So, You’re a Logger? There’s an App for That! BY SAM LINCOLN

hen I purchased my first iPhone seven years skid trails with very low value hitches in tow. My instincts told ago, I had no idea of the advances that apps me I wasn’t making money and I had been too casual about the would bring to my logging business. Apps, short- numbers when I committed to some jobs, but I had no method W hand for “applications,” are software programs to make the needed calculations before I took those jobs. The designed to perform specific functions on smartphones and first step in solving that problem was to purchase an iPhone tablets. The use of apps in forest operations is growing app to measure distance that cost less every day and increasing the management and than ten dollars. Years later, I can say communication capability, efficiency, and profitability that it made me, or saved me, tens of those who are using them. if not hundreds of thousands of When my operation became fully mechanized, we dollars by knowing the precise began harvesting more low grade stems and skidding skid distance and potential larger volumes longer distances. My old rules of thumb productivity of the woodlots I and gut feel for a woodlot weren’t serving me well when was harvesting. Not every app will selecting work and negotiating stumpage. With the have this level of impact, but they’re volume to be harvested and the time and distance to incredible tools. skid, it was suddenly much more important than If you have a smartphone or it has been in the days of hand felling large tablet, you will need to set up sawtimber. On some jobs, I bounced along an account with Apple’s App in a grapple skidder on seemingly endless Store, Google Play or Windows Phone Store, depending on the brand of your device. Many apps are free or available for a very reasonable monthly or annual fee. The following is a small sample of apps available for use in the management of your logging business.

18 THE NORTHERN LOGGER | SEPTEMBER 2018 GPS Kit iPhone Notes $9.99 Free This navigation app locates your position on a basic The notes app that comes standard on every iPhone map using a GPS signal and can be used to track the distance or iPad can be used for recordkeeping. Use it to track the date, you travel, mark waypoints and leave notes about anything time, trip ticket number, trucker and mill where each load has you’d want to find your way back to on a woodlot. The tracking gone, mark them as paid and simply text or email the note to includes the distance, time, average speed and total elevation the forester or landowner at any time throughout the job to ascended/descended of your movement. I walked some keep them informed of your production and payments. Notes skid trails on the job I was on and then let it run as I skid and can also be used to track workable days, hitches skid per day, tracked the number of hitches pulled. I began to see how our machine hours, parts lists, or major mud season repairs you productivity corresponded with the distance from the landing to plan to complete. the harvest area. Dropbox Avenza Maps, Avenza Pro Free $129.99 per year for commercial users The busy logging business manager has documents Avenza Maps uses GPS to locate and identify your on their phone, desktop computer, or iPad that somehow never position on geospatially referenced maps on your device. These end up in the right place when you need them. Downloading maps are electronic versions of the paper maps that a forester Dropbox onto your devices enables you to save documents or land manager prepares that have the parcel boundaries, there and they are instantly available to any device with access stand boundaries, topography, main trails, streams, wetlands, to your Dropbox account wherever you are. and other features identified on them, but now you have them on your phone or tablet. Your position is in relation to all these as Genius Scan you move around the site. This tool allows users such as feller Free buncher operators to locate their position within the harvest and This app uses the camera on your device to scan paper see boundaries, stream crossings, topography, and main trails documents and send them to someone electronically. How that have been preloaded onto the map as they plan the most many times have you needed to get an insurance certificate or a efficient layout of the bunches. Forest managers directing an signed contract sent to someone ASAP? You want to share the excavator operator into a site to do closeout work can prepare mill spec sheet with the forester or landowner you’re working a map that has the location of all the waterbars on the map. with but they’re hundreds of miles away. Scan these documents They can then electronically transfer a map to the operator, who with Genius Scan in a matter of seconds and you’re no longer can now see where every waterbar needs to be installed and running to the post office, a forester’s office, or trying to find the plan to efficiently install them. Time won’t be wasted tracking last functioning fax machine in North America. up and down trails where no work needs to occur. In addition, geotagged photos can be taken of the stream crossings that are Weather Underground closed out to document that it was completed properly. Free This weather app displays forecasts by day or by hour. Planimeter Where I found it to be most beneficial was using the live radar $7.99 that showed the movement of approaching storms relative to Planimeter is an acreage calculator. Determining how my location. The summers that have endless patterns of heavy many acres are worked on a site is very helpful in monitoring rain for days followed by brief windows of dry weather to work productivity and subsequently, profitability. I tracked how many in the woods make for tough conditions to produce loads and acres per hour the feller buncher could cover, how many loads maintain water quality. Having someone regularly checking per acre certain species and harvest levels yielded and how many the radar on days with heavy downpours predicted allowed us acres we could skid and process in a day. With this information, to work right up until we could tell we had a certain amount I could evaluate a new site with similar terrain, skid distance or of time left before a downpour. At that point, our skidder harvest intensity and refer to my records to estimate how many operators would install waterbars at critical locations on skid days or hours it would take to cut, skid, process, and closeout trails to reduce the potential for erosion on an operating trail a parcel. Avenza Maps also has acreage calculation capability. that wasn’t ready for closeout. We also made sure that drains It takes time to build a database with these apps to develop were installed in low spots in the trails where water might build trends in your operation, but the bottom line is that once you up and create a lot of mud. Using this method, we could be determine the most productive sites for your equipment set up, back to work sooner with drier trails and cleaner wood on the you can dial in to the most profitable ones and become more next dry day. By utilizing this app, we had our trails in good confident that you’re selecting the right sites to work on. Your shape for several days of heavy rain and we were in our trucks “database” can be a simple list of the jobs, acres, average skid leaving the landing when the storm hit in force. distance and units (loads, mbf, tons, etc.) produced over a certain time (payroll hours, machine hours, days, etc.)

THE NORTHERN LOGGER | SEPTEMBER 2018 19 TSheets Pandora $16–$20 per month plus a per user fee Spotify TSheets is an electronic timesheet app that auto- iTunes matically syncs up with a QuickBooks payroll subscription. Though there is rarely a better place to be than in the woods, Employees can easily report their time each day by task, job, older machines that don’t feature soundproof cabs aren’t great machine, etc. which makes tracking of itemized costs per job for hearing protection or being able to listen to a radio. Pairing very simple. You can also prepare notes for your employees with up your smartphone with noise cancelling earbuds ($50 +/-) and TSheets that provide them with instructions, lists of equipment, a commercial free music subscription ($5+/- per month) can materials, addresses and other important information they need make long days go by quickly. You can customize the music, to complete their work for the day. podcasts, comedy channel, talk radio or other programming to just what you like. It’s not up to me to suggest what you have for Square music selections, but I can tell you with some level of certainty GoPayment that a loader slasher operator listening to the 80’s hair metal Processing credit card payments from channel will put out an extra load per day. your phone could be a particularly handy tool for retail sales. Firewood, both split and log length, lumber or other forest products can be easily paid for when you have a Square or GoPayment account set up on your phone. The costs are very Apps are changing small business management and forest low per transaction. The convenience of scanning a credit card economy professionals are not being left behind. New before you unload the product and getting immediate payment York Logger Training has invested in the development of a compared to chasing down a homeowner for payment because “smartphone apps for loggers” workshop and Vermont’s loggers they didn’t have cash or a check that day makes this app have had the opportunity to attend similar “technology in the very attractive. The funds are automatically deposited in your woods” workshops for several years. At a recent workshop account with the transaction fee also deducted automatically. in Vermont, the basic functions and capabilities of Avenza Maps was demonstrated in a classroom setting for logging contractors and consulting foresters. In the second half of the day, the participants went to a woodlot that had timber marked and trails flagged in anticipation of an upcoming timber sale, where they used their smartphones and tablets with Avenza Maps to locate mapped features (main skid trails, property and patch cut boundaries, stonewalls, and stream crossings), drop waypoints where waterbars should be installed on steep skid trails, take photos that were geotagged on their maps, measure skid trail length and acreage. The feedback at the workshop made it clear that loggers and foresters are eager to learn more about this technology as they learned how powerful these tools are. Planning is in the works for additional workshops in the coming year. There’s no question that smartphones and tablets are here to stay, but will the forest economy’s timeless debate of “Husqvarna or Stihl” be replaced with a contemporary “iPhone or Android?”

Sam Lincoln is currently serving as Deputy Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. Prior to his appointment, he owned a Master Logger certified, whole tree, mechanized logging operation.

This article is part of a series highlighting topics that were developed for New York Logger Training, Inc. (NYLT) workshops through an appropriation from the Workforce Development Institute (WDI). The project between NYLT and WDI seeks to enhance educational opportunities and skills development for NY loggers by supporting curriculum development.

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