Zell's long reach: this Northern Alberta contractor is developing the skills and tools for such mixed wood prescriptions as understory protection to add to his full-service bag of tricks

Canadian Forest Industries, Apr 2003 by Tice, Bill

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Zeller's Gilbert-Tech boom was the first of its type in western Canada. The product was originally designed for the Quebec market in order to satisfy that province's more stringent machine travel regulations.

Sawmiller's Perspective

For Darrel Mackay, woodlands manager at Vanderwell Contractors, the understory protection projects mean quicker growth of spruce, which reduces the crop rotation time, and provides their sawmill with logs featuring growth rings that are farther apart. Vanderwell is working with Forintek Canada Corporation, the wood product research institute, to determine what effect, if any, the wider growth rings have on lumber quality.

Vanderwell, which has been in business since 1945, harvests about 700 000 cubic metres annually from its Forest Management Agreement (FMA) and eight quota areas, which are purchased at public auction. The wood, which comes from as far away as 350 kilometres north and 350 kilometres east of Slave Lake, feeds the company's dimension sawmill, which produces up to 200 million bdft annually. The mill consumes about 840 000 cubic metres of fibre, with the additional wood coming from log exchanges, purchases, and other business agreements.

The wood that Zeller harvests for Vanderwell comes from their quota within the L2 Management Unit, which is within the Alberta Pacific Forest Industries Inc. FMA. Under the agreement, Alberta Pacific gets the aspen for its deciduous pulp mill located just east of Athabasca, and Vanderwell gets the spruce for lumber production.

"We are hoping to do between 60 000 and 100 000 cubic metres per year with Alberta Pacific," Mackay says. "We have lots of opportunity to work on understory protection projects as the Alberta Pacific pulp mill is the largest deciduous pulp mill in the world. They require a large volume of aspen and are always looking at innovative ways to increase their fibre supply."

Including the understory wood, Zeller says that depending on the year, his company harvests upward of 350 000 to 550 000 cubic metres annually, all for Vanderwell. Zeller started the company over 20 years ago with a John Deere 640 line skidder. His first contract was with Mostowich Lumber near Fox Creek, AB, which he worked with for 10 years. In addition to working for Mostowich, Zeller took on some work for the oil industry including right-of-way clearings for pipelines and leases.

In March 2003, Zeller split the company into two divisions - Zell Forestry Contractors and Zell Environmental Services.

"We have really grown over the past 20 years and the new names will better reflect what we do today," says Zeller, who will continue to run the forestry side of the operation, while a manager will run the environmental side.

Today, Zeller employs about 35 people in forestry and another 12 on the environmental side of the business. For his logging operations, he runs three feller bunchers, including two Timberjack and one Tigercat, two John Deere and one Komatsu delimber, all equipped with Risley Lim-mit delimbers, five John Deere skidders, two Timberjack wheeled harvesters, a Timberjack forwarder, and a Komatsu roadside processor with Keto harvesting head. For road building, he uses two Cat dozers - a D8 and a D5, and two road graders - a Champion and a John Deere. Zeller also runs two Western Star logging trucks.