Bulletin Board

Kids Write To The Pastor

Dear Pastor, I would like to go to heaven someday be - cause I know my brother won’t be there. Stephen, age 8

Dear Pastor, I know God loves everybody but He never met my sister. Arnold, age 8

Dear Pastor, Please say in your sermon that Sam Peterson has been a good boy all week. I am Sam Peterson (age 9).

Dear Pastor, My father should be a minister. Every day he gives us a sermon about something. Robert, age 11

Dear Pastor, I’m sorry I can’t leave more money in the plate, but my father didn’t give me a raise in my allowance. Could you have a sermon about a raise in my allowance? Patty, age 10

Dear Pastor, My mother is very religious. She goes to play bingo at church every week, even if she has a cold. Annette, age 9

Dear Pastor, I think a lot more people would come to your church if you moved it to Disneyland. Loreen, age 9

Dear Pastor, Please pray for all airline pilots. I am flying to California tomorrow. Laurie, age 10

Dear Pastor, I hope to go to heaven someday but later than sooner. Love, Ellen, age 9

Dear Pastor, Please say a prayer for our little league team. We need God’s help or a new pitcher. Alexander, age 10

Dear Pastor, Are there any devils on earth? I think there may be one in my class. Carla, age 10

Dear Pastor, I liked your sermon last Sunday—especially when it was finished. Ralph, age 11

Dear Pastor, How does God know good people from bad people? Do you tell Him or does He read about it in the newspapers? Marie, age 9

Signs From Clever Minds

Shoe Repair Shop: We will heel you. We will save your sole. We will even dye for you.

Curtain & Blinds Truck: Blind man driving.

Gynecologist Office: Dr. Jones, at your cervix.

Podiatrist Office: Time wounds all heels.

Septic Tank Truck: Yesterday’s meals on wheels

Optometrist Office: If you don’t see what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.

Plumbing Company Truck: We repair what your husband fixed.

Tire Shop: Invite us to your next blowout.

Electrical Service Truck: Let us remove your shorts.

Labor/Delivery Room Door: Push, Push, Push.

Muffler Shop: No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.

In September New Jersey forester Bob Williams took this photo of a load of Atlantic white cedar, harvested in Jersey by logger Colin McLaughlin, owner of Advanced Forestry Solutions. The logs were bound for a sawmill in North Carolina.

Veterinarian Waiting Room: Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!”

Restaurant Window: Don’t stand there hungry; come on in and get fed up.

Funeral Home: Drive carefully. We’ll wait.

Propane Gas Tank Exchange: Thank Heaven for little grills.

Radiator Shop: Best place in town to take a leak.

Quotes From Thomas Sowell

l “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.” l “Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of ‘diversity’ that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen–written in blood–from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philippines. It is scary how easily so many people Sowell can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.” l “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” l “It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.” l “Some people pride themselves on their ‘complexity’ and deride others for being ‘simplistic.’ l “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” l “Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea—in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders. We should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.” l “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” l “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” l “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” l “Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.” l “Racism does not have a good track record. It’s been tried out for a long time and you’d think by now we’d want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.” l “Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on ‘income distribution,’ the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”

Cemetery Visit, Reflections

As she visited a large military cemetery, the military widow took some photos and reflected on what’s going on in America today. Then she wrote this poem:

I don’t see any color here,

The headstones look the same,

No black, no brown, no white skin tone;

There’s no one here to blame.

These soldiers fought and died for you,

Their color you can’t see.

Your rights are still protected,

Here’s the place to take a knee.

Cleaning Up

■ The Hegener family offers mulching and land restoration services in and around Texas.

Tigercat's M726G mulching head operating in the Texas hill country

NOTE: This article originally appeared in the April 2019 issue of Between the Branches, the official publication of Tigercat Industries, Inc.

By Bre Elbourn

COMFORT, Tex.

Welcome to Texas Hill Country – where the land is dry and the ★ brush is thick. Texas heat coupled with sparse rain means vegetation must be resilient in order to survive. Ashe juniper (belonging to the cypress family but commonly referred to in Texas as cedar) is well adapted to these harsh conditions and, without intervention, poses a threat to other native vegetation.

In Texas, mulching has become the intervention of choice for landowners battling cedar on their ranch lands. Recognizing a need for brush clearing services in their community, husband and wife Stan and Pam Hegener started Cedar Eaters in 2001. Now co-owned with their son, Spence Hegener, Cedar Eaters of Texas offers mulching and land restoration services across the state of Texas, occasionally breaking into bordering states.

Located in Comfort, Tex., the Cedar Eaters base of operations, including the mechanical shop and offices, backs onto the Guadalupe River on a gorgeous 20-acre property. Pam and Stan’s personal home sits at the back of the property, overlooking the river. A beautiful ponderosa pine barn, with an interior that looks more like a high-end cottage, is home to the administrative offices. It is a relaxed environment where employees are even able to bring their dogs in for the day. An inhouse property maintenance crew keeps the grounds in peak condition.

Totally focused on land restoration, Cedar Eaters offers services such as cedar and brush mulching, mesquite grubbing, and hand crew cutting and chipping for both residential and commercial properties. “But most of what we do is selective clearing of cedar for ranch owners, because cedar trees are viewed as a bad tree in our neck of the woods,” Spence explains.

Cedar Eaters operates four Tigercat M726E mulchers with Fecon heads, one 470 track mulcher, and two M726G mulchers equipped with the new Tigercat 4061 head. Spence explains that by sticking to one brand of mulcher, parts and

The Hegener family believes that mulching is the best long-term option for dealing with undesired cedar growth.

tools can be swapped out interchangeably. If there is a mechanical issue on one machine, mechanics can keep an eye out for similar issues with other machines and perfect the repair process, reducing the overall downtime required to service the fleet. “Buy one kind of machine, stick with that machine,” Spence advises. “Tigercat was the best quality machine after being through all the other ones; that was what we went with and decided to keep building on.”

Spence notes that another reason he chose and then stuck with Tigercat is because, “They listen to the customer. For example, there’s a lot of things that I think I may have had some input on with this head! Or I’ll ask for something to be done on the machine, and then I look down on some of the newer machines and those things have been taken care of. Access to different areas where it was a pain in the butt in the earlier models, now it’s easier to get into them. Just little things like that. They listen to the customer and take that knowledge and implement it. We don’t get that anywhere else.”

Roots

Pam and Stan Hegener first made their name in the industrial construction and pipeline industry in Louisiana. With Pam’s background in HR and business management and Stan’s in industrial construction and operations, the two successfully managed a large industrial construction company, with over 500 employees, for over 15 years.

In 2001, the Hegeners left the industry in Louisiana, purchasing a ranch in Texas Hill Country with the intention to retire there. Stan found himself contending with brush, particularly cedar, on their own ranch. Having worked in the industrial construction industry, the Hegeners were familiar with mulchers, which are commonly used by pipeline contractors for ROW (right-of-way) clearing.

Pam and Stan decided to buy a small mulcher of their own for personal use. After clearing their own land, Spence says they “cleaned a friend’s ranch up, and it kind of got out through word of mouth that we

were cleaning properties up around us in the Hill Country.” Thus, Cedar Eaters came to be.

Having started out with just one small mulching machine, Cedar Eaters now employs around 25 people with seven Tigercats in their eight-machine fleet. While Spence has taken hold of managing day-to-day operations, Stan and Pam still have yet to actually settle down and retire.

Cedar

So what’s so bad about cedar trees? The short answer: they’re really good at retaining water. Cedar trees are known for their ability to thrive in poor quality soil with sparse rainfall.

Spence describes how a cedar tree is built to direct rainwater to its own root system, “If you ever look at a cedar tree—our cedar trees— they’re kind of built like this,” Spence motions a funnel shape with his hands where the branches of the tree are wider at the bottom. “All the branches get smaller as they come up the trunk, right? So when it rains the tree is like a funnel and it catches the water in its branches where it runs down each branch to the trunk of the tree.” Its denseleaved canopy offers a large surface area to collect rainfall. As a result, very little rainwater reaches the soil surface below. With cedar hogging all of the water, other native grasses and trees are unable to get what they need to survive and thrive.

So why does grass matter? Why not just let cedar take over? The long root systems of native grasses help to hold soil in place, preventing ground erosion. Removing cedars using the mulching method not only helps prevent ground erosion, it improves the health of the grasslands and will increase the underground water supply. Instead of water getting sucked up by the tree’s root system or evaporating from the tree’s canopy, water is filtered through the soil and grass roots and goes back into the water table.

Another very important reason is wildlife diversity. A variety of grasses and other vegetation attracts a wide range of wildlife and promotes a healthy, well-balanced eco-system.

It’s not so much that cedar is an undesirable tree; it just requires some maintenance if you don’t want it to be the only tree on your property. Spence explains that cedar was once controlled by natural disasters.

“Wildfires would run rampant, people would set fires, lightning would strike and fire would just go. Well now that we’ve privatized and subdivided all the land, we have this issue where no one wants to burn anymore, for fear of being sued if it gets out of control. So, we have this decompose. “Basically, cedar trees are very acidic and limestone is an alkaline agent. When the cedar trees are mulched over limestone, it creates an acidic layer over top of it that will break down over time and create new topsoil. You can see this when you look underneath a cedar tree, there’s actually more topsoil underneath the tree. Well, that’s because the needles are falling down every year, and then it’s actutopsoil. So the concept is, 50 years from now, the property that has been mulched is going to have more topsoil than the guy that goes out there and dozes it.” Spence also mentions, “The benefit of mulching versus dozing is that the regrowth is considerably less with mulching, because dozing disturbs the ground allowing berries that contain the seeds to be replanted.”

Mulching creates a protective layer over the ground, since the machine mostly drives on top of the mulch, leaving much of the land undisturbed. This layer of mulch left behind also locks in moisture. It’s full of nutrients, creating the

product is a work in progress, Spence is confident in Tigercat. “With its robust build and the engineering behind it, the 4061 will no doubt rule the market over time.” Since 2001, Cedar Eaters has owned a total of 22 mulching machines spanning over five different brands before committing to Tigercat. “The reason we have settled in with Tigercat is their attention to detail and their unwavering drive to improve their products. The support From left: Spence Hegener, operations manager, with his parents and partners, COO Pam Hegener and President Stan Hegener from Tigercat’s ownership, engineers and Tejas Equipment’s technicians as problem that used to be controlled by and desirable trees to thrive. In turn, has been unmatched.” nature or by humans and now it’s not. this helps prevent soil erosion and It doesn’t have fire to keep it at bay, can also help to improve the water Next Generation so now the only thing people can do table by preventing evaporation. is go in there and doze it, shear it or When asked about the performSpence has been a major part of mulch it. We prefer the mulching ance of the new M726G mulcher, Cedar Eaters since his parents method because over time the mulch Spence tells us that, while they’ve founded it in 2001. While he did not will turn back into soil, and it’s better had some growing pains with the start with the company until 2005, for the land in the long run.” 4061 head, “We’ve been really he would often run the machines on happy with the M726G mulcher. It weekends at the family ranch in the Mulching Benefits runs cooler than even the M726Es. early years. Spence has grown to It’s got a lot more power. From what develop a great appreciation and

Terrain in the Texas Hill Country I’ve seen, the production rate on the passion for what they do and strives is rocky, predominantly consisting M726G models has improved by at to educate others about how to manof limestone. It’s very dry with little least 25%. The cut rate is quicker, age cedar in an environmentally topsoil. Unfortunately, the process basically. We can go through more friendly way. of turning organic material into topland faster with either head on that The Cedar Eaters name is a tradesoil doesn’t happen overnight. machine.” mark. Spence mentions that he hopes Formed from the erosion of rocks The Hegeners decided to start to someday, “bottle up what we’re and decomposition of organic mateswitching to Tigercat mulching doing here and replicate it in differrials and organisms over hundreds heads because they “feel it will outent areas of the country that are batof years, it forces landowners to last the heads of Tigercat’s competitling the same issue with cedar”. think long-term. tors.” While they’ve had a few setWith cedar rapidly encroaching on

Mulching essentially helps speed backs, Spence says, “Any issues that land in New Mexico, Colorado, up that decomposition process. have occurred have been addressed Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas, Conventional methods such as dozquickly with the support of Tigercat there’s no denying that there’s ing or burning strip away all organand our dealer in Texas, Tejas Equipopportunity for Cedar Eaters to grow ic material with nothing left to ment.” Acknowledging that any new in all of these areas as well. SLT ally breaking down and creating The Cedar Eaters base is on 20 acres overlooking the Guadalupe River.

well as our sales rep, Jared Swenson, ideal environment for native grasses Cedar Eaters of Texas home offices, interior, in Comfort

Alternate Route

■ Logger-owned Forestry Ins. Co. of the SouthEast offers an alternative on trucking.

By David Abbott

MONCKS CORNER, SC

Trucking insurance has consistently been among the top com★ plaints of loggers in recent years, with limited options in some areas as many companies stopped writing policies for log trucks. With all the market disruptions, Rick Quagliaroli, President of South Carolina-based Swamp Fox Insurance Agency and board member of the Forestry Insurance Co. of the SouthEast, says several loggers came to him concerned about insurance carriers leaving forestry.

One option, he told them, was to set up a captive insurance company. “In insurance it is referred to as alternative risk,” he explains. It would be owned by and insure only loggers, as an alternative to the standard commercial market. “There’s nothing wrong with standard insurance,” he emphasizes. “I’m not advocating against it. Both have a purpose, standard and captive insurance carriers, they both have a reason to exist.” In fact, his agency, Swamp Fox, works with both standard and captive carriers.

The insurance man explained to his clients that it would require an investment from them to make it work. They were onboard. So, after founding the new company in 2016, they took the Forestry Insurance Co. of the SouthEast live in 2017 to write auto and general liability policies for the member-loggers. “From a startup basis in 2017, it has performed exceptionally well,” Quagliaroli says. “Loss ratios are very low.”

What is the difference? “The primary difference is that it is a homogenous group committed to fleet management practices,” according to Quagliaroli. “Only other logging companies are members. So as a result they are very focused on the business. They put capital into the company, so they have skin in the game. They want to see it perform successfully, because they have the potential for dividends, so there is a real financial incentive. In a publicly traded company any dividends go to the shareholders. Here, the shareholders are loggers. There are no non-invested loggers in this company. Anybody who is insured is also an owner, so they have a real stake in how well it performs.”

Forestry Insurance Co. is a separate legal entity from Swamp Fox, with no relationship other than that the latter provides underwriting and services to the former. Quagliaroli helped start the new company and sits on its board, but he does not own it; the members do. He describes his role as that of a gatekeeper, helping determine who can and can’t join. The owners set the standards of what it takes to qualify and his role is to apply those standards.

As of early September, Forestry Insurance has 29 members, all in South Carolina and Georgia. In time it may expand to the rest of the Southeast, as the name implies. Quagliaroli figures they have declined quotes to another 40. The main reason a business would be turned down would be over commitment to fleet management practices.

“Fleet management is not an expense but an investment,” Quagliaroli says. “I know there are certain practices that if adopted will lower operating cost and improve profitability, because the shareholders are showing me the reduction in cost benefits.” He says the best examples of practices that can have that effect are reductions in drivers’ speed and eliminating hard braking. To achieve those aims, Forestry Insurance conducts driver and owner training sessions at least annually. Fleet Management

Before acquiring Swamp Fox in 2013, Quagliaroli had spent the bulk of his career to that point with the Hartford Financial Services. “At Hartford, one of the areas I ran was loss control and safety services,” he explains. Hartford, he says, was the company that originated the term “loss control” back in the ’50s. “It was a relatively innovative idea at the time. Loss control services bring real benefit to clients.”

He continues, “If you think about it, what does a logger, or any business owner, do all day? He runs his business, solves problems and puts out fires. You can’t expect them to come home at night and think about fleet

From left, loggers Daryl Dunn and Michael Martin join Swamp Fox President Rick Quagliaroli at Forestry Insurance Co. of the SouthEast.

management practices. The insurance professionals should be out there two or three times a year providing our expertise to help them run a safer company, because safer companies are overwhelmingly more profitable. So when I think safety services, I think largely on the fleet management side. It is kind of the last frontier, because mechanized logging has changed the industry dramatically.”

Coverage

Forestry Insurance Co. offers auto liability, covering exposure from extra heavies over the road, service vehicles and trailers. It does not cover woods equipment, only road equipment. It also offers general liability, in case of accidental injury in the woods. Excess liability, workers’ comp and equipment coverage they place with other companies.

“When I bought this business in 2013 and brought up the idea of GPS in trucks, it wasn’t universally thought to be necessary, but you can demonstrate the value of it,” Quagliaroli says. “Our agency has sold, at cost, over 1,500 dash cams. The only friend a log truck driver has on the road is the dash cam.”

Current market rates have an enormously wide range. “In 2013, a log truck could be insured as low as $850,” Quagliaroli says. “That’s a low rate, but an inadequate rate.” It doesn’t cover the cost to the insurance company. “The insurance industry was making a lot of money up through 2013, so commercial auto rates had become grossly underpriced, because it was very much a buyer’s market. Insurance companies were willing to insure not just log fleets but all commercial auto at inadequate pricing. Then there was an explosion in litigation. The factors of inadequate rates, increased litigation and limited to no fleet management practices has driven up rates or caused carriers to withdraw from insuring the industry.”

He continues, “Insurance companies had been charging as low as 15-20% of what was adequate, so companies came and went. Some lost a lot of money.” When some companies pull out, others are willing to fill the void, but with dramatically higher prices than what would be required—some as high as $40 thousand a year to cover a log truck.

The trick, Quagliaroli says, is to strike the right—sustainable and affordable—balance between the extremes. Forestry Insurance Co. of the South, he believes, is committed to achieving that balance. “This company stabilizes its rates, and gets adequate rates for exposure,” he explains. “From 2017-2019 rates went down 13%, and this year down another 6%. These rate changes are not due to market competition pressures but to fleet management practices and improvements driving down loss costs. It’s a balancing act; you have to be competitive, but we have stayed at an adequate rate level or passed on insuring an account. If you think of net cost, if you pay an acceptable rate and three years from now you get a 25% dividend, that is a good investment.” SLT