Donna and I had tried touring a number of lumberyards in the past two years while traveling through California and Oregon but it was always the same answer...no, we don't do that anymore. In fact, all the yards we visited had a security guard at every entrance, just in case you tried sneaking in.
After a couple of calls to the Vaagen mill here in Colville, we were welcomed to come on down and they scheduled a day and time for our tour.
Here is a link to Vaagen Bros website that has several videos that will explain more than this blog can.
Vaagen was started in the 1950's by two brothers of Norwegian descent. The Vaagen family still own and run this and two other mills in Northeastern Washington.
Our tour started where logging trucks line up to release the chains or cables that secure their loads.
While walking to the offloading area with our tour guide Rich, we are shown some of the chips that will be shipped to a Canadian mill that makes mostly plywood. Rich explained that there is very little waste at the yard...even wood no one wants is sold to employees as firewood.
Here is one of the trucks waiting to be offloaded by a crane. The yellow marked wood ends will relate to what forest it is from and who brought it to the yard. You'll notice there are no chains or cables at this time securing the wood to the trailer.
The crane operator, who is about 270 feet in the air, will take the whole load in one swift movement. Rich said occasionally one or two logs will miss the "grapple" but it's not common.
Yep...the crane got them all.
This end of the row, which I am guessing is about 80' or 90' feet high, is cross stitched so they don't just all start rolling in the wrong direction.
Some of the logging trucks have their own mini cranes that lift the second trailer on top of the first set of axles for transport. If your truck does not have its own crane, then the blue pipes that are only partially shown have lifts for those drivers.
Flatbed trucks are coming in for finished production wood, sawdust trucks (white), logging trucks and chip haulers (red) are all going this way and that way. We really did have to keep our eyes open when crossing paths with the behemoths. We even had to keep an eye on a train but luckily it only ran at night.
We have only been here a little more than four months but in that time I have seen full logging trucks going into Vaagen and full logging trucks leaving the mill...made no sense to me. Now I know why, logs that are too big are sent to other mills that can handle the size and traded for smaller logs.
It should be noted that Vaagen is a "small" log mill. Smaller logs have a tighter grain which produces a better grade wood. Over 150 trucks are in and out of the yard per shift, shifts are 10 hours and the mill operates 20 hours a day...the 4 hours leftover are clean up time.
Trucks even come in for a "steam down". This tree harvester was moving from one forest area to another and the federal government requires any equipment movement from one forest area to another, be steamed clean. This apparently is to keep non-native vegetation or animal life from being introduced to places it does no belong.
This may be a 3 part blog and I will work on the next part tomorrow.
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