Jim Garrett
August 21, 1996I became associated with the lumber industry in October of 1941 when I went to work for Pine Products Corporation. I was a roustabout for a while, doing different odd jobs. I finally got on as a planer feeder. I went into the service but Pine Products kept jobs open for the men who went into the service, so when I got out I went back to the same job--feeding the planer.
There didn't seem to be much future in that job. I was a young fellow with a family and I was looking to make more money. I got a chance to go on the green chain at night and I learned to grade lumber. The quality control man at Pine Products was Bob McNeil. He lived across the road from the mill. He came over at night and helped me learn the lumber grades.
It takes about a year and a half to get to be a lumber grader. Working nights on the green chain my shift started at 4:30 or 5:00 but I went down at 2:00 every afternoon and watched the graders at the planer and asked a lot of questions. Luke Gillam was one of the graders who helped me learn the grades. I was eager to learn because I wanted a lumber grading job. Eventually, I got off the green chain and ended up grading lumber in the planer.
Aerial view of Consolidated Pine
I became associated with Consolidated Pine on June 1 of 1952. At that time there were 135 to 140 employees counting the moulding plant in Bend which later was moved to Prineville. I became general manager of the plant and vice-president of Consolidated Pine.
Sidney Kulick and Howard Shirvan were the principal owners of Consolidated Lumber Corporation. All of the mouldings were shipped to their distribution yard in New Jersey. From there the mouldings were hauled in small quantities to 150 or 200 different yards up and down the east coast. Mr. Kulick and Mr. Shirvan were very good people to work for. They were thoughtful and generous in many ways. As far as business was concerned they were business people, certainly, but they had a soft side to them. They looked out for their people and wanted to do the best they could by the men working here at the mill.
Kulick and Shirvan came out three or four times a year. Sometimes they stayed three or four days and sometimes longer. For many years Mr. Kulick and his wife came out in the summer time and stayed up to three weeks. Both men liked to play golf. Through the golf club Sidney became very well acquainted with some of the local golf club members. Howard preferred to mingle with the mill people. He became acquainted with the Rhodens, the Shelks and the Hudspeths.
In the 1960's and 70's the Forest Service was putting up a substantial amount of timber. Bidding was not quite as intense then as it became in the late '70's, 80's and early 90's, when there was less and less timber being offered at auction. The mills needed timber to keep operating and keep people working. The only two mills that had private timber were Pine Products and Ochoco Lumber, but they didn't want to cut any more private timber than was necessary. They salvaged dead trees and blowdowns every year. But as far as really getting into logging their private timber they wanted to preserve it until the very last and that's what they did.
It was in the late 80's and early 90's that the timber 'wars' got pretty intense. People were bidding far more than they could ever hope to come out on their stumpage. They looked for other ways to offset their losses. In our case, we sometimes overbid, too, but we hoped to make up the difference in our moulding plant.
When we cut the last log through the mill we still had some 4.5 million feet of timber left standing. The last log cut was out of the winter deck. We had laid off for a month and it was still too early to get into the woods. The 4.5 million that we had left to log would have been enough for a two-months operation so, rather than call people back to work for only two months and then lay them off permanently, it was decided it would be better to shut down and sell the 4.5 million feet of logs. We shut down in April of 1992 and sold the logs to Crown Pacific.
We laid off about 45 people. Those who wanted to and had the seniority could go into the moulding plant. There were some half dozen or more who took jobs in the moulding plant but the majority of the sawmill workers chose not to.
Bob Scanlon, who runs the moulding plant, buys material wherever he can get it. He gets three or four truck and trailer loads each month from Ochoco Lumber and the same from Crown Pacific. It takes about 500,000 feet of lumber a month to supply the moulding plant. He uses a lot of foreign lumber out of Australia, New Zealand and South America, which is not quite as good as ponderosa pine, but it's acceptable. Pine is so scarce now, not only here but everywhere else, that customers on the other end are beginning to accept the lower grade wood.
We shipped anywhere from 9 to 12 carloads of mouldings a month, 20 to 24 carloads of wood chips, and two to three carloads of lumber daily. In the late 70's, people began to want their lumber shipped by truck because of better service and because they didn't have to buy as much or put out as much money as they would for a railroad car. Buying by the carload, a lumber yard would have to take 40,000 to 45,000 board feet. A truckload would be 26,000 or 27,000 board feet. A truckload would arrive in 2-1/2 to three days, whereas it took five to eight days for a carload to reach its destination. It was advantagous for a customer to buy less lumber and get it faster, so we started sending out practically everything by truck except for an occasional carload. It was always up to the customer as to how we made the shipment, of course.
Over the 40 years I was associated with the timber industry, logging didn't change that much except for the last few years when there was more helicopter logging. Logging by helicopter was something we had never thought much about. If a hillside was too steep or if it couldn't be logged with a Caterpillar or skidder, it was bypassed. We'd come back later and log with a helicopter. We had one good-sized helicopter sale. It's more expensive to log by helicopter but, as a general rule, stumpage is cheaper.
The timber got smaller over the years. It used to be that trees 12, 14 and 16 inches in diameter were left in the woods. But during the last few years those smaller trees were taken out. In our case, it was not practical to cut small trees through a seven foot band mill. During the last few years of operation we sold the small logs, up to 14 inches in diameter, to Ochoco Lumber for their small log mill. It worked out very well for us but I don't believe we ever came out on the logs. We either broke even or lost a little money, but it kept the production in our sawmill up because we didn't have to deal with those smaller logs. It was to our advantage to sell the small logs.
On July 1, 1993 Bob Scanlon, who had been with the company nearly 30 years and was superintendent of the moulding plant, was advanced to general manager. I stayed on several months to help Bob in his new job and officially retired on December 31, 1993 after 40 years with the company. I could not have had a more rewarding career or worked for two nicer people than Sidney Kulick and Howard Shirvan.