Bob Brown, of Upton, manages the Kennebec Lumber Yard on Route 26 in Bethel. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen

The numbers on the the logs refer to its diameter and length. The double horizontal lines on the log in the center indicate it will be made into pallets. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen

BETHEL — March is crunch time for loggers hauling heavy loads in Western Maine. Many towns will be posting their roads soon, meaning certain roads will be closed to heavy logging trucks to prevent potential damage to the thawing asphalt.

Bob Brown, of Upton, who manages the Kennebec Lumber Yard on Route 26 in Bethel, understands the impact that posted roads have on his customers. “The beauty of having been on all aspects of the logging industry is you have a common ground with the logger as well as the company you work for. It means something to me to make sure that I’m doing the best job I can for the logger to get him everything I can, but also to look out for the company,” said Brown.

Growing up in Granby, Vermont, a logging town, Brown’s family has deep roots in the industry. His family of loggers are intertwined. “My mother’s uncle who was my father’s brother-in-law,” owned a logging business, says Brown, continuing, “Logging was always in the blood … my folks had five of us in five years, so needless to say, mom was kicking us out of the house as quick as possible to be with dad … when I was old enough, at age six, I was following him around in the woods.”

At 14, Brown was running skidders and learning how to use a chainsaw. “Dad was always hands on and right there with you watching you, making sure you weren’t doing something dangerous,” he recalls. Brown laments the days before labor regulations limited underage work in logging, noting, “You learned a lot of life lessons. You had to work to make a living.”

The biggest challenge in logging, according to Brown, is being aware of your surroundings, especially when it comes to hazards like broken limbs or widow makers – loose branches in trees that can fall unexpectedly and cause injury or death.

Brown’s three brothers and his brother-in-law joined the family’s logging business, too, and after moving to Maine, Brown worked in various wood related businesses. He ran a Rumford lumber yard slasher, was a security guard in a lumber mill, and worked as a builder.

“The beauty of this is I sort out all the wood. The loggers get paid for each species according to length and grade,” says Bob Brown, who moves the logs with a Knuckleboom loader at Kennebec Lumber Company. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen

Log Yard

For the past two years, Brown has run the Kennebec Yard. He recalls that when he was a lumberjack, there were no yards. Wood was piled in the forest until a full load of a specific type of wood was ready to be taken to a mill that specialized in it.

These days several area loggers count on Kennebec Lumber Yard. Brown accepts hemlock, spruce, fir and more. After sorting the wood, logs are trucked to Canada, or to Kennebec’s mills in Tamworth N.H. or Solon, Maine. Pine logs are sent next door to Hancock Lumber. Before fuel prices soared, “a trucker didn’t have to worry about having to be loaded in both directions,” Brown explains.

Each log is tagged two with numbers: one for its length and another for its diameter.  As a scaler, Brown measures the footage to determine how much to pay the loggers. But it’s not just about size – he also looks at the log’s quality. He checks for knots, the sweep (a crooked section), rot, and the size of the log’s heartwood. A higher grade means a higher price for the logger.

Brown also helps loggers when he can. For example, he’ll trim knots off one end of a 10-foot log, allowing him to move it from the pallet pile to the saw log pile, where it can fetch a significantly higher price.

In the logging industry today, it’s all about volume. “Twenty or 25 years ago, a chainsaw and a skidder were enough,” says Brown. “Now, loggers need feller bunchers, de-limbers, processors, and slashers. They have to produce more to cover the cost of the equipment.”

Brown worries about the future of logging and hopes more young people will enter the industry. “It’s a hard living, but it’s an honest living. Everything you make, you earn,” he says.

Bob Brown, of Upton manages the Kennebec Lumber Yard on route 26 in Bethel Maine. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen