The 26th biennial Forest Products Machinery and Equipment Exposition, slated for July 19-21 in Atlanta, promises to be the significant event in what has to date been an otherwise cloudy year. What distinguishes this year’s Expo from the previous 25 is the fact that so much has changed on the equipment landscape since the 1999 show.

The founder and co-owner of James E. Raines Logging earned his competitive stripes as a middle child in a clan of 10 siblings—seven brothers and three sisters. The 41-year-old entrepreneur thrives on challenge, so it was only natural he should choose logging as a vocation. Yet it was a career path that Jim Raines discovered by accident rather than by design.

Costs are always a concern, especially in tight times, as is true in many timber markets today. Tire maintenance is an area where the prevention of problems can be simple and straightforward, with benefits ranging from prolonged tire life to fewer failures. For loggers running their equipment longer, it is just as crucial to make sure the tires last as it is to make sure the engine holds up.

Is it possible for loggers and consuming mills to work together to address the problems facing our industry? For members of the Wood Supply Research Institute (WSRI), the answer is yes. Now entering its third year, WSRI is funding and directing third party research of specific problem areas that concern loggers and consuming mills.

A federal judge on May 11 agreed with a lawsuit by the state of Idaho and stopped the Bush administration from implementing the Forest Service roadless plan which would have banned roadbuilding and logging, except in rare cases, on more than 58 million acres of national forest land. U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge accepted Idaho’s argument that the rule poses serious risks to national forests and adjoining lands by restricting active management.

I am e-mailing you to voice my total disagreement with your editorial in the May issue of Timber Harvesting (Hope For Tomorrow, by Todd Douglas). Any thinning of the logging ranks should come from the forces of the free market. To establish a political, quasi-private yet government-backed council to decide what constitutes a professional logging operation is an absurd and frightening idea.

In the first leg of a program that will be expanded, Tidewater Equipment Co. and Tigercat Industries sponsored a local equipment demonstration May 4-5 in southwest Georgia. About 75 loggers and guests attended. A Friday night chicken and ribs barbecue at the camp property of Mike and Kim Oliver of Evergreen Timber, Cuthbert, Ga., set up the next day’s demo, staged near Lumpkin on the logging site of Ken Melton, principal of local K&A Logging.

John Deere now has a torque converter option with the introduction of the mid-sized 648G-III TC skidder. With the TC option, this tractor gives 170 gross HP, yet weighs in at 28,500 pounds for an outstanding power-to-weight ratio and excellent drawbar pull, according to John Deere. It also features a bump shifter for easy operation through 6 forward and 6 reverse gears.

We have held off on buying. We have six skidders and the newest one is a 1999 and the oldest one is a 1993. We have a ’93, a ’95, a ’96, two ’98s and a ’99. So we’re really in need of skidders, but we just can’t afford to buy them. What we’re doing is just running them out until they just won’t run anymore. We’ve got one delimber that’s getting pretty close to trading. We normally trade our cutters every three years, and we’re in our fourth year on one of our cutters and plan on running it five.