Navigating Change in a Changing Industry
By Chip Capps, Executive Board Chairman
As always, when offered this space, I try to concentrate on a pressing theme in our industry that our association plays a part in. For this edition, there are so many important issues that I beg your forgiveness for jumping around among topics, in no particular order.
Change
My generation, the Boomers, has witnessed change in our industry at a rate never seen before. I can remember in the 1960s when short pulpwood was loaded by hand, and I knew plenty of men who used crosscut saws and snaked logs with horses. I was well associated with early chainsaws and the first dedicated wheeled skidders. Now look where we are. Running cutters, skidders, and loaders remotely from a desk is reality. Autonomous cars and even Class 8 trucks are already on the road without human drivers.
Timberland owners have transitioned from mostly private individuals and forest product companies to include investors such as TIMOs and REITs. Small sawmills and individual paper mills are almost non-existent. We have moved from a vertically integrated industry model to a more horizontal one, where each component must stand on its own profitability or be shut down. Is that good or bad? Arguments can be made for both sides, and it is worthy of a good discussion, but not here.
Technology
The formal definition of technology revolves around the use of scientific knowledge to solve human problems and the products created from that knowledge. We see its advancement in every part of our lives, from the transition of media from the trusted written word to all-pervasive digital media, to the incorporation of microprocessors in almost everything we touch daily. Glaring examples of where technology may take us include sensors that can detect thought patterns and transmit them into physical actions, and the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) potentially driving electronic tracking of products from the stump to their European destination. I do miss my daily newspaper.
Economic Uncertainty
This principle has a multitude of causes and effects. Some I have already touched on; others include lack of personal communication, political instability, globalization, industry consolidation, trade wars, and rapid technological advancement. The effects are just as numerous, including hesitancy to expand and invest, poor future planning, volatile financial markets, higher interest rates, and even shortcuts on safety or reduced efficiency. Not a good thing.
This is an unusual article for me, but it is a true summary of what is on my mind today concerning the future of logging and trucking as small businesses. The CLA’s mission is all-encompassing when it comes to our work. There are many obstacles we can tackle collectively to make them easier to navigate. We are an industry made up of strong individuals with an innate focus on what we want to accomplish, and your CLA is here to listen and help with the challenges ahead.
Thanks to all of you so much.
Chip Capps, Executive Board Chairman