That big empty front yard at Alberta Plywood is not necessarily an indication of the worst log haul season Gordon Sanders has ever seen. But it might as well be.
The Alberta Plywood/Slave Lake Pulp Woodlands Manager says the 04/05 season started late, ended early and was plagued by a lack of trucks and drivers throughout.
“It’s the worst, most frustrating (season) that I’ve ever seen,” he says. “We’re probably about 25 per cent short (at both mills).”
The shortage of logs in the Alberta Plywood yard is even more noticeable because the company withheld a certain volume in the bush to allow for improvements to the yard. But even counting the off-site stuff, Alberta Plywood is well shy of its goal of 400,000 cubic metres at the end of the winter haul season.
The situation is much the same at the other mill yards. At Vanderwell Contractors, the season ended about 1,200 truckloads short of the target of 9,000. “It was a challenging year,” says Woodlands Manager Darrell Mackay. “It’s going to be a busy summer.”
It’s a similar story at Tolko. The goal of the crew supplying the oriented strandboard mill was to have 200,000 cubic metres of wood in the yard by the end of March. This year there’s 135,000, plus another 27,000 in accessible off-site yards.
“It was a very abbreviated winter,” says Forestlands Manager Ian Whitby.
A wet fall and mild early winter kept the log hauling from starting until at least mid-December. Whitby says that chopped “four to six weeks out of our haul season,” right off the bat.
Then there was the big meltdown in late February that lasted well into March.
“Break-up came very early and quickly,” says Whitby. “So by the end of February we couldn’t haul day or night.”
Colder weather in late March helped a bit, but not enough to catch up what was lost.
It wasn’t just the weather. A red-hot oilpatch was partly to blame for a shortage of trucks and drivers, right across the board.
“There’s not a lot of people (drivers) coming into the market,” says Mackay. “And when the oilpatch is busy, that compounds the problem because they suck up trucks.”
Finding trucks for expanded summer hauling now becomes the challenge. The companies do some summer logging and hauling. It’s part of the normal schedule, but this year it will have to be ramped up to avoid running out of wood by the fall.
Mackay figures 750 of the Vanderwell loads still in the bush can be picked up over the summer. Whitby says his office is already planning a “more aggressive” summer harvest season to make up the shortfall. The same goes for Alberta Plywood and Slave Lake Pulp, although as always, much depends on the weather.
“Access is the issue,” says Sanders, who remains optimistic.
“We’re fairly confident we’re able to kick (the) contingencies into gear and live up to our requirements.”

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