MISSOULA— The forest products industry has been seeing a rough couple of years, and that's the same for the logging industry in Western Montana.
“They're exchanging labor costs from machine costs. And as machine costs are rising, it's putting them in a tougher and tougher spot,” said Samuel Scott, a forest economist at the University of Montana.
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Samuel Scott, a forest economist at the University of Montana, helped present a study to the Montana Forest Products Roundtable on Friday on the overall cost trends for loggers in Western Montana over the past seven years.
“We've been seeing pretty serious inflation. Other than that's from, you know, fuel costs or machine costs. You know, these machines are getting more expensive every year,” Scott said.
The study relied on voluntary surveys that his department sent out to loggers across Western Montana; they ended up with an 18% response rate.
And within those responses, it showed an undeniable rise in operating costs, on average, roughly 5% a year over the past 12 years.
But one thing the study didn’t show is how a labor shortage is proving to be a major hurdle for the industry.
“It's getting harder and harder for operators to find labor. So those labor costs are going up as well. So operators are kind of forced to make this trade-off between fancier equipment that requires just one operator or finding labor,” Scott said.
Overall, the logging industry has been seeing similar trends when compared to its counterpart, sawmills.
