Page 16 - Georgia Forestry - Spring 2020

South Georgia Technical College
What good are the nearly 45 million tons of timber harvested every year in Georgia15 if they can’t be delivered to the mills?
Trucking, a volunteer alliance commit- ted to elevating the safety, performance and professional level of the forest industry’s transportation sector (www. teamsafetrucking.com). A critical and unique component of SGTC’s program is that it is endorsed by insurance com- panies who specialize in serving the forest sector.
“This program is specifically designed to address the looming shortage of qualified log truck drivers in Georgia,” said Wally Summers, SGTC’s vice presi- dent for economic development. “We are focused on training drivers who under- stand speed and space management, rural driving and hazards associated with delivering raw material from the woods to the mill.”
Yet a concern consistently and univer- sally aired by many in our industry is the shortage of qualified log truck drivers. Many of those qualifications are deter- mined by insurance companies, which normally require a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) and a specific amount of hands-on experience driving a log truck.
The South Georgia Technical College’s
(SGTC) Log Truck Driver Safety Training program is designed to reduce accidents through enhanced driver training and to recruit new, safety-focused drivers to deliver timber into Georgia’s forest product mills.
To teach drivers about the specifics of safely operating log trucks, the program uses education modules from TEAM Safe
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