Unhappy truckers seek alternatives

A log truck shutdown aimed at Plum Creek Timber Co. operations in Northwest Montana has turned into a walkout, with most of participating truck owners pursuing options other than waiting for Plum Creek to provide better compensation.

"Everybody's come to an agreement around here, and they agree that Plum Creek doesn't care," said truck owner Kevin Jump on Wednesday afternoon from the Flathead County Fairgrounds, where as many as 40 logging trucks have been parked for more than a week.

Most of the more than 60 trucks involved in the shutdown will not be returning to work for Plum Creek, said Jump, who predicts that Plum Creek eventually will realize the affects of lost trucking capacity in Northwest Montana.

The company's leadership has turned a cold shoulder to the truckers since the shutdown started June 6, largely because Plum Creek does business with logging contractors, who, in turn, subcontract for log hauling.

But the truckers have insisted that Plum Creek has not provided its contractors with adequate compensation for trucking costs. The truckers were seeking at the very least a formula that would more favorably compensate them for fluctuating fuel costs. But Plum Creek officials provided no response to that request, Jump said.

The result is that most truckers are turning to alternatives other than hauling for Plum Creek.

They are selling their trucks. They are converting them for construction use. Or they are working for loggers who are contracting with other mills.

"There's a huge shortage in the amount of trucking capacity here locally already," Jump said, adding that it just gotten worse for Plum Creek.

Owners of fewer than a dozen of the idled trucks will return to work for Plum Creek, he said.

And those who are returning are doing so because logging contractors "dug into their own pockets" to provide adjustments the truckers were seeking. That will allow them to finish hauling logs off of active timber sales, but when those jobs are complete, those contractors and truckers will be back to where they started when the shutdown began, Jump said.

Tom Ray, Plum Creek's northwest resources manager, repeatedly has said that the company's leadership considers its contracts to be "fair" and competitive, and he has predicted that log deliveries will be adequate to sustain operations at its facilities in Columbia Falls and Evergreen.

But Jump estimates that the truckers who are pursuing alternatives could represent as much as 200,000 board feet of lost deliveries a day, or roughly 1 million board feet a week.

Jump said Plum Creek's plywood plant in Columbia Falls is within days of running out of "peeler" logs, and its plywood plant in Evergreen has a two-week supply remaining.

With a potential fire season only months away, this is when Plum Creek typically would be stockpiling logs, he said.

"it's extremely important for Plum Creek to get as many loads as possible right now, and it's not going to happen because the trucking capacity isn't there," he said.

And much of the region's log trucking capacity is being lost permanently, Jump said.

During the last two months, nearly 20 trucks have either been sold or converted to construction uses, Jump said.

This week, one truck owner sold several trucks to a buyer in Utah, and Jump sold a truck, with plans to use the proceeds to convert two of his log trucks to construction uses.

Others who continue to operate are abandoning plans to work for Plum Creek in favor of hauling work that is increasing timber salvage sales in the Flathead's North Fork and South Fork drainages. Those sales were purchased by the Stoltze Lumber Co. in Columbia Falls and Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake, both of which provide better trucking compensation than Plum Creek, Jump said.

Still others will be hauling for the Tricon lumber mill in St. Regis, the Thompson river lumber mill, or even a Deer Lodge mill that soon will begin harvesting a large tribal timber sale near St. Ignatius.

Jump said most of his trucks have been hauling to mills other than Plum Creek, with the exception of one arrangement to haul logs from two Plum Creek helicopter logging jobs this month.

Those sales were scheduled to deliver 3 million board feet to Plum Creek facilities this month, but the helicopter contractor decided just a few days ago to delay that project because of the lack of trucking capacity. The company diverted its helicopters to other harvests in Idaho rather than keep them on the ground.

"If you don't have helicopters, you can't fly. I was scheduled to do that trucking for them," Jump said. "I told them I couldn't haul it for the money that was being offered."