ya know what really irritates me?

[duramax]

To those of you who inquire, Lachute is about 45 minutes NW of Montreal. Anyways , yes its extremely frustrating having huge monthy payments, and whenever we ask for a rate increase or a fuel cost adjustment, the mills either say "you're not efficient enough"or "you're not producing enough"or" work more hours" . This gets under my skin like you wouldn't believe!!!!!!  Hardwood lumber it worth twice as much as it was 10 years ago and we get the same rates as 15 years ago.  The problem is there are so many cut-throats here in Quebec that don't know when they're operating below cost. These are the ones that are going under as I mentioned earlier. Untill they cease to exist and the stronger ones have the upper hand, only then MAYBE the loggers will have more bargaining power. Sorry for all the complaining, if anyone else is in this boat with me.....misery loves company.

[Black_Bear]

Duramax:

How do the supply of logs coming into Quebec from the States affect your area?

Do you supply mills that also buy American logs and if so how has NAFTA affected the prices which you receive?

The American Govt seems to be playing hardball in the never-ending softwood lumber dispute. They hate to see some other country get the best of them. It would be something if the WTO forced the U.S. to pay back some of the tariffs and duties they have collected since 1998.

I apologize for putting you on the spot, but I am currently taking a U.S./Canadian business course and I find the Quebec/U.S. relationship an intriguing and historical one. 

[duramax]

Actually the mills we work for (and not sell to) don't buy alot of logs from the states. I wish I had wood to sell rather than cut the wood that the mills have allocated to them by the govenment. Up here more than half of the land in Canada is govenment owned. This makes it very hard for loggers to control commodity prices. We in turn must work for the mill on Crown land. There are also too many small mills in Quebec. For the past 3 years the Ministry of Natural Resources has changed the tree marking scheme 4 times. They're leaning more and more towards poorer quality trees so that there are less good sawlogs. This is an atempt to starve the weaker mills. And it's working. I know of at least 3 mills that were forced to close since they started this. The reason they're doing this is because there never used to be any kind of sustainable forestry practices in the 60's,70's and early 80's . Everything was clear cut. So in fact there isn't much effect on me regarding wood being shipped in from the U.S.

On the other hand, the softwood tarifs on Canadian wood going to the States does have an effect on me. The whole argument is that the U.S. claims that the Canadian mills are heavily subsidised by the government. This is not true. The mills must pay stumpage like everybody else. The closer the wood is to their mill, the more they have to pay and so on. So the tarifs that are placed on exports are more ar less deducted from the logging contractors. That forces us to try to be more efficent or work more hours. The problem with this is the harder we run the equipment the sooner it wears out and by the time they're paid for, they're finished . Then the cycle starts over again. 

I hope this answers your questions.
-Matt

[Black_Bear]

What method is used to allocate wood to the mills? Is it contractual, by bid, etc.

Some of the material I have read indicates that the Canadian stumpage programs provide a financial benefit to the producers. Apparently the mills feel the pinch and pass the cost onto guys like yourself. That sounds very similar to what is happening here.   

I understand how the tariffs have a trickle down effect on guys like yourself. It is too bad the U.S. Dept of Commerce does not see the regional picture and just sees the big picture.

I am from northern VT at the Rock-Island/Derby Line border and all you see are log trucks going north on I-91 and lumber trucks heading south on I-91. It is quite sad that we must continue to send our lumber north in order to be efficient. Are the majority of the operating mills in Quebec equipped with the latest optimizing equipment?

Ed

[duramax]

  I'm not sure exactly how the stumpage program works. I know that each mill is allocated a certain volume per year , the cut blocks are given to the closest mill. Then the mill takes the wood the it's equipped to do, and the other species are allocated to other mills in the area. This can be very difficult for the contractors. On a job we did for another contractor last winter, the wood was distributed to 14 different mills. Spuce&Balsam to one mill , cedar to another ,poplar to another and so on and so on...

    The mill we worked for last winter is highly efficient  with alot of new optimizing equipment. I'm not exactly sure what their production numbers are but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 bf per shift.

    I guess the reason for all the hardwood logs being shipped to Quebec from the U.S. is because of the dwindling supply of good sawlogs being harvested here. We need to ship our softwood south of the border because there isn't enough demand here for the volume that we produce. Quebec has more softwood because of the climate in the north, most of Quebec is barren like.

    I really hope the situation changes for the better in the next few years for both Canada and the U.S.

[OLD_ JD]

the way i understant this situation is,U.S. think the stumpfee they pay for the wood is kind of "undercover" subsy but in fact most of the teritory is so far off where there no road,no town....nothing as ex: the town of lebel sur Quevillons who was built in ALL by a lumber comp .more they go far up north less they paid for the wood.in U.S. where is mostly private land whit easy acces,the price of the log is more $$ wise..
about the $$ they paid for the wood it's depend of the geo. situation more u go up less u paid,whene u open a mill the gouv.have to supply u of so manny metric cubic wood\ per year
about the wood from the U.S. here where i live ,close to the border i see several truck coming every day loaded of saw log,mostely pulp and 3 and 4 grade saw log,are mill are more efficent and that kind of log
J.D.

[Ron Wenrich]

Duramax

In an early post, you said you supported sustainable forestry.  In a later post you complained about the marking of low quality wood, and how you think that is being done to squeeze out smaller mills. 

If this sustainable thing is going to work, then you're going to have to start to take out that low grade from the woods.  That's one of the problems about having an industry try to regulate themselves.  They talk about the ideal, but have to revert to bad practices to remain in the game.  I doubt that the government is trying to force weak mills out to support bigger mills, but is marking timber in a more sustainable manner. 

We used to sell lumber to Canadian markets.  I believe a lot of it went to the export markets in Europe.  Europe isn't exactly a hot spot of activity anymore, so those markets have pretty well closed for us, for the time being. 

I know the Canadians used to come pretty far south for logs.  It was mainly oak, which was a lot more plentiful here.  Oak markets have pretty well dried up in recent years, and I don't hear too much about the Canadians buying logs.  I'm sure the trucking costs have a lot to do with it, as well.

The fall of the American dollar has probably hurt, as well.  Your lumber isn't as "cheap" as it used to be and our sawlogs continue to be at a better price. 

[Black_Bear]

Maybe being right at the border is different because you always see the trucks coming and going. When I was back in VT in early April I drove from Lyndonville to the border and passed no fewer than a dozen trucks loaded with hard and softwood logs. Like Ron said, most of the hardwood was Oak. One of the truckers I talked to last month was coming from southern NH and northern MA.

I'm sure the dried up European market and the U.S. dollar has affected the trade, but to what extent?

I think one difference here is that if you own a mill you are not dependent on the govt for much of anything except tax breaks and regs.

Old_JD, the town you wrote of sounds a lot like the towns in northern Maine. The infrastructure may be intact, but at one time roads did have to be punched in and there wasn't much govt. assistance for that.

[UrbanLogger]

How much does a sapling cost?  Sounds expensive.

The Division sells 'em by the bundles. I think it ends up working out to a few cents each. They've given thousands to our neighborhood associations to promote urban plantings after our severe storms. They're typically 1/2" to 3/4" caliper so you have to "dibble" a lot of them to get good success. My favorites are the Chinkapins and Swamp Whites.

[slowzuki]

Swampdonkey would be the best person to answer this but in New Brunswick, I think it works like this:

Crown lands - their are only a few licences to cut on crown land issued.  The big players get them as they have to have harvesting and enviromental plans made up.  The licences allows a certain harvest in certain areas and you must pay stumpage fees to the province.

No small guys get a licence.  The big players sell parts of their license to smaller mill or subcontract the harvesting.  The smaller mills also sub out the harvesting.

So basically, the only way a small outfits gets to operate on crown land is via contract work with a larger mill or forest products company.

This is bad and good.  The good part is the larger company has management plans and may supervise the work.  They don't want envirmental fines etc because they can't just go out of business to deal with it.

Bad is the small guys make no money, no incentive to work independantly of the managment plan if some areas weren't considered when prepping the plan.  No chance to harvest based on markets, it all has to be harvested in a period of time or you're fired.

So many small guys try to get private work.  Hard in NB compared to Nova Scotia as they have much more private land.

The private work can be bad and good too.  Some of the "slobber logging" happens here as the owner usually doesn't have the resources or clout to force the contractor into good practices or a good knowledge of what the practises should be.

[Ron Wenrich]

We have quite a few loggers that subcontract to bigger mills.  Most mills don't have their own logging crew thanks to workman's comp prices.

That can be OK, if you're looking for a steady paycheck; but, you're still at the mercy of the weather and other unknowns.  From a mill standpoint, they know how much they can spend on logs.  So they take that price and deduct the stumpage.  The balance goes to logging and trucking.

It works out OK if stumpage isn't too high or log prices too low.  But, everyone likes to squeeze someone else.  Mills often own the trucks, so they can only squeeze the logger.  They can do it in 2 ways - by unit price or by grade stick. 

I've known several successful independent loggers.  They make their money on marketing logs, not so much by logging.  When you subcontract, you lose that ability and the lucrative end of logging.

[slowzuki]

Another point is the government here does not provide any form of roadways to its land or maintenance, nothing. 

I've heard in the US they US Forest Service builds roads and seems to be more involved.

[duramax]

 Ron,
   
       I know it sounds rediculous that the government would try to starve a mill, but I've heard this from at least 3 different reliable sources. An engineer, a representative of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and a sawmill owner.

      As for the tree marking issue, we were already removing UGS trees (unacceptable growing stock) and no AGS trees. The percentage of trees removed went from 40% to 35% to 30% and now were at about 25%. When you start walking a feller buncher 150 feet between trees, there isn't much production. The buncher does all the work and we need to take cash from the skidders to support the cost of the buncher.  We never sacrifice the quality of our work to increase production. Most of the mills that we work for appreciate not having to pay fines, so we are in demand.  If it comes down to us ruining our reputation to make ends meet, we'll quit.

      The problem still reverts to the mills not getting the volume of logs they need to survive. We're producing more pulpwood instead of sawlogs. Untill they weed out the weaker mills, the large mills will continue to suffer as well. I also forgot to mention that this season the MNR is only issuing half of the AAC to each mill untill october. At that point, they will only issue another 20 to 30% to the mills that have completed all of thier allocated cuts. So in fact they're cutting back a total of 20% of the  overall AAC.

      Time will tell what's going to happen to the loggers from all of this.

[UrbanLogger]

Another point is the government here does not provide any form of roadways to its land or maintenance, nothing. 

I've heard in the US they US Forest Service builds roads and seems to be more involved.

This is true, Slowzuki. It is effectively a subsidy on many US Nat'l Forests.

Many landowners I know feel that there is unfair socialist market competition from some Nat'l Forest districts, particularly in the South where we have exceptionally productive growth conditions.

Private landowners who have to eat the costs of TSI and road maintenance are forced to compete for stumpage with federal managers that tally those costs in another account.

This ends up being a disincentive to manage uneven-age and many choose to crop pulp in shorter rotations for fast cash.