August 2026
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. — Mississippi’s Drew Sullivan, 46, is the owner of Performance Logging, Inc. The third generation logger grew up with a love for logging; he inherited the sawdust in his veins from his late father, Garry, and grandfather. Drew worked with his dad until markets pushed Garry out of the business in 2007. After things improved, Drew started his own business in 2010, and his dad went to work for him. After losing his dad two years ago, Drew carries on the family tradition with a single crew using Barko and Tigercat machines.
Inside This Issue
COVER: Still Hooked
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. — Mississippi’s Drew Sullivan, 46, is the owner of Performance Logging, Inc. The third generation logger grew up with a love for logging; he inherited the sawdust in his veins from his late father, Garry, and grandfather. Drew worked with his dad until markets pushed Garry out of the business in 2007. After things improved, Drew started his own business in 2010, and his dad went to work for him. After losing his dad two years ago, Drew carries on the family tradition with a single crew using Barko and Tigercat machines.
Article by Patrick Dunning, Associate Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
SOUTHERN STUMPIN': Days of Future, Now
A few weeks ago I got a call from a logger in West Virginia. We got to know each other in 2022 when I was gathering material for the 50th anniversary issue of Southern Loggin’ Times, and a few years later I wrote a story on his business for a cover story in SLT. We have kept in touch since then; he calls me every now and then to pray for me and my family. Well, he called me a few weeks ago to ask a question. “I’ve been noticing I haven’t seen you write very much in the magazine lately,” he said.
FROM THE BACKWOODS PEW: All In
“All in” might be a phrase heard more at a poker game than in your local church. Perhaps the meaning is the same: I’m putting everything I have on the table. In the world of forestry, there are a few times when you as the forester have to decide if you are “all in.” It might look like this:
INDUSTRY NEWS ROUNDUP
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- Trump To Canada: ‘Cough Up’ Tariffs
- USTR Imposes Tariff On Brazil
Long Haul
DEMOPOLIS, Ala. — At Sumter Timber Co., the goal of inhouse trucking isn’t to generate standalone profit, but to gain more control and flexibility for the entire operation. It’s an approach that, according to company owner Mark Geiger, has led to improved coordination, safety and efficiency across the entire operation.
Article by Ford Boswell, Contributing Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
Still Hooked
Third-generation hardwood logger Drew Sullivan carries on family legacy.
Article by Patrick Dunning, Associate Editor, Southern Loggin’ Times
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. — Drew Sullivan, 46, has been infatuated with logging since he was a boy with a hand saw and a stack of cut saplings, harvesting tracts in the yard with toy skidders and log trucks his grandfather had bought him. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” Sullivan affirms. “If I had to start over again tomorrow, I’d start a logging crew.”
His late father, Garry Sullivan, grew up around his own father’s sawmill and logging operation in the 1950s and ’60s. He then spent more than 20 years running the merchandiser at Weyerhaeuser’s softwood lumber mill in Philadelphia. In 1992 he walked away from the plant floor to establish his own logging company, S&S Thinning. Garry’s operation was featured in Southern Loggin’ Times in 1995, harvesting pulpwood with a Valmet cut-to-length harvester and pre-hauler he’d purchased from B&G Equipment.
Early Years
Drew Sullivan’s grandfather gifted him a handful of cattle, some of which he promptly sold to buy a pulpwood truck. That ambitious move nearly gave the eldest Sullivan a heart attack. “My granddaddy would’ve liked to die when I did that,” Drew laughs.
Drew cut pulpwood on the side through high school; he arranged his schedule so his last two periods were study hall, then he’d drive to whatever tract his dad was working that afternoon. Garry had converted to tree-length machinery in 1998, the same year his son graduated high school and went to work in the family business full time. The pair logged together every day until his dad sold S&S in 2007, worn down by tight quotas and a pulpwood market still glutted with storm-damaged timber from Hurricane Katrina. A few years later, Drew decided to launch his own operation after buying out an older logger’s equipment and crew. He founded Performance Logging, Inc. in 2010. “I got in it relatively cheap and at a good time,” the younger Sullivan says. “We did really well our first two years and paid off all our equipment in a year and a half.”
Fathers/Sons
Garry returned to the woods, this time working for his son, operating the cutter for over a decade and serving as Sullivan’s right-hand man. “We worked well together my entire life,” Drew says. “We never fought or fussed or ever had as much as a cross word between us. He respected me and I definitely respected him.” Garry lived to see his son featured in SLT back in 2017 and named Mississippi Logger of the Year in 2019; for his dad to see that meant more to Sullivan than words can ever say.
Even as Garry’s health began declining, he would still run to get parts and build roads, and on hot days he’d climb into the dozer cab and nap in the A/C. Garry passed away on February 27, 2024, at 72. He was a hardworking, godly man, his son recalls, and deeply missed by all who knew him. “He was my rock,” Sullivan says. “It’s been tough without him. He never cussed or raised hell; he was always a soft-spoken, even-toned man. When he said something, he meant it.” Sullivan’s own two boys are both enamored with logging, just like he was, and hope to follow in his footsteps as the fourth generation, which suits their dad just fine…under one condition. “My sons are eaten up with logging,” he explains. “My oldest would prefer to be out here right now working, but I’ve told them both they can come log with me after they get a college degree so they have something to fall back on.”
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