Page 25 - Georgia Forestry - Winter 2019

on the Way
Many Hands Are on the Wheel to Solve a Log Trucking Crisis in the State
Story by Ray Glier
Tommy Peagler is the Forestry and Timber Harvest- ing instructor at Coastal Pines Technical College in Waycross and he frequently runs into people connected to the state’s forest industry. He asks them a simple question — “How is it going?” — and
gets back a distressing answer.
“It’s going good, but it would be going better if we could find
some drivers.”
It is a familiar refrain across the state, no matter who you talk
to along the wood supply chain: the landowners, the foresters, the loggers, the trucking companies, the insurance agents, or the mills. The whole wood economy is predicated on getting the logs out of the woods to the mills and that is becoming increasingly more difficult because of a shortage of drivers.
The shortage of drivers, many agree, is due to the fact that insurance companies require three years of Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) experience to get behind the wheel of a log truck. On top of that, the prospective drivers also need specific training to drive the log truck.
“I get it, I understand, the insurance agencies feel log truck driving is more difficult than over-the-road driving, and pulling something like produce,” said Peagler. “It is more difficult. Loads shift. Roads are uneven. You’re driving on dirt roads with a ditch on either side. It can be wet, muddy.”
Peagler is in the position to do something about the shortage. A graduate of the University of Georgia School of Forestry and Natural Resources, he already has an “in woods” course at Coastal Pines, which teaches students how to get the standing tree down on the ground, prepared, and put on the truck for travel to the mill.
When his current crop of 2018-19 students is done with that “in woods” course in the spring, Peagler is hoping to have in
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