Turner Logging Embraces Transition Cable thinning specialist to do more clear-cuts; take on first-entry thinning work. DANShell ongtime northwest Oregon log- the company’s capabilities and strengths with an old Cat, then upgraded to a L gers/brothers Mark and Greg can be a challenge. “We’re not opposed Garrett 10 skidder in 1963. Turner, owners of Turner Logging, to doing clear-cuts and have done them Turner ended up building a small Inc., are coming to a crossroads after in the past, and we can be just as effi- sawmill near Banks in 1970, still keep- almost 25 years of specializing in cable cient in certain types of timber, but on a ing the logging company. He also part- thinning. As thinning programs wind typical clear-cut the guys with the big nered with local logger Keith Wolff, down among various public and private yarders, processors and loaders are hard who ran a couple of crews. The com- timber owners in the area, many land- to compete with,” he explains. pany remained small, concentrating on owners are now switching to more re- Making matters tougher for smaller jobs mostly under 50 acres, and stayed generation timber sales. contractors like Turner Logging, busy. Mark and Greg joined in the In response, the Turners, based in which operates two crews and occa- woods work early. Banks, are looking to not only adapt sionally a third, is the way larger com- After graduating from the Oregon their company to be more efficient panies with four or five or more crews Institute of Technology, Mark nearly when working clear-cuts, but also to can afford to have a mix of profit lev- disappeared into the big city when he take on more of the remaining avail- els at any given time. took a job with Northrup in southern able thinning work, such as smaller “It just seems like smaller operators California in the early 1980s. “I never timber first-entry thinning jobs. need a niche, like thinning is for us,” really fit in in LA,” Turner says. Two recent equipment purchases Turner says. “We do better on thin- “They say you can take the logger out reflect the balancing act of going big ning sales, and we have to make a of the woods but you can’t take the and small—to an extent—simultane- solid profit on every job; we can’t woods out of the logger, and I started ously. “We just purchased a 260 Ko- have a sale that loses money.” missing it, the outdoors and everything belco with 622 Waratah processing about logging,” he remembers. head, when usually we’d buy a 210- Backstory In the late ’80s both Mark and Greg size machine,” Mark Turner says of worked for Turner Logging, and also the machine built to handle larger tim- Turner Logging has followed that off and on in Alaska, but by the early ber associated with clear-cuts. philosophy for the past 57 years after ’90s were back in Oregon full time. And last year, the company bought Mark and Greg’s father, Bill, started Mark remembers the first thinning job a used Timbco 445 with Keto 600 pro- the company in 1959. Working in and the company took in 1992; it involved cessing head—a machine that’s more around the Banks-Vernonia area his a rebuilt Skagit SJ4 swing yarder. efficient handling smaller timber on whole career, their father began small But bigger changes were afoot when thinning jobs. “We had a couple of sales coming up where we were required to process in the woods and not at the landing, so we used the Tim- bco for that, and we’ve also done some 35-year-old first-entry thin- nings where it work ed really well,” he says. According to Turner, finding jobs that best fit The brothers: Mark, left, and Greg Company founder Bill Turner 8 MARCH/APRIL 2016 TIMBER HARVESTING & WOOD FIBER OPERATIONS Kobelco 210 carrier fells and processes with Waratah 622B attachment. Wolff retired in 1994, and Bill Turner died two years later. The brothers taking over the company at a relatively young age in their early 30s contributed to their willingness to try something new: cable and ground-based thinning using swing yarders and Idaho jammer packages. “After we took over the company we looked at what we had, and what we had was a bunch of old junk,” Mark remembers. While the company had previously worked mostly with small, private landowners, the brothers sought to grow into larger industrial timberland work. This required more productive and more reliable equipment. Turner Logging’s first thinning iron lineup included a Diamond D210 swing yarder bought in ’96 and a Ko- belco 210 with jammer package in Skilled jammer operation adds to company’s flexibility and proficiency. ’98. “We were really gearing up for oversees along with yarder engineer While his brother and some em- thinning,” Turner recalls. “We enjoyed Garland Shipley. ployees are “late adopters” when it doing it and a lot of other loggers “Sometimes we can put the whole comes to technology such as smart didn’t want to do it so we felt like we crew on the same job and that’s when phones and e-mail, Mark says he’s were developing a good niche.” we can be most efficient, when we’re always sought to utilize the latest tech- A Diamond D2000 yarder was pur- both on-site and Greg’s crew can pick nology in operating the business. chased in 2000, then it was replaced by up the short corridors,” Mark says, a Diamond 2646 with 2,500 ft. skyline adding that his brother is a highly Technology reach in 2008. Yet all the crews could skilled jammer operator with both do with the new yarder for a few tongs and chokers. “We work really Turner Logging keeps its business months in 2008 was look at it after the well together, always have.” accounting with Quickbooks software bottom fell out of the economy and log- Mark and and Ticket Tracker Accounting soft- gers across the country were shut down. Greg’s sister, ware for log accounting. All pertinent Turner still has bad memories of the Diane, ac- data for each completed job is put into time, when state timber sale purchasers counts for all a PDF file that notes production and were given some relief from their con- of the loads costs. The files are used to help deter- tracts while loggers were just sent shipped and mine job bids for future work. home. does all of the A good example of Turner’s use of “We went from full employment to accounting for technology is the touch-screen GPS he nothing in a week,” Turner remembers. subcontractors uses to scout new jobs and lay out “We got all the employees together, as well. Greg’s yarding corridors. It has a special fea- explained the situation, put together a Diane Turner Maller wife, Julie, ture that shows terrain, and Turner plan to keep their health insurance and does payroll correlates it with Google Earth and a tried to weather the storm.” It was al- and manages the insurance. Altogether topo map to give a realistic picture of most three months before Turner Log- Turner Logging employs 16, including a potential timber sale. ging was able to get another job going. the Turners and a full-time shop em- “It really helps with laying out corri- ployee. dors because you can truly see what’s Operations “We have one guy who’s been with on the ground, he explains. “You can us 20 years, another for 19 years and I see the lay of the land, mark a landing Today one of Turner Logging ca- know Garland has been with us 16 spot and see where you need to be to get ble-thinning crews revolves around a years, so our average seniority is defi- the lift and angles you need.” Diamond D2646 swing yarder and the nitely 10-plus years, because even the He adds that since he began using other around a Kobelco 210 loader that ‘new’ employees, now that I think the GPS he seldom does any back- features a Jewell jammer package. A about it, have been with us longer than tracking and can sometimes run corri- mix of log loaders and processor that,” Turner exclaims. dors both ways, coming from and equipped-excavators support each crew, The company offers health insur- going to the landing. and there’s enough spare iron to run a ance and a 401k program. “We offer a Once Turner is finished marking the small shovel-logging side if needed. good policy because basically if our corridors, when the rigging crew arrives Greg operates the ground-based side guys don’t get health insurance from he hands the hook tender a map with all while Mark does most of the running us they’re probably not going to get landings and the corridors running off around, looking at timber and bidding it,” Turner says. “We’ve determined each one pre-located and numbered. jobs. Mark also runs all the yarding that it’s really important, and we go “When he starts stringing haywire corridors and handles pre-job layout out of our way to do what we can to to get the skyline out, he doesn’t have work for the yarder side, which he help them out.” to spend a lot of time figuring things 10 MARCH/APRIL 2016 TIMBER HARVESTING & WOOD FIBER OPERATIONS out,” Turner says.