay for itself. You got tires, tags, insurance, drivers to pay for. I spend more money on upkeep for trucks than I do equipment. It’s always something on a truck to be fixed, because the equipment is made for the woods, but trucks are made for the highway, really.”

Greg Adams Trucking does regularly haul more than 50 miles to its markets, which pays a little higher rate; on three loads, trucks can get close to $1,000 a day, and a percentage bonus kicks in for the drivers.

The crews send most chip-nsaw to Two Rivers Lumber in

Demopolis and Westervelt in

Thomasville, pulpwood to Loui siana Pacific in Thomasville, logs to Lassiter Lumber in Silas and poles to Clark County Poles in

Thomasville. “We just got the

Westervelt mill in Thomasville in 2021, and that has freed our chipn-saw market a lot,” he says. “It’s also helped pine pulpwood I think.”

Overall, markets are good right now, Adams says, as good as he’s seen them since he’s been in logging. Other than the excessive amount of rain in the last two years, he has no complaints.

“We’ve had some good weeks; in

October we hauled over 40,000 tons.” The goal is for each crew to hit at least 50 loads a week, a level at which the company can turn a profit, and the employee bonus kicks in. They frequently hit that mark, and often enough, exceed it. On one five-day week, with six crews working, they hauled 385 loads; one crew got 105 loads by itself. SLT

Pass It Down

■ At D&S Logging, David McClure and Shane Cape are a couple of chips off the old block.

By Patrick Dunning

COMMERCE, Ga.

More often than not, logging is a profession passed down from one generation to the next, and usually when the next generation is still young. That only happens because men like David McClure, 83, serve as mentors to those who come after them. The veteran logger says the lifelong relationships he’s cultivated with equipment dealers and sawmill personnel over the decades of his career are second only to watching his adopted son, Shane Cape, 49, owner of D&S Logging, Inc. develop a love for logging at an early age and follow in his footsteps.

McClure grew up in a blue-collar family in Andrews, NC, watching his dad fell chestnut trees with a

Shane Cape, left, and his father, David McClure, sporting matching overalls on the job site.

Approximately 50% of D&S Logging’s production is 5/8 in. dirty chips, with 50 loads per week on average hauled to biomass outlets.

Above, Cape and McClure currently run a ’17 Bandit 3590 and ’16 CBI 484 drum chipper, sourcing brush knives from Smith & Turner and grinder from The KnifeSource LLC in SC.

At right, D&S runs an exclusive Tigercat lineup and credits Smith & Turner Equipment, Gainesville, for over 40 years of exceptional service.

Below, some of the company’s newer biomass markets include GRP Franklin’s renewable energy facility, Carnesville, and GRP Madison, Colbert.

crosscut saw and use horses to skid cut-to-length logs along the Appala chian Trail. As an adult, after a fouryear stint doing construction in New York, McClure moved to Banks County, Ga., in 1958. There, he logged shortwood pulpwood by hand for more than a decade—that’s a job, he admits, not for the faint of heart. With the advent of mechanized logging in the ’60s, McClure says folks would come from all around to witness his first-generation two-bunk pulpwood Big Stick loader in action.

In the early ’80s, McClure married Cape’s mother, Patricia Anne, and raised her son like his own. “When Shane was 12 years old, he went with us to the woods one Saturday,” the elder logger recalls. “I was running a chain saw and he came down to where I was and asked if he could get on the loader and move some sticks around. I said be careful. Then he asked me if he could do a couple drags on the skidder.”

McClure continues, “His mom, Mrs. Pat, came to the woods and asked where Shane was. I said ‘He’s down there on the skidder, he’ll be back in a minute.’ She started throwing a hissy fit saying he’s going to get hurt. I told her I’d try to keep him from getting hurt but if he wants to do something I’m going to let him; if you don’t like that, take him home and give him some pretty pink ribbons and an apron. She peeled out and didn’t take Shane with her.”

As Cape got older, his fascination with tractors and woods equipment grew and he never wanted to pursue anything else. His stepdad continued to log under the McClure Logging banner until 1991, when Shane came of age. At that point he dissolved McClure Logging and from it formed D&S Logging for David and Shane. “Me and Shane knew it was always going to be me and him side by side,” McClure says. “He was crazy about the woods and if he wasn’t in school he was with me.”

Chipping

McClure and Cape purchased their first Bandit whole-tree chipper at the end of 2009 to diversify the company’s portfolio and take advantage of the Biomass Crop

Assistance Program (BCAP). The government incentive matched payments at a rate of $1 for each dry ton paid by qualified biomass conversion facilities up to $45 per dry ton to inject liquidity into U.S. biomass markets. With U.S. housing starts lacking following the ’08 Recession, D&S says its chipping business saved the company.

“The main reason we decided to get a chipper was the Obama ad ministration,” Cape says. “There wasn’t much else to do. Building was terrible and we couldn’t get rid of anything, but energy was in constant demand,” Cape says. “It was great, but didn’t last but three months. Paper mills were BCAPing their black liquor and scraps; handled so much volume they sucked the account dry.”

The recession may have ended, but D&S still runs a chipper, now a ‘17 Bandit 3590, dealing directly with Bandit Industries, Inc. and their southeastern salesman, Kevin

Wood. The company also utilizes a ’16 CBI 484 drum chipper on its second crew.

“Our Bandit chipper was almost brand-new when we bought it; only had 300 hours logged,” Cape says.

“It’s got close to 2,000 hours now.

When we replace the CBI we’ll probably get a Bandit. Our first

Bandit was a ’09 model, then we downsized with a ’13 model. Had an opportunity to sell them locally at a good price and updated.”

Chipper knives are replaced every 50-60 loads when chipping pre-merchantable pine pulpwood and every 25-30 loads when chipping hardwood. The company sources its brush knives from Smith & Turner and its grinder is from

The KnifeSource LLC, Fountain

Inn, SC.

Approximately 50% of D&S’s production is currently dirty chips, with 50 loads per week on average hauled to biomass outlets. Cape says they tried delivering clean chips before but that it’s hard to satisfy the mills and the haul was long so they reverted back to 5/8 in. dirty chips and haven’t had issues since.

“It really hit or miss now,” Cape acknowledges. “We just came off a

job that was 98% ply logs with probably 250 loads of roundwood and 15 loads of chips. Saw logs vary too; it’s all over the place sometimes. If we’re in a hardwood stand we generate so much brush from the tops, when they pull the brush off the delimber they’ll just circle around to the other loader, stack it and only have to panel it once.”

Industry Friends

When Southern Loggin’ Times visited D&S Logging in November 2021, one crew was operating on a 120-acre block conducting a selectcut prescription on 15-year-old pines in Jackson County, about 15 miles north of Athens. Investment group Big Sandy Creek LLC re quested 100 trees per acre be left with plans to sell 10-acre lots for residential construction.

On both crews, D&S runs exclusively Tigercat machinery because of McClure’s longtime relationship with Smith & Turner Equipment, Inc., Gainesville, which goes back 40 years to when Rex Smith owned the north Georgia dealership.

Woods equipment inventory features a ’17 and ’21 Tigercat 250D loader, ’17 and ’20 632E skidder and ’16 724G feller-buncher. Cape and McClure like to run their equipment 10,000 hours before trading for newer iron.

“The reason we run Tigercat is because of Smith & Turner all the way,” McClure confirms. “I’ve known Bobby Miller, who owns it now, since he was 18 years old. We do routine maintenance like hoses and oil changes in the field but anything major Smith & Turner will come to the job site, or we’ll haul it to their shop.”

Cape says Bobby or his son Josh Miller are available around the clock and will drop off parts on his door step if needed. “If we need anything, the first thing I’ll do is text Josh and he knows what we need to do, even if they’re closed.”

D&S owns seven trucks and maintains one contract hauler. An ’07 Freightliner is the oldest in the fleet and driven by their oldest employee, 77-year-old Kenneth Arrant, otherwise known as Hacksaw. “Someone asked Shane how long he’s going to keep that Freightliner before retiring it. He said ‘I hope I retire the driver first,’” McClure laughs. Other trucks include a ’15 Mack and three (’18, ’19, ’20) Kenworths.

LubeZone Truck Lube Center in

Carnesville changes oil on company trucks every 10,000 miles and keeps an up-to-date service record. A mix of McLendon and Pitts trailers and eight ITI chip vans haul near 100 loads weekly to seven mills.

Cape says local outlets are practically begging for wood products right now, but their product mix depends on market conditions at the time. D&S delivers woody biomass material to Georgia Renewable

Power (GRP), Franklin’s renewable energy facility, Carnesville, and

GRP Madison in Colbert. Both biomass plants were constructed 32 miles apart and opened mid-2019.

D&S also hauls chips to Georgia’s first biomass fueled generating plant, Rabun Gap biomass facility, which utilized an old textile mill and boiler and came online 2010.

“The plant in Rabun Gap was a

Fruit of the Loom facility forever,” Cape says. “It’s changed hands so many times I don’t remember who started it but the boiler is still there. When they rebuilt it we started hauling there.”

Plywood is hauled to Georgia-

Pacific locations in Madison and

Warrenton, hardwood to Battle

Lumber, Wadley, and pine pulpwood to Huber Engineered

Woods, Commerce.

McClure and Cape helped found

Premier South Timber LLC, Commerce, in 2011 and partnered with two other forestry companies to better position themselves in an evolving industry. Premier South specializes in timber services, including pine and hardwood thinning, biomass utilization and clear-cut harvests. On-site forestry services encompass erosion control, reforestation and timber management planning. Cape delivers hardwood pulpwood to Premier’s woodyard and says the business endeavor helped expand their reach in northeast Georgia. SLT

Spotlight On: Chippers, Grinders, Etc.

Southern Loggin’ Times invited manufacturers of in-woods chipping and grinding machines, as well as related components and supplies, to submit material for this section. The submissions of those who participated are presented below, edited only for style.

Bandit

Since 1983, Bandit has manufactured equipment for a multitude of wood waste processing markets. The vision since the beginning has been to build quality, highly productive, easy to maintain equipment providing years of dependable service. The commitment for quality, innovation, and dedication is instilled in every employee and is one of the main reasons why Bandit became an Employee-Owned Company (ESOP) in 2018. These core values ensure each Bandit machine will leave the factory ready to exceed your expectations.

In the Southeast, Bandit’s horizontal grinders and whole tree chippers are supported by a highly trained dealer network. Each dealer has qualified sales, parts, and service personnel that receive ongoing training from Bandit. These dealers carry a wide variety of parts and machines to meet your needs and are supported by Bandit regional sales and parts representatives.

A full line of whole tree drum-style chippers are available with capacities ranging from 20 in. to 36 in. diameter. Most models can be ordered as towable or track and some models are offered with a cab and loader option. Each Bandit chipper is known to provide unmatched pulling and compressing power reducing the time needed to reposition material. With tremendous chip throwing capabilities, chips are filled to max capacity.

In December of 2021, Bandit purchased the Trelan Company adding more versatility to the whole tree chipper line. Trelan chippers serve as a great solution to produce a dimensional clean chip ranging from 3⁄4 in. to 11⁄8 in.

Bandit’s line of horizontal grinders known as “The Beast” are the most versatile units available on the market today. The heart of each Beast Recycler is the Patented Cutter mill that will cut material apart opposed to the beating action of competitive grinders. This process is best described by comparing an axe to a sledgehammer; which would you prefer to use to cut down a tree? A wide variety of models are available ranging from 14 in. to 45 in. diameter capacity. Each model offered can be manufactured as tow-behind or track.

Please visit banditchippers.com to contact a local dealer or for additional information.

Morbark

Morbark recently introduced a new, patent-pending Vtection System option for their 3000, 3400, and 6400 series Wood Hog Horizontal Grinders. The VTECTION system monitors rotor vibration to reduce damage from contact with unshreddable objects or other causes of damaging vibration like an out-of-balance rotor, broken insert, defective bearing, or extremely hard wood. The system features two operating modes: grinding protection mode and service and maintenance mode. When coupled with Morbark’s BreakAway Torque Limiter, these devices provide customers with the best solution in the industry for hammermill protection.

To use the VTECTION system, the operator sets an acceptable operating vibration level through the electronic controller. Since different feedstocks produce different vibration levels, the operator can quickly fine-tune the trip point to match the grinding application. Adjusting the trip point based on the feedstock can help avoid unnecessary stopping of the infeed from normal operating vibration.

If an unshreddable object enters the grinding chamber while in grinding protection mode, the VTECTION system will sense the spike in vibration or trip point and instantly stop and reverse the infeed conveyor. By reversing the infeed conveyor, the VTECTION system lowers the rotor’s chance of repeatedly striking the foreign object.

Once the VTECTION system is triggered, Morbark’s Integrated Control System (MICS) initiates several actions to remove the tramp material out of

the rotor area. The sequence of these actions includes: reversing and stopping the infeed, bringing the engine speed to idle, disengaging the clutch, and a warning message is displayed on the MICS screen. At this time, the operator can inspect the grinder and remove the object that caused the trip point before resuming operation.

During the service and maintenance protection mode, a user can hook up to the system software and monitor vibration levels during different engine loads (Low idle, High Idle, Clutch engage, No Clutch, etc.). Vibration specifications will vary based on the machine model. The system can be programmed to monitor and extract data. These signals can then be visually observed, and various readings can be recorded to verify that the machine is within acceptable vibration levels. Multiple programs can be used to evaluate the system data.

This system cannot guarantee a machine is without defect. Please use caution after the system trips and service work begins, as other components may have experienced damage.

Ship-out kits are available for in-field installations on preexisting 3000X, 3400X, and 6400X horizontal grinders.

Please contact Morbark sales at 800.831.0042 or your local Morbark dealer (morbarkdealers.com) for additional information and pricing.

Wallingford’s

Over the last 30 years Wallingford’s has developed and delivered oval link design flail chains that have set the standards for long life and consistent quality. Rigid quality control and exact steel and hardness specifications have given contractors clean chips at an affordable price.

Wallingford’s has since introduced a square link design that provides for even longer life, often times upwards to 45% as compared to other manufacturers. This unique design and larger chain diameter allow for the contractor to reduce flail RPMs, which results in longer chain life and less fuel consumption, while maintaining a low bark content.

Call 800-323-3708 or visit us online at: wallingfords.com/ product_category/flail-debarking-chain/ for more information.