Blue Ox Timber has received a number of notable comments, articles, and endorsements by various members of the timber and forestry management industries. Below are comments and editorials about Blue Ox Timber.
Selection Harvesting by Blue Ox Timber Steve Funsten, owner of Blue Ox Timber logging company is currently performing an operator-select thinning on timber stands in the Paulding Forest City of Atlanta Tract. Nathan McClure, Staff Forester with the Georgia Forestry Commission and manager of the Paulding Forest lands entered into a contract with Canal Wood Corporation to thin 116 acres of 33 year old loblolly pine that had been regenerated by direct seeding. This contract was made on the basis that Blue Ox Timber perform the harvesting similar to harvests performed in 1997 and 1998 on the Dawson Forest City of Atlanta Tract. According to McClure, "our main concern is the forest stand that is left after the selection harvest and Blue Ox Timber is showing that they can leave quality trees in good condition." He adds "when removing 10 cords or more per acre a few trees will inevitably be scraped, but Steve has shown that his crew can keep this damage to a minimum." McClure plans to continue working with Canal Wood Corporation and Blue Ox Timber in the Paulding Forest area to carefully thin an additional 250 acres.
Dale Greene, Professor I teach timber harvesting to forestry students at the University of Georgia. Field trips to logging operations are an important part of my course since they give students a "real world" view of how logging is performed. We visit Blue Ox Timber on a regular basis because I can always count on finding a well run operation that is safe and environmentally responsible.
Tommy Carroll, Harvesting Compliance Coordinator Blue Ox Timber Company, owned by Steve Funsten of Alpharetta, Georgia has harvested timber for Canal Wood for over 7 years. During this time, I have always been impressed with Steve's management abilities and willingness to adapt to a progressive industry. Blue Ox Timber does an excellent job of harvesting timber following the guidelines set forth in the timber contract. Employee safety and a concern for proper harvesting techniques with an emphasis on protecting the environmentally sensitive areas are two primary reasons for his success. I would highly recommend Blue Ox Timber for any timber harvesting job. Mark Winter, Landowner I manage about 250 acres of middle Georgia pasture and timberland held in a family trust. Though I had previously been contacted by various timber companies who wanted to purchase the lumber, we have resisted clear-cutting because of the property's residential and commercial potential. I had looked into several companies before meeting Steve at Blue Ox Timber and surveying some of his jobs. He met with me at our property, walked nearly the entire 250 acres, and took time to explain how he would do the job, and why he would do it differently than others had proposed. Blue Ox Timber performed the job professionally, on time, and with constant communication from Steve and prompt payment for the lumber. All man-made trash was removed, but natural tree debris was left to control erosion (as was explained upfront). In addition, Steve was very careful working around streams to limit silt and erosion. When it comes time to thin again, I will definitely call Blue Ox Timber first.
The following article appeared in the October 1996 issue of Southern Loggin' Times. The Urban Touch By Rebecca Catalanello ATLANTA, Ga. What does it take to be a respected urban logger in the '90s? For Steve Funsten, 35, of Blue Ox Timber based in Alpharetta, it takes one skidder, one loader, one feller-buncher and a whole lot of postcards. Combine that with a trustworthy crew and a timber dealer who believes that yours is the most conscientious operation in the area, and you're bound to get visits from nearby residents bearing iced tea and sandwiches. At least that's how it happens for Funsten. When Funsten preps an urban tract, he not only looks for ideal docking sites, but he also walks beyond the tract acreage into the surrounding community to find out exactly how this operation is going to affect the people nearby. Gauging a community's sensitivity gives Funsten the opportunity to greet concern before it has a chance to fester, turning a possible incident into a positive working experience. Canal Timber Forester Brian Womack has been working with Funsten more than four years and, according to him, the effort Funsten makes in the direction of public relations is one of the main things that sets his operation apart. Besides maintaining a highly efficient and organized operation, says Womack, Funsten goes beyond the call of duty to make logging a good experience for everyone involved. "He does a lot more than most loggers even think about doing in terms of letting the neighbors know what's going on," says Womack. Womack tells the story about the time Funsten was contracted to cut a tract of timber in and around several highly priced homes. "Well," says Womack, "before he even moved one piece of equipment out there, he prepared these little postcards and it had on there, 'Steve Funsten, doing business with Blue Ox Timber, contractor for Canal Wood Corp.,' and on the backside of it was a little paragraph explaining what was going on-- that it was going to be a very upscale development. Basically it said something along the lines of ‘You’re going to be pleased with the end results. Don’t panic. We’re going to operate in a fashion that will work around your schedule. We’re not going to blow in here at 5 a.m. and start revving up equipment—we want to work with you’ "He had old ladies out there bringing him iced tea and sandwiches while he was working and you just don’t hear of that. In today’s climate, it’s the opposite. Born and raised in the Atlanta area (Dunwoody), a career in logging was far from Funsten’s thoughts when he was growing up. The son of an architect, Funsten watched as Dunwoody changed from a town characterized by farmland and open fields to one filled with high rise buildings and urban flavor. Ironically, it would be this same urban flavor that would give him a taste of logging. Straight out of high school, Funsten broke the unwritten rule set by his six older brothers and sisters when, instead of going to college, he took a job with the power company, cutting trees for power lines. It marked the beginning of a life around trees. "I just started working at the bottom of the pole," says Funsten. "I did all the grunt work clearing power lines." Funsten learned how to handle a chain saw as his brother-in-law, John Bayles, a crew supervisor for the company, imparted much of the knowledge he had gained working with chain saws to the new crew member. Funsten was a fast learner. A year later, in 1979, he and Bayles began Two Brothers Tree Service, a residential tree cutting business. For more that two years, the company Funsten describes as "two guys with a couple of chain saws and a pickup truck" survived during weekend and evening hours while they both kept second jobs. Soon the business fizzled out as other interests began to take the place of the service. For Funsten, that interest was actually selling the wood that would otherwise go to scrap. Waiting tables by night and cutting trees by day, Funsten could not ignore the potential of a full-time future in trees. "I asked the guy at a little local wood yard over at Hiawathee Wood Yard in Duluth if I could make any money in short wood," says Funsten. "He thought I was going to be one of those who gets in it one day and out the next. He advised, ‘You can make a living, but you won’t get rich.’ And things haven’t changed much since then!" In 1982, he purchased a 1972 Chevrolet C50 cable loader truck. A year later, he bought a 1970 F700 Ford cable loader truck. Using this one-man, two-truck operation, Funsten set out driving the roads looking for grading jobs where contractors were clearing land in preparation for new subdivisions. "They’d just pile the timber at the curb and cut it whatever length," says Funsten. "Sometimes I’d get them trained to cut it right and sometimes I’d have to come in and retrim or recut it." Building a reputation with graders for reliability, it wasn’t long before they were calling him, filling up his schedule with pickup orders. In 1984, Funsten thought he had the Cadillac of pulpwood trucks when he purchased a 1981 tandem Chevrolet with a Prentice F90 knuckleboom mounted behind the cab. It improved loading time considerably. Funsten stayed busy. But when the grading market hit bottom, he knew it was time to take the logging industry by its antlers. "I started somewhere around 1988 of 1989 cutting Virginia pine around Dawson, Ga. For Etowah Timber," he says. It was about this time that he purchased a 160 Barko loader, a 230 Timberjack skidder, and a bell feller-buncher and developed his first crew. " That was trying times, going through crew members left and right," says Funsten. "It’s not easy in this area to find good logging help like it is in, say, Alabama. It’s just not a prevalent in the metro area, so it took me a while to put together a good crew." While cutting for Etowah, Funsten stayed on the phone in search of better timber. When a forester from Scoffield in Atlanta visited his site in 190 and offered him a thousand acre tract in Gainesville, Ga., it only took one good look at the tract for Funsten to say ‘yes.’ "It was beautiful timber," he says. "It took us a year to finish it and it brought about 13-14 thousand cords." Today, Blue Ox Timber contracts exclusively with Canal Wood Corp. of Augusta in the Athens/Winder area and, according to Funsten, the relationship has been a positive one. "They’ve really done a good job of keeping me in good timber," he says, attributing much of his recent success to the fact that Canal Wood strives to maintain a diversified market. According to Womack, staying in close communication with the mills and actively anticipating change in mill needs has kept Canal Wood above ware in otherwise difficult times. "In this market things work in cycles. You’ll go through periods when pine is moving well, and mills need it, but they don’t need hardwood, and you’ll go through cycles where it is the opposite," Womack says. "We like to keep a good bit of timber in advance and not just all pine tracts so that when we anticipate a mill or a pulpwood market really hurting and needing some, we can go move to a first thinning tract quickly, and get that wood to them. Because of that, through the last four to five years, they treat us very well in terms of delivery price and quotas and that kind of thing, because they know we’re going to be there for them. That’s the key." For Funsten, Canal’s commitment to diversity has meant similar success, but he also makes an independent effort to make sure that the wood he harvests will be sold. Both Funsten and Womack will tell you that this does not come about without spending a lot of time on the phone. "The biggest thing in logging now is communication," says Funsten, who claims that if it hadn’t been for his penchant for asking questions and never taking ‘no’ for an answer, he would never have made it as far as he has. "If I can get one or two extra loads that somebody else is going to miss, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. That’s mainly due to just staying in touch with the other foresters and other loggers. Most of them are running mobile phones and beepers and I can call them up and within 10 minutes have an idea about whether somebody else is going to miss a load." Says Womack, "Steve doesn’t wait for us to come visit one afternoon or call him one night. If he can’t find me, he’ll call the mill himself. He’s not bashful. He know how to be professional and courteous and at the same time beg for another load." Operating equipment that caters to a wide variety of operations has also been a key. Today, Funsten runs a 711E Hydro-Ax feller-buncher with 22 in. H-A sawhead, a machine Funsten says is "more machine than I need," along with a Timberjack 450 skidder with 100 in. ESCO grapple, Prentice 210D loader, and a Hudson pull-through delimber and Hudson slasher. All of the equipment was purchased through Pioneer Machinery in Gainesville, Ga. With the exception of performing first thinnings, such an operation has given Blue Ox the versatility it has needed. When SLT visited, Blue Ox was thinning a 122 acre tract in east Atlanta to county specifications, leaving 15-30 trees per acre. Hardwood taken out was 16 in. and larger. Pine plylogs were being trucked to Georgia-Pacific in Madison, Ga. And Trus Joist MacMillan in Athens; pine chip-n-saw to Louisianna-Pacific in Eatonton, Ga.; pine pulpwood to J.M. Huber in Commerce, Ga. And International Paper in Cordele, Ga.; poplar plylogs to Trus Joist in Athens; ash and oak sawlogs to T&S Hardwood in Milledgeville, Ga.; hardwood chip-n-saw to Southern Forest Industries in Forsyth, Ga.; and fardwood pulpwood to International Paper in Madison. Most of the company’ s trucking is contracted to owner/operator Melvin Branch of Douglasville, while Mike’s Trucking of Covington also fills in when needed. Though finding a crew that would stick may have taken a while, Funsten seems very pleased with the team he has today. Sylvester Johnson, a life-long logger, has operated the loader for Blue Ox Timber for the past four years. He and Funsten hooked up after Johnson had declared retirement. "He was bored to death from retiring, so I called him up one night and I said do you want to work and he said, ‘Shoot yeah!’ He said, ‘I’m tired of watching soap operas.’ He’s the best worker out here and the most dependable. You can set your watch by him in the morning; he never stays out," says Funsten. Operating the skidder is Robert Amos. Funsten’s brother-in-law and a welder by trade, Amos was out of work and got on with Blue Ox more than a year ago when Funsten approached him about the possibility of trying his hand at logging. "It was a gamble," says Funsten. "At first, he didn’t know a pine tree from an oak tree, but he’s turned out to be a better skidder driver than ones I’ve seen with 20-30 years experience." Thanks to the newly purchased 711E, Funsten finds himself with more time than ever to make sure the next week’s planning is in order. "People think I’m crazy for running a machine that large with a one skidder, three-man operation, but it allows me all the time in the world to do paperwork and organize where the trucks are going—to call and find out about quotas and to run the dozer and the chainsaw and everything else," he says. Moreover, the feller-bundher’s efficiency has helped to keep the rest of the operation ahead of schedule and has meshed nicely with Funsten’s emphasis on pre-planning and organization. Says Womack, "Steve has a good grasp of being able to coordinate all the different facets that go into running a logging job. He has the ability to think about three different issues at the same time: trucking, the crew getting to work on time, and when markets open and close. It takes him half the equipment and half the manpower that it takes other loggers and he still moves just as much wood." Womack notes that increasing the operation to include more equipment might actually hurt the operation due to the high visibility of most of Funsten’s jobs. "Both Steve and I have talked and considered growth, but for what he has to do in metro Atlanta, growth would not be a good option. It is such a sensitive area that, in terms of his production level, he’s where he needs to be." High visibility can leave urban loggers open to heavy monitoring. Sometimes the results are good, and sometimes they are not. For Blue Ox, heavy monitoring can be constructive when it comes from places like the Georgia Dept. of Transportation in the form of road inspections. Funsten uses a shovel and gravel to ensure that road entrances are kept mud-free at all times, regardless of the weather. "If it gets to where there are clumps going out onto the road, I just shut everything down and clean it up," says Funsten. "The county people know who takes concern. They’ll come out and if they see you’re making an effort they’ll tell you you’re looking great, and then go." The flip-side, though, can cost a logger time and money. In 1992, Funsten experienced a dose of vandalism that changed the way he did things. During a job in Snellville, Ga., vandals hit the operation two nights in a row, pouring sand down tubes and breathers, shooting up radiators, and knocking out windows. For the remainder of the job, Funsten camped out on the site to ensure nothing else happened. "The only thing left for them to do was to burn the machines and I couldn’t afford that on the insurance," he recalls. Today, if an area seems risky to Funsten, he’ll insist that full-time security be provided. As far as maintaining new equipment, Funsten leaves the big jobs up to Pioneer. Regular upkeep includes daily greasings and oil changes every 600 hours. "Luckily, with the new equipment, I don’t have to worry about breakdowns, pins breaking, that kind of stuff," says Funsten, "I truly believe it’s easier to make payments if you’ve got the work than it is to be working on a machine and have a payment." When Funsten thinks about making changes, he thinks in terms of purchasing a stroke delimber or something like a Hahn harvester. While the operation is currently fully mechanized with the exception of minor trunk trimming done by either Johnson or Funsten himself, Funsten would favor a more efficient delimbing system. "I think if I won the lottery, I’d buy a stroke delimber," he says, "but otherwise, I think I’ve geared up the perfect situation." Those who work with Blue Ox Timber seem to agree. Says Womack, "Steve is a good case in point that you don’t have to necessarily be moving 80-100 loads per week in order to make money. He’s making good money and he’s doing a quality job at half that. His ability to use what he has to the maximum potential without just tearing up his equipment is amazing." For Funsten’s part, staying on top of things measures op to one simple formula: "I drink a lot of coffee and think logging 24 hours a day." |
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