Business Publications

Track record: Dougie Connors is a natural as CWF Outstanding Logging Contractor of the Year for Atlantic Canada. For most of the past 20 years, the veteran logger has been Irving's top producer for his district, all the while topping quality and environmental performance as well

Canadian Forest Industries, Mar 2003 by Jamieson, Scott

Today's logger is constantly balancing the need for speed with growing quality and environmental demands. Modern automated sawmills need consistent log products to remain efficient, while Joe Public expects nothing but perfection in the woods. Yet loggers who become too finicky on log or regen quality, see both production and their paycheques dwindle.

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So when New Brunswick logger Dougie Connors manages to excel in both production and job quality for 20 years running, he deserves recognition. That's just what has happened, first in the form of countless production and QC awards from the folks at JD Irving's Chipman-Miramichi-St. Georges district, and most recently as last year's winner of the Canadian Woodlands Forum (CWF) Outstanding Logging Contractor Award for Atlantic Canada.

The latter award has been the pet project of the CWF's Peter Robichaud since he helped found the program in the late '90's. It recognizes first-rate logging contractors in each of the region's four provinces, with one then selected as the year's overall winner for Atlantic Canada. Factors considered in the detailed nomination and selection process include job layout, soil disturbance and environmental management, safety, machine management and maintenance, general housekeeping, and, of course, efficiency and production.

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Test of Time

It thus comes as no surprise to Allie DeGrace, Dougie Connor's supervisor with JD Irving, that his long-time supplier had bagged the CWF award.

"Dougie has assembled an impressive, well-run, efficient business," DeGrace explained in nominating Dougie. "His goal is to have the top producing operation around, all the while maintaining top quality and safety. Dougie meets these goals year after year. There have only been a few years when he has not been the top producer and this is an accomplishment in itself. But to routinely win quality awards as well speaks volumes about how Dougie runs his operation."

Indeed it does, and talking with the soft-spoken logger over breakfast in his native Doaktown, N.B., it's obvious that experience and a love for working in the woods drive this success. Dougie currently runs a mechanized CTL operation, but over the years has tried just about everything, from horse logging to cut-n-skid and more.

"I started part time in the woods with my Dad at 12, until I finished high school. I went out west and worked in a sawmill for a while, and then came back here to work in an Irving sawmill as a grader. But in the end, the mill work just wasn't for me, there wasn't enough variety. So I came back to Doaktown and went back into the woods."

That was in 1981. Dougie started by working for other area contractors, but by the mid 80's, he'd picked up his own 666 Clark Ranger skidder, a piece of logging history in itself. He moved to a new John Deere skidder in 1988, but in 1992 he decided to switch to cut-to-length (CTL) harvesting with the purchase of his first single-grip harvester.

In December 2002, when CFI dropped in on Dougie, his company DCT & Sons Logging Ltd. was on its third CTL machine, a Timberjack 608B tracked harvester with 762C head with some 14 000 hours on the dial.

Cutting Downtime

Both Dougie and his supervisors at Irving feel that a big factor in his consistently high production is above-average machine availability. The operation runs at least five days/week with two employees on 10-hr shifts. Dougie himself does a daily maintenance routine between the shifts, and will then run the harvester himself for a couple of hours if time permits.

"My operation has managed to cut 68 000 m[Symbol Not Transcribed] the last three or four years, which around here is a lot of wood for one machine - maybe a little too high in this type of wood to maintain year in year out, with all of the things out of a contractor's control, different operators, wood, weather, you name it. But we've been able to do that because the machine never breaks down, and there's no magic to that when it comes to harvesters - it takes maintenance. I take the four hours between shifts and work on everything that needs it. That way the operators on the main shifts run without delay."

On the weekend when weather permits, Dougie washes the harvester with a pressure washer (something that should keep his insurance agent happy, too), and carefully examines the clean machine for potential trouble, and changes the oil. The end result is a harvester that looks new despite the long hours. As Irving's DeGrace notes in his nomination, it also means reliable production.

"One of the reasons Dougie is a top producer is that he has very little downtime, and this can be attributed to his very strict maintenance program, which is all documented in his log book."

Reading between the lines, it is also likely that this disciplined maintenance regime has been a major factor in Dougie's impressive quality and environmental performance. Clearly, a well maintained machine runs cleaner and will probably measure more accurately than a poorly maintained one. Moreover, a crew bagging steady, orderly production is less likely to cut corners and sacrifice quality than a seat-of-the-pants crew constantly trying to make up for machine downtime.