Out of Dutch: hard work pays off for BC interior contractor John Van Ommen, who has gone from trading RRSPs to buy a used skidder to running a 20-employee operation

Canadian Forest Industries, Sep/Oct 2004 by Tice, Bill

When John Van Ommen started working in the bush at 15 years old, he didn't realize logging would become a life long obsession. Thirty years later, he has a crew that numbers in excess of 20 people during the busy winter logging season, but the soft-spoken son of Dutch immigrants still makes the trek out to the woods almost every day.

[Graph Not Transcribed]

[Graph Not Transcribed]

"I have great people working for me, but I still like to participate in the day-to-day activities," concedes Van Ommen. "People in the forest industry are just really good to work with, and my employees are no exception. They get up early and put in a good day's work, and I like to be part of that."

Van Ommen's love for the forest industry comes naturally. After immigrating to Canada, his father, Henry, worked as a logger on Vancouver Island. A long strike forced him into other jobs, including farming and trucking, before he eventually moved the family to Silver Creek, near Salmon Arm in the BC Interior. There he purchased a small sawmill. That mill was the starting point for the younger Van Ommen's career, as he learned to drive a Cat at the ripe old age of nine.

John's older brother, Herman, also went into the logging business and had a contract to fall, skid and buck for Lavington Planer Mills, which is now a Tolko operation. John started working for Herman as a buckerman, and hasn't looked back since. "I have to admit that I really didn't know anything when I started," notes John. "I couldn't even sharpen a saw."

[Graph Not Transcribed]

Perseverance paid off, and a year later John took a job as a skidder operator with Silver Creek Industries, where he stayed for a couple of years, until he decided it was time to venture out on his own. With a brand new power saw in hand, he started Van Ommen Contracting, and did contract bucking for other loggers in the Salmon Arm area for $35 a load. On a good day, he could do 10 loads, but often it was far less.

Four years later, in 1981, John started working for Dave Stuart, a road builder for the local Federated Co-op mill. In addition to bucking for Stuart, John ran the loader during busy times, and kept Stuart's equipment running as a self-taught mechanic. In 1983, John went back to operating a skidder on contract for a company in Adam's Lake, before eventually taking a "wage job" with Titus, a Sicamous, BC-based logging company.

Taking the plunge

After a year with Titus, John bought the skidder he had been operating for Titus - a John Deere 740 line machine, and contracted back to them.

"I bought the 740 on a rent-to-own deal," recalls John. "Against the advice of my financial advisor, I took $4,500, which was all of my Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) money, and paid the first month's rent of $3,000 and spent the rest as a down payment on a new pick-up truck. The total price tag for the skidder was $50,000 and it cleaned us out completely. We made the first six payments and then tried to find a bank that would finance the balance, but it was the early 1980's when the interest rates were really high and no one would lend us the money. Eventually, the Federal Business Development Bank (FBDB) agreed to give us a loan, but we had to put up everything we had as collateral."

Things were looking up for John, and his wife Carol, until one of the three brothers that owned Titus died and the business folded. With huge payments to make on the skidder and mortgage payments to make on the family home, John was understandably worried. Yet within a few weeks he picked up a job with Ron Kriese of K&S Road Builders, working on right-of-ways in the Malakwa area, near Salmon Arm. That turned out to be a good fit, as K&S kept John busy enough to hire a faller to work with him on the right-of-ways, and then in 1988, he bought out the logging portion of K&S's contract.

"By that time, I had decided that I was in this for the long term," notes John. "I had learned a lot from Ron at K&S, and I was ready to go at it in a bigger way, and on my own as a full service contractor."

A year later, John added a loader to his fleet and hired another operator, and then in 1989 he bought two brand new John Deere skidders. "At that point in time, Carol and I did everything ourselves. We would be up at 3 am to get the paycheques ready, and with the commute out to the bush, 100 hour work weeks were not uncommon."

Growing up

All of the hard work paid off, and in the early 1990's Van Ommen Contracting went through some major growth spurts, buying a Caterpillar excavator in 1992, and the company's first Kenworth logging truck in 1993. In 1995, Van Ommen Contracting bought out another local logging company called Pardix, and took over its equipment, along with its logging contract for Westar's Malakwa mill, which is now predominantly a western red cedar mill that is owned by Louisiana Pacific (LP).

The Malakwa mill, along with Bell Pole in Salmon Arm, have become Van Ommen's bread and butter, although many of the logs they harvest are shipped to other company's mills through trade and purchase agreements between the tenure holders. Last year, Van Ommen Contracting harvested 120,000 m[Symbol Not Transcribed] of timber.