calling all fallers

[forestryworks]

looking to become a faller

halfway through my forestry degree right now

i know the forest service is kinda tough to get into
cause once you're in, you're in for life, pretty much... right?

as far as careers, falling crew first, and urban forestry second

any advice?

 

[burlman]

I don't think there is to much work left if you want to be a dedicated faller only. the west coast is your only range. most eastern companies are going mechanical falling. I just read that in british columbia they started an intense certification course, due to all the fatalities these past few years. I fall for my own operations, fall and limb a hitch, then I get to run the skidder for a litlle break, in between. also do urban trees in the warm months, the variety is nice, I like all the jobs in my carreer, because of the change. I couldnt be a faller everyday, week after week, nor can I longer run my portable sawmill every day, but with the option of changing as the mood hits, you look forward to the next days activities.

 

[SRT-Tech]

^ the BC Fallers Certification course is around $10,000. Its a two month program, at malaspina university. Factor in relocation and living costs for those 2 months, plus another chunk of C- notes for the WCB exam afterwards.

 

[Sprig]

^ the BC Fallers Certification course is around $10,000. Its a two month program, at malaspina university. Factor in relocation and living costs for those 2 months, plus another chunk of C- notes for the WCB exam afterwards.

Not to mention seasonal, back breaking work, feast and famin, union bs, etc etc.. Most of the fallers I know (who are still alive) worked from the bottom rung, chasing, choking, swamping, bucking, pulling cable, what-ever, its not something you generally just decide to do and go jump in. Quite frankly if all you had was a course in falling on your resume you'd be looking long and hard to find someone to take you in/under wing as, as far as I'm concerned, there is so much to learn I don't see a course getting it all together and preparing someone for the actual reality of the job.

I may be mistaken but this is only my personal opinion.



Serge

 

[Gologit]

If you're getting a degree in forestry why not just go to work for one of the timber companies? They all employ staff foresters and the bigger companies employ many of them.
Theres nothing wrong with wanting to be a faller. As far as I'm concerned it's the best job in the woods. If I hadn't had a log roll on me and ruin my knees I'd still be falling. But take a look around...theres a lot more old foresters still going to work every day than there are old fallers.
If you're interested in forestry as a career PM me and I'll give you the name and address of the people I work for. They require a four-year degree from an accredited college but they will hire with no other experience than the degree. They can let you know what they're looking for.
As far as being a faller...I'm not sure how you'd break into that anymore. Theres still a lot of falling out here but you just about have to know somebody to get started. Lot's of travel, lots of being away from home all week. No real job security. Not much money until you get established and have the contacts to work steady. Hope this helps. Bob

 

[SRT-Tech]

Not to mention seasonal, back breaking work, feast and famin, union bs, etc etc.. Most of the fallers I know (who are still alive) worked from the bottom rung, chasing, choking, swamping, bucking, pulling cable, what-ever, its not something you generally just decide to do and go jump in. Quite frankly if all you had was a course in falling on your resume you'd be looking long and hard to find someone to take you in/under wing as, as far as I'm concerned, there is so much to learn I don't see a course getting it all together and preparing someone for the actual reality of the job.

I may be mistaken but this is only my personal opinion.



Serge

could'nt agree more. i know a few loggers and they are saying that there bosses will not hire someone from that course, under any circumstances. They want guys that want to start at the bottom, and work their way up.

 

[tek9tim]

You really can't be a "faller" for the Forest Service. The crews that do the most felling in the Forest Service are fire crews, and unless you think burning snags are a fun thing to get under with a saw, (happens to be one of the things that gets me out of bed in the summer) and of course working your way through the ranks to become faller on a crew will take a couple seasons, but ultimately, being a faller on a crew is not a career choice. You make roughly 11.80 an hour, and can only work up to 6 months a year. (typically) Plus, your body gets beat. Most of the guys I know that've been FS fallers for several seasons in a row have had seperated shoulders from packing the 044 around the woods 16 hours a day all summer. Dumb place to be with a college degree. So, sticking with the fact that fire crews dump the most trees (ok, aside from timber stand improvement crews, but they don't cut much over 5" dbh) having a college degree would put you up toward being leadership on a crew. In order to be leadership, you can't have earplugs in and be running a saw. Plus, everbody hates working for somebody with a college degree and no on the ground experience. The better place for you to be with a college degree is to be working in the timber shop. As far as "once you're in, you're in for life" that isn't entirely true, and where it is, it's not as you'd expect. Once you're a permenant seasonal (not easy to become), it's harder for them to get rid of you. But, I know plenty of people on downsizing districts that are getting moved across the country to new jobs, because the one they did have got eliminated, and rather than make a career change, they've made life changes and moved.

When it comes down to it, tipping over trees is a hell of a lot of fun, but it takes a good body and compromise to make much of a career out of it. I thought the whole point of getting a college degree was to avoid the knuckle dragging jobs.

 

[forestryworks]

for most people gettin' a degree is so they don't have to break a sweat doing anything...

not me

i like working outside
i've done manual labor most of my life
and i'd like to get in some big jobs before i get old

my degree is something to fall back on
and quickly rebound

always have a plan B

 

[Jacob J.]

I highly recommend you stay away from timber falling as a career choice. I worked for years as a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service on "Hotshot" crews and then I quit fire management to go to work full time as a timber falling contractor. I'll outline the important points so you can make an informed decision.

1.-Contractor's/logger's broadform, insurance, and OSHA account- Just to get these three things in Oregon/Washington will set you back around $2200.00 total. Some agencies will let you pay a portion down and make monthly payments, but that's only on the broadform. You still have to shell out $540.00 for a comp account and pay your own health insurance if you want it. Payroll taxes are a whole different animal.

2.-Industry contacts- you need to know people in the industry if you want to get work. People have to know that you can dump timber day in and day out, and do it right and be reliable. It's a lot harder than it looks. On a straight falling job (dumping trees straight down the hill with the butts up) you'll have to put around 275+ trees down a day to be profitable. That includes flushing the butts on anything over 12" and taking a log off of anything that the processor can't handle (usually 22" and above). On a full manufacture job (falling, limbing, and bucking) in western second growth plan on getting at least three loads a day. People aren't going to hire you just because you're a cutter with your own numbers. Cutters that work as employees make dismal wages.

3.-Reliable employers- There's a lot of loggers out there that hate fallers with a passion. I've heard many loggers, especially in bigger companies, refer to fallers as a "necessary evil". A lot of them will quote you a price at the beginning of the job and then find excuses during the job or at the end of the job to pay you less money or completely rip you off. I'm going through a deal right now with a contractor that owes me and my partner about $4500, he won't return our calls and won't acknowledge our existence.

4.-Misc. expenses- On paper it sounds like fallers make good money, you'll hear guys talk about making upwards of $375/day or better. Those jobs are few and far between and you spend a lot of that money doing the work. Plus, there's a lot of layoff time unless you have several loggers on your string which rarely works because keeping a logger satisfied is a high maintenance job.

Basically you can take your degree and go to work in private industry as a professional forester doing pre-sale work, layout, and contract administration and make a worry-free $50-60k a year with a benefit package. Or, you could buy saws, jacks, rolls of chain, a chain grinder, axes, wedges, spencer tapes, multiple hardhats, tally counters, scale books, saw parts, and many other necessities and bust your butt to make $40k a year, most of which you'll spend on the job.

The best money in falling is working for the helicopter loggers. But this involves living on the road 2-300 days out of the year in a fifth wheel or pull trailer and not seeing your family much. Once in a while a cutter will meet or marry a woman that will tolerate that lifestyle but again that's extremely rare. The divorce rate for cutters is high, the quality of life is low, and at the end- you're not left with much.

 

[slowp]

And here is how it is with the USFS right now in my neck of the woods...the owl forest. I've worked 30 years now all in timber except for 4 years as an engineer. I'm not a "Forester" but have a 2 year degree. Right now I'm doing what I love, contract administration. I'll retire doing this, I hope. Our people up here in the Pacific Northwest have finally realized that they have not hired any new people in eons, and the workforce is retiring in droves.
They are TALKING about getting new foresters hired, but I have not seen any action. Here's what has happened in the past:
1990s, the Clinton Forest Plan was put into effect. The west side timber programs crashed. The timber-engineering purge went into motion. Timber and engineering jobs were done away with, folks were given the option of moving to whereever the need was (I ended up in AZ) or being fired. More
'ologists were hired.
Throughout the 90's the timber budgets were cut, trees were not. At one point, we were told that there would be no more timber, period. (that's when I gave engineering a try).
Bush is elected: Suddenly, the anti-timber management people started saying "We're going to put up timber sales." But, they had gotten rid of much of the timber workforce. The politics of Washington DC did not match the rulings of the courts. We're contracting out a lot of the layout and such.
The district I am working on now, used to CUT 150 MMBF a year. Now we try to put up 8MMBF. It is one of the worst districts as far as the planning goes.
So, if you chose to work as a Forester for the feds, in timber, be prepared for constant change. The agency is unable to plan beyond a year, and morale is at an all time low. You no longer can be guaranteed to work till retirement. Jobs are being consolidated and contracted out. Also, there is the sanity factor. As a Forester, you would work in the field for a few years, then be relegated to the office and "management". 90% of the people seem to love this, they claim they can do planning from the GIS and maps and only go out on sunny nice days. That is part of the problem.

I can only keep sane anymore by going out to the field. When I have to go to meetings where sales are planned (gutted) I go mental! All of the decision makers on how the sales will be are biologists of some sort. Right now, there are no foresters. The planners seem to be anti-logging and only put out enough volume to keep their jobs. But, there are better places than here.


What keeps me sane, is that I get to work with folks who have to produce to make a living...I call it the REAL WORLD. There arw not days of endless meetings to make a decision, and on the ground work gets done.
I've been told I have the best job in the FS. I tend to think so. You might be interested. I go out and check contract compliance on one hand. On the other, I also work as a go between, trying to fix errors made during the planning process. But, should you choose to do this, you have to be out on hot, dusty days, or on days when the rain is pouring down. If the loggers are out, you should be out. I'm often down in the brush with the rigging crew, or checking out the falling. The ground is rough, and I'm stumbling/walking through slash. But, I don't have to go jogging after work to keep in shape. The attitude of the loggers in this area has also changed from what it was during the 80s. Then it seemed we were in constant battle, now the ones that are left, pretty much follow the rules.

Anyway, you might look into the field of sale administration. You should spend time doing timber cruising and layout, get some logging systems training. You could also go through the FS saw certification, and maybe get on some fires. Our saw certification is a 40 hour course and then working with the certifier. There's A,B, and C classifications, with C fallers doing the big or difficult trees. It is no way like production falling.

The fallers I work with have all started on rigging crews. Like previously stated, it looks like they make good money but they have to buy things like a $1000 saw and accessories, a 4X4 pickup (one logging company provides transportation) and are usually not working part of the year. There aren't many old fallers out working, and there's a lot of injuries.

The logging crews have a high turnover. It seems like I see different faces every week. The wages are not that good and the work is hard and dangerous. But, at least they get things done....

This is my lengthy view of both sides of working in the woods. .
You could try a couple years with the FS as a summer seasonal, go work on a rigging crew, and then make a decision. Or go with a private company. Sounds like you are young and have time to try things out. Any questions? Good luck!:bang:

 

[Jacob J.]

Slowp, that was a terrific post and it's right on the money. Being a forester for the government is a dead end career path these days, unless you have a degree in some kind of *ology*, soil science, or fisheries. There will never be logging on the scale of what it was 20-30-40 years ago because there's so much existing legislation in place, even if we had republican administrations in the white house for the next 20 years.

In fact, a lot of people I knew in the regular F.S. general population that were in Timber/Engineering/Silviculture switched over to fire management in the mid-late 90's and have had continuing successful careers as a result. The crew superintendent for La Grande hotshots right now was a timber sale admin for 16 years. One of the guys that broke me in on the hotshots had spent 21 years in silviculture as a tree planting inspector, and he was as tough as old shoe leather. He continued to fight fire up until his retirement at age 58.

As far as cutting tree on forest fires, that's a tough market to get into now. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Managment overhead teams only like to use commercial fallers for that purpose. Even a "C" certified agency faller only gets to fall a handful of trees a year whereas a commercial private industry faller is tackling tough/dangerous trees everyday. I was an agency "C" faller for ten years before going to work as a falling contractor and I quickly learned when I started that my ten years as a forest service faller really didn't teach me a lot, other than a good understanding of the basics. There's also a company here in Oregon that is basically getting most of the on-call forest fire falling work, and that's Northwest Timber Fallers http://www.nwtimberfallers.com/.

They've been establishing a pool of contractors for CWN fallers since 2000 and they're the "go-to" group now for the F.S. and B.L.M., and individuals don't stand much chance of getting good fire assignments anymore. The state governments will still hire individual fallers but it's only a matter of time before NWT sews that market up as well.

Forestryworks, if you want to cut trees get a job with a tree service company that is owned by or employs a reputable arborist. Have them teach you about rigging and falling. The pay starting out isn't very good but you'll learn a lot and the quality of life is a lot better than an entry level job in logging. Talk to one of the experienced arborists here, Like RBtree (one of the best on the planet in my opinion) or John Paul Sanborn (a moderator here). Get their ideas on how to start out in that industry. If you absolutely have to work as a pro faller to satisfy your curiosity, then your best route is to go to work for a small logger on the logging crew initially and then have them get you experience with falling and bucking. There's a lot of gypo loggers that cut and log the timber themselves.

 

[Gologit]

Take the advice

Forestryworks....If you're still with us...listen to these guys. Tek9Tim, JacobJ, slowp, all these guys have real world experience in what you want to do. Listen to them...make copies of their posts and read them over once in awhile. You'd be surprised how different this business is from the inside looking out. Most of us still involved in the timber industry are here because it's what we really like to do. Most of us have never really wanted to be any place else but the woods. But to advise a young man starting out to try to make a career out of logging would be a mistake. I know I'll get some argument here but I just don't think the living will be there for a kid starting out like it's been for me. If you want to be a faller you have to know that you have a good chance of being permanently crippled or worse before you're fifty.
Get your degree, shoot for a staff or management job. Cut wood on the week-ends if you want to. Hook up with somebody already involved in logging and see if you like it as much as you're going to need to to make it a career. I'll get off my soap-box now, Good luck to you...whatever you decide. Bob

 

[redprospector]

My son wanted to be a faller, so I put him to work felling trees and trying to teach him how not to be injured or killed on the job (I have come close a few times, so I know what not to do.). He has done a good job for the last 4 years, but I heard of an opening in a local municipality and he jumped on it.
He said the pay was better, and there was something they called benefits. He can always cut trees on the weekend if he gets the bug, but it's hard to support a family felling trees.

Andy

 

[forestryworks]

you guys have put out some heavy information

thanks to each of ya...

stay safe

 

[gavin]

yeah lots of good posts on here. i got my first taste of real falling doing forest fire fighting on a unit crew (our equivalent of the hot shot crews) for the b.c. forest service (my summer job). its what i really love doing and i'm looking into the falling course.

from the info i've found there's local colleges that do it, and the ones i have seen are a 30 day course which runs $9500-$10,000. then after that you get a log book to track your progress, and you have to work with a qualified supervisor for up to 180 days before you can take a test to become a fully certified faller....if you find a company that will take you. keep in mind this is for british columbia, i'm sure its easier and cheaper in other provinces/states because this is a fairly new program here.

my ex's uncle is a faller and i've spoken to him about becoming a faller. like most people say, its not the best idea to do it as a career, but if its what someone loves to do, good luck talking them out of it. haha. but good on you for getting a degree to have a backup plan. falling is very up and down: shutdowns in the summer for heat (fire risks) and in the winter (from snow)...oh yeah and out here all the fog, since a lot of places you get flipped in with a chopper. also, i'm not sure about other places, but in b.c. the forest industry has gone under a major operational shift. major companies don't have their own employees much anymore. just about everything is contracted now. like timberwest is basically a landowner now. they have key people to decide what gets done, but they contract the harvesting out. there are some very large contractors out there though, so there's still company jobs, but most fallers i've talked to work for themselves, so they're always moving around from contract to contract. hope i helped a bit here. i used to work summers as an engineer/surveyor (mostly on the dumb end of a tight chain and laying out standing stem wood, kinda like a simplified version of timber cruising). working in the woods is definately something i love.

 

[Forest Steward]

Well, I'm kind of in the same boat. I just finished up with school in December with my associates in conservation. Basically, it means nothing in the woods. There's no doubt it helped me better understand how I'm effecting things, but very little practical experience. I was fortunate enough to get set up with a local logger by me school and have been there for a year and a half now. Around here, this is the only way to break into the field. Overhead costs are getting ridiculous, and the debt load you would have to carry for skidders and such is becoming outright unmanageable (that is, unless you have some rich relatives...which I don't). I fell in love with working in the woods about thirty seconds after I started, but realized quickly that falling is only part of it. Like it's already been said, if you want to work for the large companies, they already want experience, but if you want to work on your own, you are going to have to diversify. I'm not sure about the yearly conditions you encounter, but around here, good logging weather is limited. In the down time your either going to have to do firewood, learn how to saw lumber, etc...which encounters more overhead costs. I hate discouraging people from the field, especially if your like me and just outright enjoy the work, but there are some serious factors to consider, and if your have the ambition and luck, to overcome.

 

[1I'dJak]

hey man, do what your heart tells you....i was a prettty good student, went to university but didn't have my heart into it...liked learning but couldn't see myself happy at the end...worked in the woods quite a bit....then, couple years ago, while finishing a diploma course i got a job for a tree service...now i've got my own business...most of my work consists of climbing trees in the forest...whether it be standing stem or windfirming...its fun exciting work...big rush dumping down a 60 ft top with a 200t, or chucking your grapple and swinging from one tree to another....the pay is pretty good but like the fellas say though, the work is seasonal...that's why i'm saving money for a truck and chipper...hoping to balance it out....if you truly want to do something and are smart enough to figure out how to make it work, it'll happen

 

[gavin]

hey 1 I'd jack, i'm probably going to be taking the falling course sometime next year. do you find that you get more or less work days as a climber than a faller would get? if i go through with falling i plan go to camp wherever there's work...camp work doesn't really bother me.

 

[Jacob J.]

Do they offer a loan program for you guys taking that falling course? $10k is awfully steep for that kind of education, especially when it'll take a chunk or two out of your hide as well.

 

[gavin]

haven't looked into loans, but if there is i think it would be through the government, like for university degrees. you also have to pay for your living expenses, and it says provide your own transportation to and from the sites when you're doing field training. i'm guessing that would be a problem in a car, and you'd need a truck.