September 2025
Manning, SC— Ken Holladay founded Santee Pole & Piling Inc. in 1989 after leaving the pole mill business to build his own hybrid operation. He had spent years buying poles in eastern South Carolina’s coastal plain before purchasing a smallscale pole mill in Lane, one for which he had formerly worked. Holladay disassembled the equipment, moved everything to Manning and kept it running for seven years while also starting and managing a logging crew to feed the yard. Santee Pole & Piling contracted with Koppers Inc. to finish and treat the green poles it produced and delivered.
Inside This Issue
COVER: Ground Game
Manning, SC— Ken Holladay founded Santee Pole & Piling Inc. in 1989 after leaving the pole mill business to build his own hybrid operation. He had spent years buying poles in eastern South Carolina’s coastal plain before purchasing a smallscale pole mill in Lane, one for which he had formerly worked. Holladay disassembled the equipment, moved everything to Manning and kept it running for seven years while also starting and managing a logging crew to feed the yard. Santee Pole & Piling contracted with Koppers Inc. to finish and treat the green poles it produced and delivered.
Article by Patrick Dunning, Associate Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
SOUTHERN STUMPIN': Spotlight On: Russ Wood
If you’ve spent very much time around various industry events in the southern loggin’ community in the last dozen years, there’s a good chance you may have come across Rick Quagliaroli or members of the Swamp Fox Agency Team. Rick became associated with Swamp Fox, which is headquartered in Moncks Corner, SC, in 2013.
Article by David Abbott, Managing Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
FROM THE BACKWOODS PEW: A Hot Day in the Woods!!
Hope you are making plans to attend the Mid-South Forestry Equipment Show in Starkville, Miss., in October! The Backwoods Pew will be there, and we will be hosting a morning prayer meeting just outside the main gate each morning at 7 a.m., so come join us and stop by our table. —Brad
You know the expression: “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Welcome to Summer in the South: land of heat and humidity. Blink and you will sweat. The kind of day I really love is the day the local news channel has issued an ozone alert. It goes like this: “The high heat and humidity will make it extremely dangerous to be outside today. Residents are advised to stay inside as much as possible.” But loggers look forward to the gentle breeze made by a falling tree; so, it is off to work they go. And if the loggers are in the woods, so are the foresters. And so is the original logger, and that is the beaver. His logging will keep a diligent forester up at night. The beaver will block the one pipe that will flood the road the loggers are hauling out of, or flood the timber sale itself. Beavers can mess up a logging job faster than you can say, “It sure is hot out here!”
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- 2025 Loggers Tech Summit
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- EPA Seeks Truck Def System Changes
- Congress Proposes Logger Relief Fund
- Forestry Mutual Sells FMIC Agency
- Homeownership Rate Lowest Since 2019
- Rayonier Fights ‘City Hall’
- Young Leaders Meeting At ALC
Backwoods Degree
Kentucky Logger Larry Wood Left Lecture hall to forge 40-year logging legacy.
Article by Patrick Dunning, Associate Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
Manning, SC— Ken Holladay founded Santee Pole & Piling Inc. in 1989 after leaving the pole mill business to build his own hybrid operation. He had spent years buying poles in eastern South Carolina’s coastal plain before purchasing a smallscale pole mill in Lane, one for which he had formerly worked. Holladay disassembled the equipment, moved everything to Manning and kept it running for seven years while also starting and managing a logging crew to feed the yard. Santee Pole & Piling contracted with Koppers Inc. to finish and treat the green poles it produced and delivered.
The mill eventually shut down, but the logging side stayed alive, along with the company name. Holladay’s crew cut for several timber dealers before establishing a steady relationship with Charles Ingram Lumber in Effingham. That relationship has lasted more than three decades. Now semi-retired, the elder Holladay remains active in day-to-day operations as President of Santee. He offers strategic guidance regularly to his son, Hunter Holladay, 34, Santee’s Vice President, who has largely taken the reins from his father and is steering the company into its next chapter, looking ahead to the future.
Hunter joined the family business full-time in 2013 after graduating from Wofford College with a degree in environmental studies. At the time, Santee Pole & Piling was running one crew, then quickly expanded to two, briefly stretched to three, then eventually scaled back down to two. Today Hunter manages one oversized crew—essentially the size of two combined crews, it averages 120 loads weekly.
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