“When I was a kid, if you had told me that I was going to grow up and be a logger, I would never have believed you. Especially in this area,” said Chris Swearingen, owner of Missouri Timber Company.
An entrepreneur by the time he was only 20 years old, Chris Swearingen started his own business, building all-too-familiar wooden pallets for manufacturing companies. A short time later, a chance-occurrance meandered its way into his life and business. The sawmill he had formed a partnership with – the mill that cut the wood he ultimately turned a profit with – ran out of lumber.
If Swearingen could find logs, the sawmill owner informed him, they could continue working together. Convenient it was in hindsight, but troublesome for the young pallet-maker at the time.
After stumbling onto a swath of land laden with hickory, most of which the landowner wanted removed, Swearingen borrowed his father’s John Deere tractor, a log chain and a chainsaw that ran “only about half the time.” For a time, during the first half of the day, he ran his pallet business. He supplied his own product during the second half of the day, logging the hickory. Swearingen produced his own supply and supplied his own product.
From The Boonville Daily News: https://www.boonvilledailynews.com/news/x1081598629/26-year-old-logger-cuts-his-way-through-age-old-trade