This is an interesting time in the Wisconsin logging business, one of the state’s signature industries. Sawmills are looking for logs and the logging industry is looking for loggers.
“It’s a smidge more complicated than that but, yes, you could say there is a shortage of loggers,” said Henry Schienebeck, executive director of the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association, a trade association based in Rhinelander.
Among the reasons for the shortage is that is the state has lost loggers to the oil business. “A lot of guys migrated to North Dakota with the gas and oil boom,” Schienebeck said. “They are making good money out there. A lot of guys who were in our industry, they left and went out there.”
Also, logging is rough, often dangerous work, and not everyone wants to do it. “It takes a special type of person to work all day and operate the machines out in the woods,” said Andrew Komassa, a procurement forester for Weekly Timber & Pulp Inc. in Wautoma.
Still, if you have some mechanical aptitude and don’t mind being by yourself for long hours out in the woods, logging might just be a career to consider. “Right now, the mill inventories are extremely low,” Schienebeck said. “We haven’t seen them this low for this long of a period of time for several years, actually. There’s a lot of opportunity out there right now,” he said.
From JSOnline.com: https://www.jsonline.com/business/oil-boom-thins-the-ranks-of-loggers-b99345274z1-277457791.html