428: Mike Albrecht—Got Wood?

As a logger and forester, Mike Albrecht knows a lot about wood. He is the two-time president of the American Loggers Council, and he's on a mission to reintroduce America to one of its most abundant and reliable renewable resources—wood. Mike also speaks to how we can better manage our forests to prevent wildfires.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Mike Rowe?

  Hello friends, it's me again, joined by the ever-popular and omnipresent Chuck Klaus Meyer.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Ever-popular, is that right?

• 0:11Mike Rowe?

  Hmm.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  You're just making shit up, aren't you?

• 0:13Mike Rowe?

  I'm just saying things, you know.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Just making sounds.

• 0:16Mike Rowe?

  I wanted to say nice things in the preamble because it occurs to me that I may have been mildly disparaging during the actual episode that's about to unfold. But it was said with love. It's just, sitting here, face to face, or really, whatever, somewhat oblique, you have two laptops open.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:33Mike Rowe?

  You have a brand-new switcher, you have a dedicated GoPro pointing at you, and you've got a whole separate monitor.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:38Mike Rowe?

  And we had a guest sitting next to you the whole time. It was...

• 0:42Speaker 01

  There was a lot going on.

• 0:43Mike Rowe?

  And amusing, if I'm being candid. I don't know how amusing you'll find it, folks, at home, but I certainly enjoyed watching Chuck out of the corner of my eye, try and make sense of this podcast, which is a really good one, I'm just gonna say. My guest is Mike Albrecht. I'm so glad you found him. Was it Will Swaim who hooked us up?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, Will Swaim. Basically, we had on Ed Ring, and, you know, to talk about the wildfire management.

• 1:10Mike Rowe?

  Right after the fires, yeah.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Exactly, right after the fires. And he came from Will, because he's also at the California Policy Center, and he said, "You know, if you want a good follow-up, you should talk to this guy, because he is the president of the American Loggers Council." And I wound up talking to him for the better part of 45 minutes.

• 1:29Mike Rowe?

  I told you, you might as well have just recorded it and called that the podcast, because you really did talk to the guy at length. But, um, but I see how you got sucked in. He's a wealth of information, he's just warm and funny and real, and really on the cusp of something that... Look, this is a big deal, guys. I'll just, spoiler alert.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48Mike Rowe?

  We're calling the episode "God Wood." Because it amuses me. But there are so many things that I learned about our relationship with timber. Part of this is forest management, part of this is fire prevention, but mostly this is a conversation about our dysfunctional relationship with a precious resource. And if you start finding parallels in our energy policy, well, then you're just like us because I'm sitting here thinking, my God, how can we be the largest? We have more wood in this country. We have more forest in this country per capita than any place in the world, and yet we're the world's largest importer of wood.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, we're the largest importer of lumber, I think, is what we are. And we're the largest creator of lumber in the world. Right. And one third of the nation is forest.

• 2:45Mike Rowe?

  Is forest land. Yeah, I mean, there are no new revelations in the energy space, but the fact that all of them translate into the lumber and timber space is super interesting. Your relationship and your reliance on wood and lumber is more keen than you think. This guy is the tip of the spear. As Chuck said, he's the president of the American Loggers Council, and he's joined by his wife, who is also delightful. Vicki is super sweet, and we threw a mic near her because she is the first lady logger of the year.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yes, right.

• 3:25Mike Rowe?

  And he's so proud of her, and you'll see why. These guys are on a mission. It's an important mission. It rhymes with a lot of what we try and do at MicroWorks, but just super happy to give them a platform and really hopeful that some of the swamp creatures are listening because there's a big, I think it's the FFA, the Forest First, what's the law? What's the thing that's pending? It's a big bill coming up in front. You know, but it doesn't matter.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  He mentions it.

• 3:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, because we're about to talk about it. The name of the bill doesn't matter, but it's import and its intent is really critical. The question is, got wood? The answer is provided by Mike Albrecht right after this.

• 4:14Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 4:56Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 5:39Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. So Mike Albrecht, you're here with your lovely wife, Vicky, who has taken a position next to the lovely Chuck, who continues to impersonate a producer. As I sit here impersonating a host, it's all coming together. You good, Vicky? Yeah. You happy? Yep. All right, fantastic. Is she telling the truth, Mike?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  She is, yeah. She's very truthful.

• 6:13Mike Rowe?

  Is she?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:14Mike Rowe?

  Is that what most attracted you to your wife? Her honesty, or her good looks, or her, just her personality? What was it?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  The first time I saw her, she got out of her van, and she had on a tool belt, and she's carrying a tool bucket, and she had a 50-foot cord, electrical cord, kind of slung over, and I said, "That is gonna be my wife."

• 6:34Mike Rowe?

  Wait a minute. So she's wearing nothing but a tool belt?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 6:37Mike Rowe?

  And a little cord? This is unbelievable.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  This is amazing.

• 6:40Mike Rowe?

  Vicky?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  That's all I saw, baby.

• 6:44Mike Rowe?

  I'm so glad you guys made the time to come down and talk. Full disclosure, I don't have a specific agenda. I'm just overwhelmed with a new level of certainty, having just kind of gone through these fires. I've been talking about forest management, and water management, and land management with various experts for a long time, and it's all been very, what is it? Sort of ethereal, or academic, or abstract. And then, all of a sudden, there's this event.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:14Mike Rowe?

  And I suspect you can talk about the Rim Fire, and you can talk about the Palisades Fire, and you can talk, I mean, you've had a front row seat to so much of this. But as the newly-elected president? Or have you been in this role for a while?

• 7:26Speaker 02

  This is my second year, yeah. Last year, yeah.

• 7:29Mike Rowe?

  So you're in charge of the...

• 7:31Speaker 02

  The American Loggers Council.

• 7:32Mike Rowe?

  Where does that rank in the pantheon of acronyms in charge?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Well, the American Loggers Council represents the nation, if you will, nation's loggers. So every state, actually 45 states, have state organizations that represent logging. All those states together, combined, are the American Loggers Council. So we're looking at about 10,000 companies, and about 50,000 or 60,000 loggers that do the heavy lifting every day to get products to... America.

• 8:02Mike Rowe?

  I won't lie to you. I'm looking at your, your notes. There's a yellow legal pad with a lot of really handsome, well, I mean, your penmanship is terrific. You seem very organized. Can we start maybe with myths and misperceptions and, you know, the beliefs, mistaken beliefs that's, that people hold about our timber industry in general that have led to this miasma of misunderstanding?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. When people think of loggers, what I would like them to think of is ranchers, miners, farmers. Those folks take God's given natural resources that we're blessed with and turn them into products that we use. That's what loggers do. We're the same as those folks, only we're working with timber.

• 8:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  So our job is to take timber resources and turn them into something that America wants and needs. And that is usually lumber or certainly wood energy, which we can talk about. But if I can digress a minute, I'll just tell you, loggers started out, not very well understood, I'll tell you that. When our, when our country was formed, Mike, loggers were some of the first people that went to work. And in fact, back in the early 1800s, Bangor, Maine was not the leading lumber shipping exporter in America. It was a leading lumber exporter in the world. So, and this is a colonist, man, they went to work. They said, we can make something out of these woods and started logging.

• 9:34Mike Rowe?

  They said the canopy went from Bangor all the way down to like Sarasota, the whole east coast.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:41Mike Rowe?

  Was essentially a forest.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:44Mike Rowe?

  You know, I wonder sometimes if, if people hear that and think, my God, look, we took it all. People have no sense of how much is left.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We, and I'll speak to that. But so loggers, pretty soon, five presidents bought up 1.5 billion acres over about 100 years. Lincoln, Pierce, Polk, Adams, different presidents. They bought 1.5 billion acres in the Louisiana Purchase to Alaska. And this is interesting, Mike, for three and a half cents an acre. That's what America was purchased for that kind of price from Spain and Russia and Mexico and different countries. And so, one of the first things the government said is, "Go west, folks." They wanted to move, in fact, 11 million people west. And they couldn't get over the Allegheny Mountains. They finally said, "Get over there and get going." Well, loggers went out ahead of them.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  In the 1800s, the Department of Interior managed 80% of America. So, their first rule as a government agency was, "You will not cut timber on public land." This is back in the 1800s. So, loggers are going, "Okay, well, there's no boundaries. There's no roads. There's no fences. We just, we gotta cut timber somewhere. We gotta build the transcontinental railroad." And it got off to a very chaotic start. And loggers started getting arrested. They were viewed as thieves and bad people.

• 11:07Mike Rowe?

  But what I'm... I mean, that's, that's a terrific place to start. "We need to go west. You can't go west. There's no roads. There's no railroad. There's no path." So, the loggers go in first and catch hell for it.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:21Mike Rowe?

  And you guys have been catching hell ever since.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's taken a while to redeem ourselves, I guess, or change that image. But now, we're essential to America. I guess, really, our image is most tarnished by big environmental groups anymore. That's who we are disliked by. And the most of the public doesn't understand us, Mike. But loggers, they get up in the morning, between 1:00 and 4:00 in the morning. And they go to work in the woods. And they do good, honest, hard work. Come home at night, support the soccer teams, this, all the different things in the community. They're just great, honest people, just like ranchers and miners and the ones I mentioned.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  And we're really proud of what we do.

• 12:10Mike Rowe?

  So...

• 12:12Mike Rowe?

  So maybe it's PR, maybe it's how much of your job is involved with crafting an image or perpetuating an image, debunking these perceptions that we're talking about? Because I, I think on the one hand, most rational people wouldn't disagree with anything you've said. It's just that we've been presented, I say we, the 330 million people who, who depend on your industry frankly, for so much. I mean, ever since Joyce Kilmer, right? I think that I've never see a poem as lovely as a tree. We like trees. I love trees. You know, people fight over the trees here, trees there, take the tree, don't take the tree. It gets very emotional, you know?

• 12:55Mike Rowe?

  So that's kind of what I want to dig into. Like what, what do you do to balance?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  What we do, part of that is we, we take people out and tour. We got to get people out of the cities and out of our schools actually, and come out to the woods and see what we do. And it's very interesting when we do that, Mike. We take kids from all over the, the state and we'll have a tour and we've got machines that cut down trees that are really neat. They, they can grab a tree and cut it down and pick it up and lay it down very safely, very good for the environment.

• 13:29Mike Rowe?

  I've seen those. They're mind boggling.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're called feller bunchers. So they can cut trees and they put them in bunches. And so we'll do some of that and when the kids are watching, and this does, I don't, whether it's third graders up through high school, they'll watch this and then we'll shut the machine off and I'll say, okay, how many of you kids thought when the saw went through the tree, the tree felt that? Over half, whether they're third graders or high school, will raise their hand, yeah, I think the tree felt that. And I'll say, okay, well, how many of you think when your mom or dad mowed the lawn, the grass feels a lawnmower? Never has a kid raised it. And so we are still dealing with an entertainment industry and school teachers that don't know, they don't know to teach biology to kids. We've got a generation that's come up and think trees are...

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Not only beautiful, but they have something spiritual or different about them. And so, cutting a tree makes a logger not real popular.

• 14:24Mike Rowe?

  It's a kind of anthropomorphism, right?

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:28Mike Rowe?

  Projecting a human quality onto a non-human thing. Chuck, see if you can find a fellerbuncher there on Google in action. It is worth looking at. I remember the first time that I saw one. I think it might have been on a show that I don't want the credit or the blame for, but Axemen.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:46Mike Rowe?

  Was a thing, you know?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:47Mike Rowe?

  And I remember the first season that aired. People were taking a position almost that the, that the chainsaw had, once upon a time, really presented an unfair advantage. Everyone's talking about it. You know what I mean?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:04Mike Rowe?

  Like, Chuck's working it out. I told you, Vicki, feel free to jump in if it gets awkward over there.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  I could use the help, yeah, for sure.

• 15:13Mike Rowe?

  That looks like dirty stuff going on there, Chuck. I don't think we can put that up there.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Nobody's looking at that now.

• 15:19Mike Rowe?

  I am now. The Tiger Cat LX830D Fellerbuncher in Oregon. I want to see that. I don't know about the girl taking a shower.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  All right. This is YouTube. What can I tell you?

• 15:31Mike Rowe?

  I know. It's a bold new world.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 15:36Mike Rowe?

  Did that just say it gets men rock hard?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  I believe that's what it said.

• 15:39Mike Rowe?

  Honestly, this is a G-rated.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  This is the last time you're ever going to ask me to pull anything up on the interwebs.

• 15:43Mike Rowe?

  Poor Vicki is blushing so hard right now. She's like, I probably should have just taken the sofa. I probably should be, I didn't have to sit next to him.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  All right, look, here you go.

• 15:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, we don't need any audio. I just want to, I just want to show people what this is.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Just try not to, try not to get any audio.

• 15:58Mike Rowe?

  There we go. Look at this thing.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's what kids think when they see that happening. They're going ouch. About half of them are.

• 16:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  That's a great machine.

• 16:10Mike Rowe?

  So you see my point, though, right? I mean, people think that back in the 1800s, okay, the lumberjacks went into the woods with their double-sided blades and their feathers and their wedges, and they started taking trees. And, okay, okay, right?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:24Mike Rowe?

  And then come the chainsaws, and then comes this thing. And I guess, you know, if there's some parallel, I think, not justified necessarily, but in the way of thinking with maybe, you know, dragnet fishing, like, it's just like, wait a second, you're taking too many, it's too easy to get too many fish, and now you've overfished the fishery.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:45Mike Rowe?

  And people are thinking, ah, you know, it's too easy to take too many trees, and now you've denuded.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:50Mike Rowe?

  The forests.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  What people don't know, Mike, is the enormity and the blessing of the forest we have. So, America has, uh, one-third of the country is covered in forest, 800 million acres.

• 17:02Mike Rowe?

  That's worth repeating, just say it again.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:04Mike Rowe?

  Because people might have been zoning out.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll say, okay, so one-third of the United States of America is covered in forests. 800 million acres, our country is covered in forest. And we manage that extremely well with really sophisticated equipment that's very easy on the ground, good for the environment. But in spite of everything we're doing correctly, America is now the number-one importer, and I'm gonna say that again, number-one importer of lumber in the world. So, folks, that means we, compared to India, China, any other country you wanna, we buy and purchase and bring in more wood than any other country in the world, even though

• 17:47Speaker 02

  we have this vast resource that we could be using and exporting wood. That's really one of the goals of the American Loggers Council, is to talk to Congress and say, folks, why are we importing lumber into this country? Why aren't we exporting lumber, using our resources wisely? And instead, we're seeing so many, uh, millions of acres burn up every year.

• 18:11Mike Rowe?

  What are the financial realities of doing that? Like, what's the, the dollars attached to this industry? And what could it be worth? Like, I liken it to energy independence.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:22Mike Rowe?

  Why would we import natural gas or oil when we're sitting on a motherload of it? I think the knee-jerk answer is, well, because we don't want to. Take it. We don't want to wreck our land. We'll let you wreck yours, or some such argument, right?

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that is such a backward, that's really a false argument if you're looking at the global environment, because nobody, no other country manages their forests like America. Nobody manages their forests with the rules that we have in America and still get the things done that we do in America. So, we keep track as an industry of how much is grown and harvested every year. And then we do it kind of in five-year increments, taking a look at what's going on. In the last 75 years, we've always grown more timber in our forests than it harvested. In our national forests, I'm speaking of here specifically.

• 19:20Mike Rowe?

  I'm sorry, but again, when you look at the feller bunchers, en masse, full steam ahead, that claim still holds up. We still grow more than we take?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yes. In fact, right now, our forests are burning and rotting twice as fast as they're growing. And we are not able to go out and salvage the products that we need to salvage because of tremendous environmental pressures from groups like the Sierra Club, who do not want us into the forest, cutting down burned, dead trees. And if I were to point to one of our biggest problems, that would be it, our inability to get in and use the dead and dying wood. Mike, if we just cut one-third more of our growth, and one-third of our dead and dying timber, we would be wood independent, we could start

• 20:11Speaker 02

  to export products. But our industry, I'll just talk about California for a minute, but it's a good example for the nation. California in 1990s had about 150 sawmills. We were doing a lot of milling. We have 27 now. So we've reduced our capacity from then to California now imports 80% of our wood products. So America is the leading importer of lumber in the world. California imports 80% of its wood products and we see our forests rotting and dying, our national forests, our public land, at rates we've never seen before.

• 20:52Mike Rowe?

  It's scandalous.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's taken, personally, I've been on this bandwagon for quite a while with Congress. They are now talking about it in Congress, like, some of them are going, "Wow, we are the leading importer of lumber? Really?" And they're starting to do some things about it. But it's taken years to get that, just that simple message. Why aren't we not lumber and wood independent, just like we're trying to get to be energy independent? We can do it. We've got...

• 21:16Mike Rowe?

  And what would it save us? That's the number I'm still flailing about for. It must be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

• 21:28Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries and the maddening policy that allows meat packers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well, shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising. Given

• 22:09Mike Rowe?

  a choice, most people would prefer to buy their meat from American ranchers. And Good Ranchers is the number one company in America that delivers 100% American meat straight to your door. They partner with over 100 local farmers and ranchers to deliver pasture-raised meat with no antibiotics and no added hormones. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews on Trust Violet. 25,000, including my own. This month... When you visit goodranchers.com/row, you'll get a free Angus ground beef bundle with your first order. Again, that's goodranchers.com/row for four bonus pounds of ground beef raised right here

• 22:52Mike Rowe?

  in these United States, and that's guaranteed. Support your local ranchers by insisting on American meat delivered at goodranchers.com/row. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow,

• 23:07Speaker 02

  don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get Good Ranchers now. Hey, haul.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Our industry is a 300 to 400 billion dollar industry. We import about 25% of our lumber right now, a lot of it from Canada. So we're talking hundreds of billions we could make for American jobs, build new sawmills. So I'm optimistic, Mike, that the change is coming. And some of it is driven by the catastrophes that we've seen. And the Palisades fire, although not burning in a forest, really energized Congress. Congressman Westerman out of Arkansas has put together a bill called the Fix Our Forest Act, which is a good title because it's broken. Let's fix it. Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  And he tried to get it passed in Congress last year, and nobody on the Democratic side, sorry, folks, I'm not trying to make this partisan, but that's just a fact. Nobody on the Democratic side voted for it. He reintroduced it about a month ago after the Palisades fire. 64 Democrats instantly jumped on it, passed Congress instantly. Nancy Pelosi voted for it, which because they've seen the horror of catastrophic fires up close.

• 24:22Mike Rowe?

  I do love to say I told you so from time to time, especially to the listeners of this podcast. But I've often said that in conversations like this, things simply have to go splat.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:35Mike Rowe?

  Unfortunately.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:36Mike Rowe?

  A splat is never pretty. Sometimes it's downright catastrophic. Was the Palisades a splat? Was Altadena a splat? Is that the kind of, I mean, literally, people need to be slapped upside the head.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:48Mike Rowe?

  To see it.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  What's so frustrating to foresters and loggers is we've been slapped up in Northern California 10 times in the last 15 years. The Dixie Fire, a million acres, and...

• 25:04Mike Rowe?

  That was old growth, too.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a lot of, lot of nice forest up there. Prior to that, the one that really got attention for a while was the, called the Paradise Fire, the campfire. That fire, this was horrible. I don't want to minimize this at all. It's horrible down here. But that fire, folks, burned 18,000 homes. It killed 35 people and burned 150,000 acres. This was just six or seven years ago.

• 25:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that was up north.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Fire, yeah.

• 25:34Mike Rowe?

  That went Malibu.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So, this one got the headlines. And I think, okay, wow, the Fix Our Forest Act suddenly got through Congress, just like that. Who was it? Rahm Emanuel said, "Don't let any crisis go to waste." And I guess, here we go.

• 25:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Well, look, I mean, it's just another version of, people are looking around and waiting for the splat. You know, sometimes, maybe it's $8, $9 a gallon. We can always find, you know, a corollary for all of this, but man, it's a steep price to pay. Do you think the Dixie Fire was preventable? Would it have been preventable had the forest been better managed?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  So, these horrific fires share three things. High wind, drought, and low humidity. You can look at every big fire we've ever had, they share those three things. If we were to thin out trees on our landscape, the chances of them moving from a ground fire to a crown fire are definitely reduced.

• 26:37Mike Rowe?

  Explain, so people understand.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  And I will. Let me just say, before I explain that, when you have 100 mile an hour wind, there's nothing you can do. So, there's no sense in blaming anybody or forest management. But, under normal conditions, kind of normal wind conditions, you can hold fires down. Okay, so how do you do that? If you thin out our forests... What you're really looking at is, okay, we've got this very thick overgrown forest. And we have ground fuel, we have intermediate fuels that go up to the crown. So what we do is we thin out the ground fuel in the intermediate fuel. We call it the fuel ladder. It's like each one's a rung on a ladder climbing up. If we can take out that first couple rungs, a lot of times fire will then just stay on the ground.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  It won't carry to the crowns of the trees and destroy the forest. So that's our goal when we're logging is to try to thin the forest out, break that fuel ladder down, fuel ladder, so folks know, L-A-D-D-E-R. And then have fires stay on the ground. Often then we can follow a thinning project with prescribed fire and actually burn some of the fuel out in a prescriptive manner, under good conditions, and really make the fire, the forest fire safe. So that's what we're about. And in the meantime, doing all that thinning makes products we need. We can make wood energy out of it, biomass. We're making electrical energy, Mike, in our hometown out of wood chips.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  We can power our whole town on this power plant we've got, burning wood chips to make electricity.

• 28:15Mike Rowe?

  Do you have video of that? Well, I would love to see Chuck look for some of that video.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  It's called Ultra Power. To find that if you can, it's wood-fired power plant.

• 28:24Mike Rowe?

  Vicki's like, oh, God. Don't make him do this. No, I'm super interested in this because I've done shows around biochar.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:36Mike Rowe?

  And I'm just continually beset by these examples of that, I don't even know if I can call it recycling. You're using your own product to basically power your own product to make more of the product than you need to power the product that you want.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  It's been around for several decades. It's an exciting business. We're very much pushing, or American Loggers Council pushes biomass energy. It's simple, Mike, because power plants share this common thing. They gotta heat water to steam with something, and then the steam runs a turbine generator set. That's what spins and makes things happen. You can use Coal, you can use electrical, you can use, not electrical, but natural gas, nuclear. In this case, we just use wood to heat the water to steam to power the plant. So it shares a commonality with those plants, but we're using wood that has no other real market. These are the small trees that don't make lumber.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  So it's a tremendous natural resource that instead of burning it up in a wildfire, if we thin it out ahead of time, we can make a product to make the forest safer.

• 29:39Mike Rowe?

  Store it, make the product.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:42Mike Rowe?

  Incredible. Okay, so do people understand that? Is this biochar a thing that the average person?

• 29:49Speaker 02

  No, the biochar is making, and that's another good thing. You can make biochar, which is an additive to agricultural ground, which, which actually is, you're making a charcoal product that you can put into the ground. It'll help it retain moisture, but that's kind of a minor industry right now, a growing industry. But mainly, we make lumber and we make different types of pulp and paper products, and we make biomass products to make energy. And biomass is becoming something more important for even liquid fuels. They're starting to look at ways to power aircraft. I'm not sure I'd get in, I don't know if it'd be the first one in an aircraft being.

• 30:27Mike Rowe?

  Powered by wood burning material?

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, by, by, actually, a fuel that can, chemicals that come out of the wood, mainly methane. Point being, wood is a tremendous resource that we're finding so many more uses for, but basically, we need it for lumber. This is what my prop is right here. This, okay, I'm gonna bring this.

• 30:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, bring in the prop.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Here's the prop. So how much lumber do we use every year? This is a board foot. We use about 60 billion of these every year in America to build homes.

• 30:58Mike Rowe?

  Why do they call it a board foot? It looks longer than a foot.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. Well, this one's actually two feet long and six inches wide, but it's 144 square inches. If it's 12 by 12, or however you want to configure it. So actually, this is a board foot, even though it's two feet long. To give folks an example, how much is 60 billion of these? If you start stacking these end to end to the moon, which is 240,000 miles away, if I remember right, I think that's right. 60 billion of these go back and forth and moon about 40 times. If you can get, wrap your head around that. That's how much lumber we use in America every year.

• 31:36Mike Rowe?

  Most of which is imported.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Well, actually, we do make most of it domestically, but we import about 25% of what we need, and that's ridiculous. We don't need to import anything. We should be making our own. This one shares an interesting sticker on it, says "Made in New Zealand." I got this at Lowe's in Sonora. This board came from New Zealand. I cannot explain to you how this board can be cut and milled and shipped to America cheaper than we can do it ourselves. Don't ask me that question, because it's maddening and I don't know the answer to it. But those are the kind of things we've got to look at and go, why is that happening? Why are we not doing this ourselves?

• 32:13Mike Rowe?

  Being as fair as you can.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:16Mike Rowe?

  What would the head of the Sierra Club say if he or she were sitting here? And the accusation was, look, you're affirmatively keeping us from going into forests to clean them out. You're affirmatively saying no to all of the things that have been demonstrably shown to improve the environment, which assumably, purportedly, is your stated goal anyway. Where's the disconnect?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. If the head of the Sierra Club was sitting here, they'd be sitting here in this wooden chair with this wooden table in front of them, talking into this microphone powered by electricity that's probably, very possibly, powered by biomass energy, by wood. You would expose the hypocrisy of the Sierra Club, which their take on this whole thing is we should not be harvesting anything in our national forests, period.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  And so I would think that would be an interesting guest to have on some time, but I can't speak for them, other than their policies are against what we do.

• 33:18Mike Rowe?

  I get the policy. I just don't get the argument.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:22Mike Rowe?

  I'm missing the part where they're saying, "The best thing for the forest is to leave it alone." Are there any facts to support that, that you're aware of?

• 33:32Speaker 02

  No, in fact, the opposite is, the reality is, leaving the forest alone is bad for that, for that whole environment. We've left our forests alone, and our national forests now for decades, and they're burning and rotting. We've shut things down. I mean, the parallels between how much we've reduced our timber harvest through forest management, good logging, and how much is now burning up. It's an inverse. We've shut it down to use it, and now the rotting and burning has climbed dramatically. And it's as clear as the nose on a person's face. And honestly, Mike, I put environmental groups into three categories. The first category

• 34:13Speaker 02

  would be environmentalists that really care about things, but they're willing to talk to you and think about it, and when they see a tour, they go, "You know what? Maybe we're wrong about this." The second group are kind of like, I just, I call them cave people. Citizens against virtually everything. That's kind of where they are. They're just, that's how they are. And then the third group-

• 34:32Mike Rowe?

  I'm opposed.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just opposed, yeah. And then the third group are really the deep, extreme, and it's an industry, it's an environmental industry. I'm gonna ramble on here too much, maybe, but I got it, how big it is now, Mike. So environmental groups have to register in America to be a 501(c)(3), to get their nonprofit status. There are 30,471 environmental groups registered in the United States of America. They have 138,000, not members, employees. They have an annual income of over $28 billion. They have a war chest of about $80 billion. I shouldn't say a war chest, I'll say a balance sheet, because we're

• 35:17Speaker 02

  not at war with a lot of these people. We can work with some of them, but we're up against-

• 35:21Mike Rowe?

  They're at war with you.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're an extreme group. Why some of them want to stop things, I really think they want to see, they want to see a lot of the world depopulated, but I'm not gonna get into that kind of thing.

• 35:31Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's a Malthusian, right?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:34Mike Rowe?

  I mean, a lot of people- I mean, even with all the headlines around population collapse, I mean, it really looks to be a very serious thing, but you still hear guys from

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:46Mike Rowe?

  You know, some big eggheads all the way to Bill Maher, who are just saying, "Look, the, the resources aren't here to support the people we have." And here we are. I'm still trying to get my head around the earlier claim that a third of our country is forest.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:59Mike Rowe?

  And I'm reminded of like the blind guy and the elephant, right? He doesn't know what he's touching, and he just assumes that the whole of the thing is whether it's the tail, or the trunk, or the tusk, right? And I think, you know, I flew across the country yesterday, had a window seat. I didn't see any forest. Flew across the whole country. What I saw was vast wasteland.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 36:22Mike Rowe?

  You know, and I get it, that's, you know, that's where the flight paths are, but most people who stay in their lane and in the flight path, they don't see the forest. And if we can't see it, if we can't touch it, then it just becomes unreal to us. It's just worth belaboring, a third of the country

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:41Mike Rowe?

  is forest.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:42Mike Rowe?

  It's incredible.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Right. And it's managed by really good people that we call loggers, and that's what we're about. And, you know, one of the things I think, Mike, that folks need to know is loggers are trained, they're certified, they're licensed, they have to take tests to even become a logger. In California, you, you have to have 3,000 hours of experience before you can even get a licensed timber operator's certificate. So, you know, one guy, we had an interesting talk one time, you know, loggers are just those knuckle draggers that walk around and they, you know, like cavemen. That image is gone, I think, or it should be gone. We are professional people, really proud of what we do.

• 37:23Mike Rowe?

  It's gone in the church that you attend.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:27Mike Rowe?

  It's gone into the choir you preach to.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:30Mike Rowe?

  But, I tell you, man, this is a great transition, because we could talk about the macro for hours, but it's the micro. It's the individual loggers that I really want to pick your brain on, because I do think those guys are still subject to the same sorts of Stereotypes that have been around since Paul Bunyan. I think farmers are still subject to, you know, Billy Bob and the the overalls clear in the South Forty, you know, hay seeds. Mechanics are still relegated to knuckle dragon grease monkeys and so forth. These, these are very powerful images.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:06Mike Rowe?

  You know, in fact, I remember the Future Farmers of America telling me right before I addressed 30,000 of their members back in 2008 that we're now officially referred to as the FFA. Because the word farmer itself had become an impediment to their ability to recruit.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:26Mike Rowe?

  So, yeah, I'm, I'm always fascinated by these images and by these stereotypes and, and the impact they have, not just on your industry, but on our country.

• 38:42Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week, I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name because his medical history is complicated and personal, but his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason, to help people on Medicare

• 39:25Mike Rowe?

  find the plan that's right for them. It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you.

• 40:08Mike Rowe?

  Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter save an average of $1,100 a year.

• 40:15Mike Rowe?

  804, Chapter. That's the number. Call it today, it's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804, Chapter.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's to kind of further your example. So even up till, I don't know, actually, most of my career. We're loggers. We're proud of that word. It has a connotation that folks, I don't know where it comes from, maybe all our history, but for a while, they've tried to change what we do. Let's call it timber harvesting. Let's call it forest thinning. Let's call it vegetation management.

• 40:46Mike Rowe?

  Let's call it post-traumatic stress disorder, not shell shock anymore.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, forest health workers. No, we're loggers. And that's what the American Loggers Council is all about, is trying to educate folks on what we do, why we do it. And we're making tremendous progress. In fact, what's coming, Mike, is wood is now being viewed by the world as the premier building product. You may have heard of mass timber or cross laminated timber. We're seeing around the world skyscrapers being built out of wood. And

• 41:18Mike Rowe?

  Whoa.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:19Mike Rowe?

  Where?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  30, 40, Denver, Colorado to Denmark, all over the world. It's something worth maybe doing a show on sometime. It's called mass timber or cross laminated timber.

• 41:30Mike Rowe?

  God help me, Chuck, but can we find a wooden skyscraper with cross?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Probably not. Probably not.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  But there's some beautiful.

• 41:41Mike Rowe?

  It's not on Pornhub, by the way.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  There's some beautiful examples of wooden structures being built all over the world. So one of the leading architects in the world was saying, and I'll get this sort of right, but he said something to the effect of the 17th century was the century of rock. The 18th century was the century of steel. The 19th century was a century of brick. The 20th century was a century of concrete. The 21st century is a century of wood.

• 42:11Mike Rowe?

  We're gonna go back.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  We're headed in the right direction.

• 42:14Mike Rowe?

  Is that?

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go. That's wood. Even though that's been painted, it looks like. That's a good job, Chuck. That looks good.

• 42:22Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, we're gonna keep you around for another week, brother.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Man, I feel so good.

• 42:25Mike Rowe?

  Think you gotta be proud to be sitting next to a guy that's so close to being a producer. That's amazing.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  This is what's gonna bring us around is when the world starts to see how important wooden structures and how beautiful they are and how they can replace other types of building materials and hey folks, wood is a renewable resource. All this other stuff we dig up and I'm not against any of them, the cement and all, don't get me wrong.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  I mean, it literally grows on trees, am I right?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Easy, Sparky. Vicki, please, can you do something?

• 42:56Mike Rowe?

  Well, can I just ask the screamingly obvious question about the risk a wooden structure might pose, especially in its high risiness? I mean, does the cross lamination, is that some sort of fire retardant?

• 43:14Speaker 02

  So, there's a couple of things. Will they fall over, you know, in an earthquake? So, to build this stuff, you gotta pass all these tests. So, wood, wooden structures, high rise, when you, they put them on shaker platforms and shake them, and they hold together better than concrete, brick, steel, they kinda compete with steel. Fire-wise, they're absolutely, they're not fireproof by any means, but it's like holding a match up against a log. It won't start on fire. And so, these wooden beams are just solid superstructures that, you know, if a fire got going in somebody's bedroom and that got going, maybe it would, but no, they've

• 43:54Speaker 02

  passed all the fire tests and they're extremely safe from a structural integrity and from fire.

• 44:02Mike Rowe?

  As safe as brick?

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, safer than brick when it comes to earthquake. I'll give it to you, brick won't burn, but I'm gonna Google up sometime, has a cross laminated timber skyscraper burned yet? I haven't heard of one.

• 44:15Mike Rowe?

  Hmm. Has a cross laminated?

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Or mass timber, yeah.

• 44:20Mike Rowe?

  Mass timbered skyscraper burned yet?

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:24Mike Rowe?

  I mean, look, again, that's just one of those things that creates enough cognitive dissonance in the average person's brain pan that they, all they can do is stare at you like a cow looking at a new gate, you know, it's like, so you're telling me the wooden, I live up in San Francisco, God help me, and, you know, that was a wooden town once upon a time, and after that earthquake, that thing went up like flash paper, and that's seared into my sort of, you know, imaginary reptilian repda. God, you know, it wouldn't have been that bad if everything had been brick.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  You know, these beams are often two feet by two feet. I mean, they're just huge, they're the strength of steel and they, I guess I'm not prepared to convince you that...

• 45:07Mike Rowe?

  No, I'm just trying to be, look, I mean...

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know what people would think, am I with you?

• 45:12Mike Rowe?

  You and I are in such violent agreement, it would be boring. I'd just sit here and just nod my head and go, yeah, but I mean, look, first of all, you're telling me this country is a third forest. Secondly, you're telling me that the future of building materials is wood.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:26Mike Rowe?

  Okay, I can't wait to hear number three.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Well, and the number three is, still is the problem, is we're the leading importer of wood in the world. That's the one that doesn't resonate in there, and that's where we're, that's what the American Loggers Council is working hard on. So you're back to, yeah, loggers, how are we viewed by people?

• 45:45Mike Rowe?

  I just, well, I'm sorry, I just got up and real quick. We're the leading importer of wood, but we basically use 75% as a country. So even though we're only importing 25% of all the wood we use, we are the overall, in the aggregate, the leading importer of wood. California, on the other hand, is importing 80% of the...

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Of its timber products.

• 46:09Mike Rowe?

  Of its timber products. And California, by way of comparison, state by state, who has more wood than California?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe Alaska.

• 46:16Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe Alaska.

• 46:18Mike Rowe?

  Well, they don't really count though.

• 46:22Mike Rowe?

  What's going on in Alaska?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, Russia wants that back, I'm sure.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  So on ChatGPT, it says here that as of February 2025, there have been no reports of cross laminated timber CLT skyscrapers burning. In fact, CLT has been extensively tested and is recognized for its fire resistant properties. When exposed to fire, CLT forms a protective charred layer that insulates the inner wood, allowing the structure to maintain its integrity for extended periods. This charring process enables CLT buildings to withstand fires, effectively often outperforming traditional materials like steel in certain fire scenarios.

• 47:01Mike Rowe?

  Okay, no, that's interesting. And the charring is interesting.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. So that, yeah, there you go. It forms a protective layer that, oh, now it won't burn.

• 47:08Mike Rowe?

  So you use fire to char the wood, so it won't burn?

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I meant to say, Chuck, all that stuff.

• 47:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, that's good.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:18Mike Rowe?

  I'll tell you what's unfortunate. CLT, also the airport designation for Charlotte, which leads me to the next question. Wooden planes, are they coming?

• 47:28Speaker 02

  That's how we started, right?

• 47:29Mike Rowe?

  Right, was it?

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Back to the future.

• 47:31Mike Rowe?

  Was it the spruce goose basically a wooden plane?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  It did not do well.

• 47:36Mike Rowe?

  No?

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a wooden plane, but it didn't spruce very well.

• 47:40Mike Rowe?

  Well, any.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Or goose.

• 47:41Mike Rowe?

  When you force rhymes like that into technology, the spruce goose, you're tempting fate.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Let me speak real quick, Chuck, to another, excuse me, Mike, to another problem that we have with these forest fires, and that's the smoke, which you saw from the top of the building looking across, huge, huge volumes of smoke. So there's smoke and there's the watershed effects, and I want to hit them both real quick. How bad is this smoke problem? When we're breathing, it's horrible.

• 48:11Mike Rowe?

  Drifting smoke, they call it.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. So a UCLA study was just came out and it looked at the fires in California, the 2020 fires, which was a bad year. Here was their conclusion, and I'll read one sentence. Wildfire emissions in 2020 essentially negated 18 years of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, all our electric cars, all this stuff we've been doing to ourselves, and I'm not in a bad way, but you know, we're trying to improve, that one wildfire season negated, it offset 18 years of all of that. So, smoke is worse than just a noxious, we don't like breathing it. This thing really wipes out our greenhouse gas advances that we make.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  So, really something for folks to be aware of, that another reason burning up our forests is really, really bad. Watershed. Our forests supply about 75% of the water in California. Comes, when I say supply, it sheds the water, it comes out of the mountains, 75% of California's water. And we're often short on water. If we were to thin our forests and take out what, it's a good example. If you look at a bunch of, a drinking cup with straws in it. Each one of those trees is like a straw, taking water out of the ground.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  It's called evapotranspiration. An average-sized pine tree, Mike, takes about 200 gallons, not per week, per day, out of the ground. 200 gallons a day. So that much water, and so when you've got millions of trees, more than you need, you're, we're losing millions of gallons.

• 49:59Mike Rowe?

  Hundreds of millions of gallons a day.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  A day, yeah.

• 50:01Mike Rowe?

  Just being like a straw sucked right out of the forest.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  So if we could thin some of those trees out, make them into products, reduce the fire danger, we also will improve our water supply. And get rid of this smoke problem. I mean, it's such a win-win-win. So yeah, if you have the Sierra Club guys sitting here and go, "Why aren't we doing this?" I don't know the answer to that. But we ask politicians why we're not doing this. And we're making some good traction now. We go back to Washington DC every year, the American Loggers Council. We used to meet with staffers, which we love meeting with the staff. Now we meet with the Speaker of the House. We meet with the Speaker of the Senate, with the head of the Senate. We meet with the head people. They're like, "Hey, we want to hear from you guys. What do we need to do different? Fix our forest act is coming." It's a new day coming,

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Mike, and I'm optimistic about the future, even though it's been a tough go.

• 50:52Mike Rowe?

  Well, we've been watching a lot of splats happen here and there. Before I really ask you about the daily life of a logger and ask you to make a case for a man or woman who might want to enter that industry, and before we talk about some of the recruiting challenges therein, I'm still stuck a little bit on the anthropomorphism that you alluded to earlier, you know, when half of the kids in all of those surveys indicate that they believe the tree felt pain when it was being cut.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:26Mike Rowe?

  You know, I don't know that you outgrow that. I think, from what I've seen, that's a belief structure that metastasizes, like most beliefs do, and it gets, you know, firmly held. And you see it in, you know, Gaia and Mother Earth.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:42Mike Rowe?

  And so many examples.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Wizard of Oz.

• 51:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And so suddenly, I mean, I'll get, I'll catch all sorts of hell for saying it, but if somehow the species doesn't see itself at the very top of the food chain, and as the proximate cause of all the environmental trouble in the world, then that's when people start to push. They're like, "No, no, it is up to us. We are in charge," as if, as if we were in charge of Pangaea, or Tambora, or Krakatau, or the last earthquake, or the next earthquake.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:18Mike Rowe?

  I just marvel when I think about how quickly the Earth will revert to whatever just fine means for the Earth.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:27Mike Rowe?

  It'll shrug and will be gone.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Well, you know, when you talk about we're in charge, we can only be in charge of what we can really be in charge of. Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, Krakatoa, those are acts of God. We can start a forest fire and we can put out a forest fire. That is what's different about fires and we can be in charge of that dynamic. When a fire starts in 100 mile an hour wind, no, I'm not talking about that. But we can do a lot as a society to prevent forest fires, like Smokey the Bear said. And that's where we need to go. And we need to do it in spades. We need to get serious about it. And the crisis that we've

• 53:12Speaker 02

  seen is driving it. And it's finally, yeah, maybe we've been slapped finally the time that we're going to get it.

• 53:18Mike Rowe?

  Maybe.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  But, you know, back to kids and teaching and stuff and how do they get this idea? Vicky can tell this story better than me, but we often have the teachers come and we'll teach Forest Institute for Teachers and we'll teach the teachers. And one time we had that and this lady came up to Vicky later and she's in tears almost. And Vicky goes, what's the matter? She says, I've been teaching these kids wrong my whole life about everything you do and about trees. And so she said, man, I'm going to start teaching the truth. Okay, well, we need to do a lot more.

• 53:54Mike Rowe?

  That's a parapetia. That's a parapetetic moment in the narrative when the protagonist realizes everything.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:02Mike Rowe?

  He or she thought she knew.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:04Mike Rowe?

  Is wrong.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:06Mike Rowe?

  That's a very, very hard thing to get your head around. But would you give Vicky your mic for a sec? Because I want to hear from her in a moment after I make this next salient and unforgettable point. It's really just repeating what you said. We have to focus on the things we can do, but we also have to be very realistic about the things we can't control. And when you call Krakatoa an act of God, that's a tough sell today. In the same way, you don't want to make this political. I don't want to make it religious.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:35Mike Rowe?

  But what would have happened back when Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein? You know, that was that famous summer. Was it Krakatoa or was it Tambora? I don't remember which one.

• 54:48Mike Rowe?

  Tambora, right? So giant volcano. Huge cloud. Talk about the impact of smoke.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:56Mike Rowe?

  Goes around the world, basically. Blocks out the sun.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:59Mike Rowe?

  Wound up changing migratory patterns for humans in this country. Indiana wouldn't be where it is but for the changing patterns of migration as a result of this volcano. It plunged the world into this preternatural gloom and darkness. It screwed up the farming cycles, the seasons. Poor Mary Shelley's right in Frankenstein locked up in Switzerland in some crazy hotel. My question is, what would we do today in the wake of that? Would the next 30,000 plus environmental agency to emerge be the agency committed to somehow putting an end to volcanoes?

• 55:37Speaker 02

  That is so great you you mentioned that because I I think of that same thing. Only I think of it in terms of the Dust Bowl. What would we do today if that occurred? Where and and I remember reading interesting in religion for a minute. So I remember reading about it and some pastors saw this first black. They thought it was the apocalypse. They thought it was the end of the world. That went on for four or five years. People didn't sweep things off. They shoveled their houses out. What would happen if that happened today? Who would we blame? How would we view something like that? Same example.

• 56:12Mike Rowe?

  We would look for a cause.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  We'd look for a cause.

• 56:14Mike Rowe?

  Because because we would fundamentally believe that because we're at the absolute top of the food chain.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:19Mike Rowe?

  It must be within our control.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:21Mike Rowe?

  So we either caused it or it's incumbent upon us to prevent it.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:29Mike Rowe?

  Right? So that.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  But you can't prevent Krakatoa and you can't produce. But the but forest management, you can prevent a lot of things. And you can't cure all the ales. You can't stop every fire, but you can certainly make things safer. People can do things with forest management around fire that you can't do on any of these other things we're talking about earthquakes or those are going to happen. And that's what makes forest management firefighting and all that and interrelated very important thing for people to get. And by thinning and preventing, we're making products for goodness sakes. You know, it's like, how simple can this possibly get?

• 57:14Mike Rowe?

  If you work in boots all day long and your feet sweat, I feel your pain. And I'd recommend trying the socks that I wear every day from Camel City Mill. These guys sent me a box as a gift long before they sponsored this podcast. And I started wearing them and eventually I reached out to them because I love the product. And I wanted more sponsors on the podcast who make things in America. And now here they are again sponsoring another episode. Camel City Mill makes their socks in North Carolina with American wool in an American factory. Their merino wool blends help wick sweat away from your skin. And their no sweat vent lets heat and moisture escape. That helps keep your feet dry and comfortable when you're spending long days in work boots.

• 57:58Mike Rowe?

  They also reinforce the heel and the toe with double plated nylon to stand up to the wear those boots put on your socks. Remember, it's not the feet that wear out your socks, it's your boots. And they back their socks with a 10 year durability guarantee. If you get a hole or a tear in the first decade, they'll replace them for free. If you're a hardworking guy dealing with sweaty, uncomfortable feet, I'm telling you, these are worth trying. I wear mine every day and I'm glad to have the company on the podcast. CamelCityMill.com Use code ROW. Get 10% off my favorite work socks. CamelCityMill.com Code ROW. It's complicated because it's neither fish nor fowl, right?

• 58:40Mike Rowe?

  It's not Krakatoa, but because it's going to happen to your point when the winds are blowing and the humidity is low and there's drought.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:48Mike Rowe?

  There's not much you can do.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:49Mike Rowe?

  But during all these other times, there are things you can do. So you can mitigate it.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:54Mike Rowe?

  You can't mitigate a volcano. You can't mitigate an earthquake.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 58:57Mike Rowe?

  That's why the fire is so vexing because it feels like we ought to be able to do more to stop it.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:06Mike Rowe?

  And surely we can.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  We can.

• 59:08Mike Rowe?

  But we can't necessarily eliminate them.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:11Mike Rowe?

  And so we have to, I don't know.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Well, it's like.

• 59:14Mike Rowe?

  There's a humility in this, right?

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. He used the elephant thing a little while ago. It's like eating an elephant. You gotta get started and we are well started at it. We are doing great things.

• 59:23Mike Rowe?

  Hey, man, I don't want to make any trouble for you, but you start talking about eating elephants. You have any idea the mail you're gonna get? I'm sure that's on the naughty list.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, okay, yeah, we're not gonna eat any. PETA is gonna get me.

• 59:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, dude, they got a file on me. Thick as a brick.

• 59:42Mike Rowe?

  We'll come back to you in a second, but your beautiful wife, the lady logger of the year.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:47Mike Rowe?

  Say something smart, Vicky, about education. And what's a nice girl like you doing out there with a bunch of feller bunchers?

• 59:54Speaker 02

  And tell everybody the first thing you said about logging when you met me.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Oh, well, Mike loves this story because when I first met him, one of the things I said was that I really, really did not like logging trucks.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  No, she said hated.

• 1:00:09Mike Rowe?

  That's a form of intense dislike. Sure.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  And the reason behind that was because I was a single mom at the time and would drive to town on a little two-lane road and logging trucks would pass me. I'd be going 55 and they would pass me on these windy roads. And the ones that were doing it, it was pretty unsafe. They'd throw up gravel and break my windshield and I didn't have the money to pay for it.

• 1:00:36Mike Rowe?

  And so people know, we're talking about these possibly long flatbeds with these giant trees, a dozen of them.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:44Mike Rowe?

  Chained. You do look at that and go, boy, I don't want to be behind it when that chain snaps.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  Well, most, most logging trucks drive really well and have great drivers. I just happened to get behind a couple of wild ones. So, so that's where my impression came from that I didn't like logging trucks.

• 1:01:03Mike Rowe?

  And then you learned he was a logger. What, you guys are dating at this point? Or about to date or what?

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  Well, we actually, we met at Thanksgiving and he proposed January 4th. So we didn't have.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Same. Yeah, six weeks.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  However, many weeks later.

• 1:01:19Mike Rowe?

  That's borderline.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  So logging didn't really play into it, except that I didn't really want to meet someone from out of state. I was living in Oregon at the time, although I'm a native Californian. And so Mike's sister asked if I wanted to meet him and I said, well, if he's from California, no, not really. And she lied.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Well, just because I wasn't gonna move. And she lied and she said, um, well, actually, I, you know, he has a logging company and I think he's planning on moving his company to Oregon. And there was zero truth in that.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  That's the big lie. That's what got us together.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  But there was purpose behind that because we've been married now for 26 years.

• 1:02:09Mike Rowe?

  Oh, logging, a love story. So you meet on Thanksgiving and December goes by and then you're halfway into January and you, and you propose.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Over the phone from California.

• 1:02:21Mike Rowe?

  Over the phone because nothing says romance like.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:25Mike Rowe?

  Honey, trust me, I'm down on one knee and I'm, and I'm holding this amazing ring for you.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Well, here's how the conversation went. So I, so we're talking, I said, Vicky, will you marry me? And there's this long pause. And so I go, well, do you need more time to think about it? And she goes, no. And I go, well, no, you won't marry me or no, you don't need more time to think about it.

• 1:02:51Mike Rowe?

  And?

• 1:02:52Speaker 03

  And I said, and I laughed and I said, no, I don't need more time to think about it and yes, I'll marry.

• 1:03:00Mike Rowe?

  What in the world did he do in six weeks? I mean, was this his good timing all around or what kind of game does this logger have? People want to know.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  You know, I was not looking to get married. I was, I had two young boys and truly, um, God brought us together. I could tell a 15 minute story, which I won't, um, that just every single step of the way, that's what it was.

• 1:03:28Mike Rowe?

  So it just felt like something bigger than you.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, what I realized probably about 10 years later is the reason that Mike's sister intuitively knew that we should be together is because we are so much alike. And I think that we tuned into that pretty instantly.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so from I hate logging trucks to lady logger of the year, I knew, see, I knew what was coming.

• 1:03:55Mike Rowe?

  What did she do to get lady logger of the year? How does this, how does this happen? And has there ever been a lady logger of the year?

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  No, she's the first one. And the president of our association said, we're going to start doing this and Vicky's going to be the one. And actually, what she does, she works behind the scenes. She, she does all sorts of work for our associations. That's how she got to be lady logger of the year. We put on the national convention in Sonora, California in last October. And she pretty well put that whole thing together. She believes in what we do. And she believes in the people, loves the logging community. And all the things you've written about, all the different jobs and all that. I don't know if you've ever written about loggers, but they would be right in your wheelhouse. You would love us too. We're just great, honest, hardworking people. And that's, Vicky saw that and she's part of it, but she's always behind the scenes doing things.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  She never had to do a, she never won the axe throw or anything like that. She was just always hard, hard work, supporting our industry. And that's how, that got her that recognition and it was well deserved.

• 1:05:00Mike Rowe?

  With his double-bladed axe and his hobnail boots, he goes where the timber's tall.

• 1:05:06Mike Rowe?

  Hey, Paul, Paul Bunyan. Wow. Okay, so I'll start to land the plane somewhat.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:05:15Mike Rowe?

  Around work, you know, what kind of people today?

• 1:05:20Mike Rowe?

  Who are you looking for in your industry? What kind of person who really doesn't know much about your industry?

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Mike Rowe?

  Ought to consider it. And why?

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  That's a really good question because the industry is rapidly changing right now, Mike, in terms of the equipment we use and the technology that we employ. And kids really are into technology and joysticks and different things. So the reason to get into logging, not is to, because you like joysticks and stuff, but, or electronics, but it's not setting chokers and chainsaws and it's a...

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  A job I think that kids can be attracted to because it uses a lot of technology for sure. But it still takes kids that get up in the morning and want to get to work at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and work hard and make a good living. And there's a lot of those kids out there. There's a lot of kids that are in college right now. They come out of college with debt and they're like, really don't know what to do. So what we're trying to do right now is to get into high schools and show young people that there's a honest, good living out there doing logging. And probably in 15 years, Mike, 20 years, that feller buncher you just saw, you'll be able to operate it right here from LA in Sonora.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  We're working with a company right now that is teleoperating equipment. There's a machine called a skitter that drags the logs after the feller buncher puts it down. He's operated that skitter from 1,000 miles away with teleoperating electronics, with cameras on the machine and sensors and GPS. So the Tesla-type stuff on the highway is coming to the logging industry. That's not the reason to get in it necessarily, but I think it attracts the young folks to go, "This is kind of cool."

• 1:07:12Mike Rowe?

  Same thing with farming. The miracle of modern agriculture has been hidden from view from a whole generation. There's so much big science.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:21Mike Rowe?

  There's so much incredible tech.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Mike Rowe?

  In all of it.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:25Mike Rowe?

  But what happened to you? What was it about the industry that got you? And how did you start working in it?

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Oh, that's... So, we're going to go back about 55 years for that. At about 15 years old, a lot of the young guys that logging that age back then were, start firewood cutting. And so, we started a firewood business. And Mark and Wayne and I started this firewood business together. And we cut trees and made firewood and did all sorts of great things and...

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  We weren't driving yet. We were just kind of stacking it up. But as soon as, one day, we were working and had ropes and stuff and dragging stuff up. And we thought, okay, let's figure out how to yard this stuff up the hill. So our pastor was a logger too. He came up, put a block and tackle in the tree, rope, okay. And we started dragging stuff up. And so we had a truck pulling stuff up and we were all working together. And we'd load and unload firewood. And we started a business and it was really great. And the difference in our little business was Mark was blind and was blind from birth. He would be a great person for you to write about in your book. He's the kind of guy that you would write and

• 1:08:39Mike Rowe?

  Mark was a logger.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Mark was a logger and he was blind. He could load and unload the truck with firewood. This was back when they're kids. He didn't go into logging as a profession. And we could teach him how to drive the truck to pull logs and say, hey, Mark, stop and go and back up. And it just was a great way for us to get started because it

• 1:08:59Mike Rowe?

  Vic, am I hearing this right? You just told me the blind guy's driving the truck?

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  That's what I heard.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Well, let me tell you what we used to, after, as soon as we got our driver's license, what I did with Mark, the blind guy, he had a Model A, his dad got. So we got in the Model and I said, hey, Mark, let's go take that out on the highway. So I said, you get behind the wheel. I'll sit in the passenger side and I'll steer. And off we went, out onto the highway. Because Mark knew how to drive. He knew how to shift and do all that stuff because he practiced around on his ranch. But, and so Mark was a, it taught me that handicapped is only in the eyes of us beholders. That Mark wasn't handicapped. He knew what to do. But anyway, that's how I got started in logging. I went from that to, I actually went to school, got my forester degree. I'm a registered forester also.

• 1:09:47Mike Rowe?

  Duke, right?

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Duke, yeah. And we got a kick ass basketball team. You know that. That's what we're And then we went on-

• 1:09:55Mike Rowe?

  And they play on a wooden floor.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we play on a wooden floor, yeah. Now I'm president of the American Loggers Council and it's been a great ride all in between, but-

• 1:10:02Mike Rowe?

  What's the YSS all about?

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a reason that we've got in our little community, it's a group, a consensus group, a collaborative group where we get these environmentalists that I say want to work with us, we all get together and we say, "Okay, we had the rim fire, we don't want that anymore. What are we gonna do?" And so, yeah, we got together and we're gonna thin the forest, we're gonna get things replanted, we're gonna, no litigation, we said, "Nobody show up here to sue it because we're against that" and we salvaged 300 million board feet after the rim fire because we kept any litigants out because we all got along. So it's a local group of folks that get together and make things happen.

• 1:10:40Mike Rowe?

  Do you think that's what's going to-

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:10:42Mike Rowe?

  Is that the way forward?

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:10:44Mike Rowe?

  For everything, maybe?

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Things locally are where you can make things happen. If you wait for Washington, if we wait for Sacramento and all their bureaucratic, we're gonna wait a long time, but if we can get together locally, we can make things happen. So in Tooluma County, which is in kind of the center of the Sierras, we're building our seventh wood processing facility in that county. We've got two sawmills still, we've got two biomass plants, we've got a wood shavings plant. We're building things because our community gets it and we get together. I'm gonna digress if I can take a little more time-

• 1:11:19Mike Rowe?

  Take it, yeah.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Of what, how this can work the other way and, and, and when an environmental, a big extreme group gets in the way. There was a project called Tucuyara Ridge down on the Lost Padres National Forest, Santa Ana Wind Country, and they said, this little community of about 3,000 called Mount Pino said, "We want to build a fuel break around our community. We want to clear so we don't burn up, we've got about 3,800 homes here. We want to be safe."

• 1:11:46Mike Rowe?

  How big is a fuel break, by the way, so people understand?

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Mike Rowe?

  How wide?

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and by the way, usually they're shaded, so it's not just a clear cut. You thin it out pretty aggressively. In this case, I think this was a 300-foot fuel break, which is gonna work in most things, not 100 mile an hour wind, you can't, okay. So- The Mount Pena's community group got together, says, "We want to do this." The Forest Service said, "Yep, let's do it." The Kern County Fire Department supported them. They put it out for scoping, it's called, so everybody could weigh in on it. "Let's move it forward." Gets ready to go, in comes the Center for Biological Diversity out of Tucson, Arizona, and says, "No, no, no, you're not going to do that because you're going to endanger the condor, and it's in a roadless area." Really?

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Okay, we'll go to court. Two years later, this district court says, "Yep, you're good to go." "No, Center for Biological Diversity, we're going to take it to the Ninth Circuit." They sued again. Took six years to get this fuel break built. Luckily, there wasn't a fire. I don't know what would have happened, but it would have burned the place down, is what would have happened. That's an example of how it doesn't work. When an extreme group that doesn't live in the community comes and says, "We don't like that," for whatever reason.

• 1:13:05Mike Rowe?

  I'll tell you what, it's not good for the condor.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Mike Rowe?

  It is a windmill.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10Mike Rowe?

  Have you seen that? Have you seen these, the condors and the kites? Big birds just flying

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Mike Rowe?

  Straight into them all of the time.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's lots of documented bird kills. The spotted owl is probably known more than the condor. After lots of studying, really, it took a lot of studying, they figured out, the scientists, what's killing the spotted owl is wildfire, killing their nests, and the barred owl, which is a bigger owl that actually kills the spotted owl, eats their eggs. It's not logging, it's the lack of logging that's killing these animals off, because our forests are burning up. So, these are all the kind of things the American Loggers Council and others try to get up to Congress, "We're going in another month," and we bring these facts to people, and they go, "You know what? We're starting to hear you here."

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  And Westerman heard us, and he's now got the Fix Our Forest Act. And I'll tell you, listeners, it's through the House, we got to get the Senate to pass it. It's at the Senate doorstep right now.

• 1:14:12Mike Rowe?

  Fix Our Forest Act.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Fix Our Forest Act.

• 1:14:14Mike Rowe?

  When's the vote? Do you know?

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Got to schedule a vote. The Senate, they have a few committees, and so, we just need to call our senator. We've got two senators here, say, "Folks, this is a good thing, push it through."

• 1:14:27Mike Rowe?

  I know that you've obviously got a clear and present bias, but... Do you liken this and the importance of this topic to energy independence?

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Oh, what a great comparison. Okay, I'll just, we don't want to talk politics, I know, but the Trump, I don't care either. It was the Trump administration that said, "Look, we can be energy independent." And he got us there in about four years. We started the Keystone Pipeline and did things that said, "Made sense. We have more energy in this country than any other country." Same thing with wood products. Yes, we just need the administration to go, "This is really important. We can be wood independent." I don't want to be wood independent. I want to export wood, Mike. I want us to export our wood and our technology. I'll tell you, this is an interesting fact.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Half the wood in the world is still used for heating and cooking. You know, you've seen it in National Geographic, these ladies that carry wood on their back for five miles because they've denuded Cambodia or Ethiopia or wherever. We need to be helping those countries with wood products and technology on how to get things going.

• 1:15:39Mike Rowe?

  They've got to get through their own industrial, right? I mean, they're burning dung and wood. They've got to get to coal and oil and then gas. And then maybe we can talk about hydro or solar or wind or fusion or fission.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. But we need to be able to show up to those countries, say, "Hey, folks, we've got wood for sale. We've got pellets, wood, biomass, whatever. But no, we're importing it because we are shutting our industry down." And that's, we're making a big push on that and it's working, but it's going to take a while. It's like turning the aircraft carrier.

• 1:16:16Mike Rowe?

  Vicky, did he forget anything? Are you sitting there going, "Gosh, if only you would have mentioned blah, blah, blah"?

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  That's a good question, because she usually is.

• 1:16:25Mike Rowe?

  Here's your last chance. I'm about to look into this bag of schwag you brought me and unwrap the treats.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  You know, I got a question though.

• 1:16:32Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Sorry, but.

• 1:16:33Mike Rowe?

  Oh, dear.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  My question is, you know, I know that you said like, it all grows on trees, right? This wood grows on trees. The biomass can help us with energy. We can build more with wood. And I've seen cross cutting, like in Washington State. I've driven past a section where they take out of like an acre here and it's like a checkerboard. It's like, how long does it take from the time you clear that piece of a checkerboard till it grows high enough, big enough, that you can clear it again?

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. It takes a little longer in the West than it does in the South. And so in the Southern United States, you can have a new crop of trees ready for harvest in about 25 to 30 years. It's grows quicker. Here, it's about 50 years. In the meantime, you can do some intermediate cutting, thinning it out, getting some products as you thin that, and then it's ready to harvest, say, in 50 or 60 years. And it has to be replanted. We don't cut anything and not replant it. That's a law, but it's, of course, we want to, because that's our business. That's our livelihood. But, so that, get the answer?

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that answers my question.

• 1:17:39Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's a slightly different analogy than the energy one. It's more like fisheries. You know, you can overfish. And if you don't take care to not do that, if you don't let fish and game do what they do, well, then you're just shooting your own feet off. Right? So, obviously, it's.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:17:57Mike Rowe?

  You guys are motivated. I would think.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Mike Rowe?

  By the same self-preservation. What'd you bring me?

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  My favorite thing's in the front, and it's a challenge coin, right? Right in the very, if you turn it around in the front pouch, it's way in the front.

• 1:18:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, zipper.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're good. Can I say something while you're working with zippers?

• 1:18:13Mike Rowe?

  I can't stop.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Okay. I want to say that we've got some good things going with the Forest Service too, even though, you know, Forest Service has been, we've had some problems over the last couple of decades. The American Loggers Council just signed a memorandum of understanding with the Forest Service that's promoting our timber industry, new markets, and logging.

• 1:18:34Mike Rowe?

  That's a big deal.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  It's a big deal, and it's exciting, and it's showing, I think, where the future is. People are getting it.

• 1:18:41Mike Rowe?

  Nice. So that's the, whatever that is.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  That's a lapel pin, and that's your challenge going down there.

• 1:18:46Mike Rowe?

  That's a lapel pin?

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:48Mike Rowe?

  How big a lapel you think?

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Well, that's what we, yeah, we really want you to see what's, we want to be noticed, yeah.

• 1:18:54Mike Rowe?

  That's great, American Loggers, great.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  While you're looking through that, Vicky's got a question now.

• 1:18:57Mike Rowe?

  Go ahead, Vicky.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  Well, actually, just a statement that if we were really wisely managing our forests and getting our timber off of our forests, one thing I think that's important for people to realize is that doesn't cost the Treasury, our government, money. That will bring in a lot of money to the Treasury.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  There's a good point.

• 1:19:23Speaker 03

  As well as making the industry healthier and providing jobs.

• 1:19:28Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's a great point. I was just at CPAC. I was just in the belly of the beast in DC, and I saw Elon onstage with a giant chainsaw. The metaphor's not lost, you know? This is not the time to ask the taxpayers to step up to do a thing.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Mike Rowe?

  Or the feds. Whatever you're on about, it has to be self-funding. It has to be self-perpetuating, right?

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:51Mike Rowe?

  It feels like it, anyway.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  And I'm so glad you mentioned that, because that's a really good point. This can make money as we're doing the work.

• 1:19:58Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:19:59Mike Rowe?

  This is the greatest bag of swag I've ever got on the podcast. This is like, I got, is playing cards?

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:05Mike Rowe?

  Chicken Ranch, playing cards?

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:08Mike Rowe?

  You'll explain that?

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Well, that's where we had our convention, at the Chicken Ranch Casino.

• 1:20:11Mike Rowe?

  In Nevada?

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  In Sonora, Sonora, California, yeah. Oh, that's a really good book, if, to...

• 1:20:17Mike Rowe?

  Why would anyone cut a tree down, right?

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Mike Rowe?

  Look at that.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  But it answers the question in a very positive way when it's over. Yeah, it starts out like...

• 1:20:25Mike Rowe?

  All right, terrific. Chuck, there's one for you, too.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  No, I got a box, I got a bag as well.

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's right, you already interviewed him before the podcast. This is great, huh? Good, good, this stuff all comes in handy. Nuts? Good?

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, these are the best ones there. All right.

• 1:20:42Mike Rowe?

  Final thoughts.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:46Mike Rowe?

  Why is chopping wood so satisfying?

• 1:20:51Mike Rowe?

  What is it? I've thought a lot about it and read a lot of poetry about it. Got my own thoughts, but I'm just wondering.

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think because you see instant results. You see something made quickly. And that's why I think it's satisfying.

• 1:21:05Mike Rowe?

  That's what Einstein said. People love cutting wood because they like to see instant results.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:10Mike Rowe?

  And Henry Ford said, uh...

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  Oh, that makes me feel really good because I...

• 1:21:14Mike Rowe?

  You just went to Einstein.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't even know it. Yeah, I mean, I'm not quite there, but...

• 1:21:18Mike Rowe?

  Your husband had a brain the size of a redwood. It's amazing.

• 1:21:22Speaker 03

  Yes, he is incredibly good.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Anyway, sorry.

• 1:21:24Mike Rowe?

  Ford said, uh, oh, chop your own wood. It'll warm you twice.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go.

• 1:21:30Mike Rowe?

  I'll leave the listener with this. My earliest memories are of block and tackle and feathers and wedges and watching... For a while, watching and then accompanying my dad and my pop back into the woods behind our... Our little house. We're about 50 acres. We didn't own it. It was the state's, but nobody could develop it.

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Mike Rowe?

  And our house was heated by wood stoves.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Mike Rowe?

  And watching those two men go back there and pick a tree and then fell it. They played it like it was a game show, right? It was like here, the thrill they got.

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:02Mike Rowe?

  From watching a fall where they wanted it.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:22:04Mike Rowe?

  And then the chainsaws and then the cutting and then back to the wood pile and then the splitting and then...

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:10Mike Rowe?

  It was just, uh, something primal and practical.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Mike Rowe?

  And...

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  And there's some artistry about it.

• 1:22:16Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:17Mike Rowe?

  Such a right way to, you know, go with the grain and how to... It gets in your blood. I can see how it would happen.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Well, it's in... And so in the American Loggers Council, it's in the blood of about 60,000 of us. And I think the timber industry is going to grow. And we're going to have more loggers. We're getting younger loggers in. And we've been through some tough stuff and... But better times ahead. You watch. Let's get together in 10 years and we'll talk about mass timber.

• 1:22:40Mike Rowe?

  All right. I do have one...

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:22:43Mike Rowe?

  Poor Chuck. I know that. I'm sorry, we're over.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  I'll be all right. Go ahead.

• 1:22:46Mike Rowe?

  Um, is there...

• 1:22:49Mike Rowe?

  A school, an academy, a learning type of situation that people enroll in, in order to get into your industry, if so, what and where?

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Very good. They're just starting up. So Shasta College in California has logging equipment and they're working with Sierra Pacific Industries. Sierra Pacific's giving them 30,000 acres. They have the equipment, state of the art stuff, feller bunchers in there. They said, kids, come on, get into our program. It's a school certified program.

• 1:23:17Mike Rowe?

  Not a four-year school.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  No, it's a weeks, a few weeks or say a couple of months of training.

• 1:23:22Mike Rowe?

  What's it cost?

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  I don't even know if there is a cost, to tell you the truth.

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  What's it called? Oh, there's, no, there isn't a cost, but it's Hilo is the name of the program.

• 1:23:32Speaker 02

  Heavy, yeah, heavy equipment logging operation. It's, well, it's a junior college. I, I don't know if there's a college. It's very inexpensive.

• 1:23:39Mike Rowe?

  Well, Google it, guys. Hilo, if this sounds like it's interesting to you.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Shasta College.

• 1:23:43Mike Rowe?

  Shasta College. And, you know, my foundation is all about work ethic scholarships for vocations that don't require a four-year degree. This is such an important space and I'll make sure that it's indicated on our, we're currently in the midst of an enrollment period now. So, I mean, I, I'm happy to do what I can to call some attention to

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:24:06Mike Rowe?

  To this. I mean, where's the need right now in terms of manpower and labor? How many loggers could be hired if they showed up ready to work and good to go?

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  That's, I don't know the number for sure, but everybody coming out of that school gets placed instantly. Let me put it that way. Jobs are waiting for these folks. It's not just logging. It can be saw milling, like at this, at the sawmills are looking for people. I know our local sawmills, the guys that hold for pizza signs and say, they had for log, we need people. They were holding signs up on the corner, like, we'll pay $25 an hour, apply here. It's, it's interesting. There's a lot of need in the timber industry, not only in logging, but all the way through, power plants, sawmills. It's a great, we can get into it.

• 1:24:52Mike Rowe?

  Look, it's, it's everywhere.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Mike Rowe?

  It's our submarine base. It's our automotive industry. Every major industry that I know of.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:59Mike Rowe?

  Is just staring, recruiting right in the face and pulling out the stops.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Mike Rowe?

  I'll tell you this, man, if there's peanuts and ball caps and notepads and books and everything else in the way of, you know, inducements.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:25:15Mike Rowe?

  Thank you so much for making the time, Vicky. Congratulations, you lady logger of the year. Thank you both for coming by. Good luck.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, our, our pleasure. Thank you, Mike. Really, really fun, yeah. Thanks. Thanks. If you like what you heard... And even if you don't... Won't you please, pretty please, pretty please, subscribe? Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead, but please, pretty frickin' please,

• 1:25:41Speaker 04

  please sub... Please subscribe.

• 1:25:56Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce?

• 1:26:34Speaker 05

  Fresh meat? Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 1:26:40Speaker 05

  Apparently, we celebrate. At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices. When your fresh detector is going off, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.