Page 26 - Georgia Forestry - Winter 2019

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place a program for students to get their CDL and then start an eight-to-10 week program in driving a log truck. That program will be rigorous enough, Peagler said, to satisfy insurance requirements, which have been one of the biggest impediments to finding drivers.
Meanwhile, Scott Copeland, an insur- ance broker with Rome-based Guffin & Eleam, Inc., took a phone call in 2017 from Jeff Alexander, the president of Georgia Forest Products in Americus, who was also suggesting a faster track for drivers to get behind the wheel of a log truck.
Copeland then talked with Longleaf, an insurance provider, which had started Team Safe Trucking. Longleaf had the same idea: fast track these drivers. The idea was to have an intensive course using training modules for truck drivers, along with actual driving with a quali- fied instructor.
“We realized if we didn’t start doing something, I was going to be out of a job, Jeff Alexander was going to be out of a job, and nobody is going to have any wood,”
Copeland said. “We have to fix it.” Momentum to find a remedy has also attracted the forest products
company Interfor.
“We are hearing from suppliers the
ability to attract new drivers into the sector is very challenging, largely due to the log trucking experience requirements being mandated by insurance providers,” Interfor said in an email response to questions about the driver shortage.
Meeting the Need, Avoiding a Crisis
Dr. Joseph Conrad, who teaches and does research in timber harvesting and timber transportation at the University of Georgia (UGA), said the CDL initiative is a significant development because the majority of wood in the state is moved around by smaller trucking companies. It is these smaller firms that need drivers, as well as reasonable insurance premi- ums for their drivers.
“Here in the south we’re moving 60
percent of the nation’s timber,” Conrad said. “There are loggers having to change their business model, shrink their foot- print because of the shortage (of drivers), so it’s a terrible problem.”
Copeland said the crisis really showed itself between July and September 2018, when two insurance underwriters called him and said they were getting out of the business of insuring log trucks. The industry not only had a driver shortage, it had an insurance shortage.
“Every logging crew needs another driver,” Peagler said. “I have had people say if I had a driver I would buy a truck. One thing bleeds over to the other. The counties down here rank 1, 2, 3, 4 in the state in producing wood. Interfor has told me it sees a trucking problem coming and we need to do something about it.”
Interfor, which has seven wood facil- ities in Georgia, as well as its U.S. South regional headquarters in Peachtree City, wants to get keep the spigot open for logs to get to the mill. It recognizes the problem.
“Loggers are being driven out of business due to trucking shortages,
24 | GEORGIA FORESTRY