August 2022

This month, SLT is focusing on the future of logging with feature stories profiling three of the bright young men taking up the mantle for the next generation. South Carolina’s Rick Bennett and Louisiana’s Thomas Johnson both grew up around longtime logging families, but only just started their own companies last year. Meanwhile, Tennessee’s Zachary Comer has a similar multigenerational timber pedigree but has been on his own a little longer, since 2016. It’s a difficult time to start logging, but these three are meeting the challenge.

Article by David Abbott, Managing Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times

SUMMERVILLE, South Carolina – Rick Bennett, 29, embraces his identity as one of the younger generation of loggers. In one sense, he’s super green: Bennett just started his company, Bennett and Sons Logging LLC, in October of 2021, less than a year ago. But in another sense, he’s far from a novice. In fact, you could say he’s been preparing for this his whole life.

First of all, he came from a long line of loggers, though he is the first in his family to have his own company. “My granddaddy is real proud,” he smiles.

“I remember being a little boy, going out with my granddad on some jobs. My granddad, all my uncles, they had been in logging and forestry many years. I heard so many stories of going in the woods with just a saw, a can of gas and a lunch pail, and stumping trees by hand, loading trucks by hand. I used to hear those stories when I was young and thought, ‘Oh, I want to do it!’”

Article by Patrick Dunning

CROSSVILLE, Tennessee – At 28 years old, Zachary Comer, owner of Comer Logging, is one of the youngest loggers currently contracting for Huber Engineered Woods in Spring City. Being a greenhorn in the wood-products industry is something Comer is proud to acknowledge; he believes more millennials are getting involved with the business. His employees are even younger; loader man Jacob Futrell is 27, and cutter driver Seth York is 25. They have been with Comer Logging since the start.

Comer gives his grandfather, Danny Futrell, 70, credit for the sawdust in his blood. “We’ve always been in logging,” the young Comer reveals. “My grandfather and his brother even had a sawmill for a little bit. Logging can get the best of you sometimes but I enjoy it.”

Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Associate Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times

DeRIDDER, Louisiana – Though it seems obvious after talking with 33-year-old Thomas Johnson for any length of time that he’s got logging in his blood, the relatively new owner of Cutting Edge Logging says in school he wasn’t sure it was what he wanted to do. When pushed, he explains that while he might have entertained other forms of work, Johnson has always been a logger, having got his start at the age of 11 picking trash off his dad’s job.

In 2021, the timing was right for Johnson to buy out the crew of his dad’s he’d been running and start his own journey as a business owner. After asking the timber company for a few months to get his financial house in order, and bring him and his wife up to speed on that side of running a job, Cutting Edge Logging was born. It was a pretty straightforward transaction, and Johnson signed as a contractor with Bennett Timber.