This is not going to be easy to explain for people who don’t know about logging and scaling logs. This is the way you tell how many board feet of lumber will be in a log. The small end of the log is scaled with a stick that is placed across the end of the log. It is marked in inches for the diameter but, the stick has numbers that tell how many board feet is in the log of a given length and diameter.
In olden times when most of the logging was Anaconda Copper, Minerals and Timberland, you put a number on the end of the trees. You cut down number one up to how many trees you cut that day. Then the scaler came and scaled your trees, gave you a slip with each tree listed as to how many board feet was in each tree. Then, when they started logging Forest Service government timber, they scaled them at the mill using a Forest Service scaler. When the truck was unloaded they would scatter out the logs and the scaler would scale each log.
Some forty years ago the Forest Service was calling Lodgepole Pine weed trees. Up to this time they weren’t cutting trees smaller than sixteen inches in diameter breast high. Del Conner of Conner Mill south of Darby designed a mill to take smaller timber (Lodgepole). It was fast and very profitable. So, for the next some years Lodgepole was logged more than anything else. Now the trucks were coming to the mill with one hundred or more logs to the load. The scaler would have quite the job scaling each log so, after the logs were scattered out on the ground, he would scale a few varying sized logs (as they ran pretty uniform in size) and count the logs from the load and take an average. If they were running an average of forty board feet to the log he would just tally the load as forty feet for each of how many logs on the load as again, they ran in uniform.
As for larger logs, they were loaded on the trucks; half the logs were butt forward and half butt back. The small end was scaled and it was hard to scale the end next to the cab. When speed was very necessary they just scaled the back end which could make for half the logs, when doubled the scale and would come out real accurate.
I’m trying to explain why the Forest Service started selling logs by the ton instead of by scaling. After the big fire of 2000, the Forest Service was selling fire killed timber at a giveaway price, then they decided to sell it by the ton. Now comes the rub! Fire killed trees lose their weight real fast, maybe up to 30% or so, meaning that the trucker could get 30% less for hauling fire kill rather for unburned timber. Now they will only take green timber that is close to the highway and no farther south than Darby.
Seeing as how the mills are getting these logs for nearly nothing they could afford to make up the difference in weight loss with the truckers and skidders, fallers, and also for the longer hauling as they have untold amounts of millions of feet of fire kill in the headwaters of the West Fork of the Bitterroot; perhaps forty million that could be logged from existing roads.
There are only two mills that use any amount of logs. One is Pyramid at Seeley Lake and the other is at St. Regis. For all practical purposes Pyramid is the sole buyer of timber in the Bitterroot. They come to bid on timber; they bring the guy from St. Regis to bid also so that it won’t look like Pyramid has a monopoly going. This whole thing is somewhat of a scam. The Forest Service main being is to sell timber. Pyramid has timber closer to home but it is more money and the environmentalists are looking down their necks. So, the Forest Service here in the Bitterroot is bending over backwards to keep the people happy.
What I’ve been trying to point out is the key to this whole thing is to go back to scaling the logs instead of weighing them. Then they would be happy to go back to taking fire kill. When the log goes through the barker, as all logs do, you can’t tell the difference in them. If they would do this maybe we can save what little elk cover we have left.
Would you contact those sorry people we have elected to look after the Forest Service and chew on them some? If there is something you don’t understand in this letter (and I’d be surprised if there isn’t) give me a call at 961-3423 and I will be happy to explain.
Floyd Wood
Corvallis