Scott Swanson
At the Sweet Home High School Auto Shop Tuesday morning, Sept. 30, Nikolas Dishaw was getting a lesson in cutting – trees.
Dishaw, a junior, sat in an office chair-like operator’s seat, surrounded by joysticks and buttons. His feet danced over several pedals as he watched a boom and jaws on a vertical video screen about the size of a big-screen TV directly in front of him. On the screen, his “machine” rolled forward toward a stand of trees, one of which he grasped with the jaws and “zooooom” a blade cut it off, zipping through the trunk in less than a second.
Dishaw was one of several dozen students who got a chance to try out a Caterpillar 522 feller buncher simulator provided by Peterson Equipment of Portland.
In the actual woods, the feller-buncher has a constantly spinning saw blade on the end of a boom similar to a that of a backhoe, but with much more maneuverability, which can reach, cut and lift bunches trees from a distance of 20 to 30 feet and weighing anywhere from 13,500 to 35,600 pounds, depending on the model and how it is equipped.
The $100,000 simulator’s visit to the high school was arranged by D&S Logging, a local firm, said Jeff Strasheim, a machine sales representative for Peterson based in Eugene.
“We had it at the logging show and D&S asked if we could bring it down here,” Strasheim said as students clustered around the unit, all watching the video screen intently.
As Kara Baker worked on the array of buttons, levers and pedals that enable the actual machine to crawl through the woods, swivel on a dime, and thread a proverbial needle to cut trees and stack logs, Dishaw and Caleb Winn watched closely and offered advice.
“It’s a lot more difficult than it looks,” said Dishaw, who said his only previous experience with heavy equipment has been on a tractor. “I got up there and I was a lot more confident I could do it. It took me a while, but I got it.
“I’ve always wanted to be a logger.”
D&S Logging owner Don Arndt said he and his son Larsen arranged for the visit “just to educate kids.
“The stereotype of the woods industry is not very accurate,” he said. “We wanted to give them a little more indication of what’s going on out there, and let them do something that’s hands-on and fun and realistic.”
He said some of the teens discovered that they were better at operating machinery than they expected.
“Some of the girls got on there and in three minutes they were cutting trees.”
Dustin Nichol, the high school’s wood and auto shop teacher and adviser to the Forestry Club, said for some young people, a chance to experience the simulator is a wake-up to what modern logging is really about.
“I’d fill the shop with them if they’d let me,” he said of the simulator.
Strasheim said the unit will do “everything a machine sitting in the forest will do,” from pre-operation checks of grease and fluid levels, to realistic cutting, bunching and stacking of logs. “It takes you through the whole thing.”
“We have simulators for almost every piece of heavy equipment Caterpillar makes: graders, shovels – you name it,” he said. “We’re thinking, between Don Arndt and CTC, that we can get it here more often.”
Arndt noted that Caterpillar has budgeted “a lot” of resources towards public education.
“These simulators are spendy,” he said. “They have them on the road all the time. They took it up to the Pacific Logging Conference in Molalla and they were bringing kids in by the busload to try it.”
He and Nichol said the simulator provides an opportunity for students to learn about opportunities in the world of logging or other heavy equipment-related occupations without the risk of operating a real machine.
Nichol said for some, it’s a chance to get up close to machines they generally view only from a distance, usually on the highway.
“People see those pieces of equipment running down the road and they say, ‘What is that?’ Here they can see what’s really going on.”
He said students do not realize what’s out there for them, citing Weyerhaeuser’s difficulty in finding people to work in some of its mills, including Foster, local logging firms’ search for qualified technicians and mechanics, and a similar need at the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District.
“There’s an operator shortage,” Nichol said. “People think the timber industry is gone, but it’s still here. It’s just reduced. People are retiring and nobody’s replacing them. These kids can go out there and get a job that pays $18-20 an hour, plus benefits.
“What kids don’t realize is that this isn’t pulling green chain any more. It’s not the work it was 25 years ago. It’s maintaining machinery. Even if the wages aren’t too good, people need to think about the benefits such as retirement.”
And the wages in some fields related to heavy equipment are very good, he said.
“A lot of people don’t know that using equipment is not jumping up in the morning and going to work and getting dirty. There are a lot of technical jobs now in the woods, equipment operators. These machines all have computers and keyboards in them and diagnostic checks can be made from Sweden or Finland by satellite or phone.
“Cat has been running an ad in Portland for weeks to find qualified technicians to work on these pieces of equipment. They can’t find them. Cat probably charges $100 an hour for equipment repair and the technician probably gets $25 to $30 of that.”
Arndt said it’s not just equipment companies like Papé and Peterson that are looking for qualified technicians. It’s tough for local loggers to find qualified equipment operators these days.
“There is no labor pool any more,” he said. “There used to be a small one. Most loggers are getting older. We have to get some new blood in there. There’s a need for people with technical skills to fix these machines and the skills to run them.”
Nichol said the shortages in the labor market, locally, extend to other fields he teaches, such as construction.
“Somebody I know had to wait six weeks to get a bid, then wait seven more weeks to get the work started. It’s tough.”
There was plenty of interest in the auto shop on Tuesday, Nichol said.
“The kids liked it. They had a lot of fun. We had three kids who were there all day. They just kept coming back.”