Page 17 - Tree Line - NCFA - First Quarter 2020

I was growing up, everything was done by hand. I don’t even have a chainsaw on the job anymore, just a pole saw. I never had track equipment on my job until the winter of 2018, when it was so wet that it became necessary. Now that I’m not working in plantation timber all of the time, I’m going to make the switch back to rubber-tire machines.”
At the time of our interview, Holcomb and his crew were logging a tract outside of Rich Square, NC that is roughly 100 years old. The tract was a mixture of mature oak and pine forest. Holcomb has logged in eastern North Carolina his whole career. “My dad and my grandad went out of business when gas was
$1 per gallon. That’s when I went to work
for Weyerhaeuser Company. I logged their timberlands for 15 years,” he said. Holcomb noted that his son, Dylan, started working for him full time about three years ago, but had actually started two years before as a part- time employee. “Logging is in his blood too,” Holcomb said. “Hopefully, one day, he will want to take over. But the business is definitely not as easy as it once was.”
Holcomb vividly remembers the first tractor that his father and his grandfather used on their job. “It was a small tractor
Left: NCFA ProLogger Robert Holcomb at his logging job outside of Rich Square, NC. Above: (l-r) Robert Holcomb, third-generation logger, and his son Dylan Holcomb, fourth-generation logger.
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