March 29, 2024
Business

Training fills need for loggers College, industry collaborate

NEW CANADA – Huge forestry machines – a mechanical log harvester, a grapple skidder and a delimber – lumbered through a clear-cut three miles northeast of the Sly Brook Road on Tuesday.

The operation was being conducted by students in the fifth week of a 12-week forest program for tree-length harvesting operated by the Northern Maine Community College in partnership with two of Maine’s largest forestry operators, Irving Woodlands and International Paper. They were using equipment Tuesday that was valued at nearly $750,000.

It’s an effort by the two companies to start a training program to fill the ebbing ranks of loggers in Maine. The program is designed after one operated by the New Brunswick Community College at Miramichi, N.B., for the last 12 years. Instructors from Miramichi are training the NMCC instructors for the course.

The community college has applied to the state for a $1.5 million fund for the program. In the meantime, the monetary needs for the program are met by Irving, IP and other forestry companies.

Eleven northern Maine men and one from southern Maine are in the program that started last month. All of the trainees are Americans living in Maine. The group will graduate at the end of January and already have jobs lined up with Irving and IP. The men are paid while they attend school.

“These men had never worked in the woods, and they started right from the bottom learning the very basics,” said Yves Levesque, a Certified Logging Professional trainer and one of the instructors in training for the NMCC program.

“They are paid by the hour, getting paid to learn a new trade,” he said. “This was tried in the past and it didn’t work, but it will this time.”

He said the program should have been started in Maine 20 years ago. The industry is hurting for trained loggers, and it will only get worse with an aging work force in the northern Maine woods.

“This is an exciting day for us, and big challenges are everywhere in the industry,” Anthony Hourihan, regional manager for Irving Woodlands and Irving Forest Products, said Tuesday. “This will allow us to become more productive.

“We have jobs for all these men, and others that will be trained,” he said. “We are looking forward to a good future with the program, with three or four courses a year.”

The Irving official said he has 25 mechanized logging positions open in northern Maine that pay $9 to $13 an hour.

“The tree harvesting program is the future of the industry, an industry that is changing rapidly,” NMCC President Tim Crowley said at a press conference Tuesday at the New Canada Town Office. “We are supporting the industry in the effort. This is a partnership between the college, the industry and the state.”

Levesque said the trainees will be about 60 percent efficient when they operate machines on their own. He called it a big step for the industry because most contractors can’t afford to train their own. He estimated the cost of training a logger at $50,000 to $60,000.

When trainees finish the program they will have been trained to Certified Logging Professional Program expertise. They will also have been trained in CPR and first aid and have OSHA certification. After working for six months in the woods, they will become certified logging professionals.

The training includes three weeks of classroom instruction and nine weeks with the machines. They get experience operating both day and night. They also learn how to maintain their equipment and will have been trained in operating the three largest logging machines in the woods.

There are no women in the program, but Levesque said they are welcome to apply. The first application period for the inaugural program brought in 88 applications, from which the 12 were selected. They hope to run three or four programs a year, creating 36 to 48 new loggers each year.

According to industry statistics, this will just about fill in the ranks of an estimated 40 Maine loggers a year who retire or get out of the industry.

“These young people like this work,” he said. “They were never exposed to logging careers before.”

Along with Levesque, the NMCC program has Mike Bouchard of Fort Kent and Jeff Lavoie of Mapleton as instructors in training. Levesque said the three men will customize the Canadian program to Maine logging as they move along.

The program is designed to move from area to area in Maine, wherever the need arises and trainees can be found.


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