A large metal claw clamps down on a 45 foot high 15 year old pine tree and severs it at the stump.
The man operating the large green piece of equipment, called afeller buncher is part of Donnie Lambert’s logging crew.
“I got five machines out here,” he said.
Lambert’s crew is cutting down trees on this 300 acre plot of land north of Summerville. The feller buncher moves down a dirt path surrounded by loblolly pine trees. With the scent of freshly cut pine, it smells like Christmas.
“We’ve been pretty busy since it’s been drying up,” he said.
Lambert’s happy to have some consistent dry weather after an unusually wet fall and winter. He wasn’t able to find much work during that time because the ground was too wet for the large machines. Lambert said he was sending employees all around the state to find work as a contractor.
“We tried to get them as many working days as we could,” he said. “It gets tiresome on them driving two or three hours every morning and every evening.”
That’s in addition to the several hours employees spend hauling freshly cut wood to paper mills. The industry with an estimated annual economic impact of more than $18 billion statewide, suffered many of the same troubles as farmers. Much of the land was too wet to access, and they couldn’t work for several months. But loggers aren’t eligible for the same aid. The state approved 40 million dollars in grants to help farmers.
“Forest industry felt like they deserve the same relief,” said Georgetown logger Joe Young. “I still believe that would have been fair.”
According to the South Carolina Department of Agriculture people who grow timber may be eligible for aid if they can prove they lost more than 40 percent of their crop. But loggers, the ones who harvest the trees aren’t able to apply for the same assistance. When South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley vetoed the measure that was eventually overridden by the legislature, she said didn’t want to give special aid to farmers that wasn’t available to other small businesses. And other business, like Young’s also suffered from the flooding.
“When the cash quits flowing you aren’t able to pay salaries, you are not able to pay your expenses, and pay your vendors. It just gets very crippling,” Young said. “Yet you know not to close the doors because after 59 years of doing this, I know this will pass.
Young said the bad weather was an especially hard hit to the industry because it came during the high season.
“Fall of the year is usually your best logging chance, generally speaking up until about middle of December,” he said. “We got our knees cut right out from under us.”
The state forestry commission estimates the industry lost more than $100 million as a result of October’s flooding. Crad Jaynes is the President of the South Carolina Timber Producers Association, a trade group. He said it is nearly impossible for loggers to make up the revenue they lost.
“Once it’s gone it's gone,” he said.
Jaynes explains many logging companies aren’t able to make up for those lost working days because they are already working at full capacity.
You can’t ramp up enough to make up for anything that’s lost,” Jaynes said. “You can try, but what will happen is you are going to start pushing your employees and your equipment to a point of breaking.”
Back in the woods north of Summerville, Lambert is happy to be contracted to cut wood here for nearly 10 weeks. In a navy blue uniform with yellow reflective stripes and a hard hat he said this job can be stressful, but at least it isn’t boring.
“Hey, if you didn’t love this business you wouldn’t be in it,” Lambert said.