The timber industry has formed the economic backbone of Plumas County since the early part of the 20th century, when the completion of the Western Pacific Railroad made it possible to ship lumber out of the area. Today, timber remains a leading industry. Along with Collins Pine Company in Chester, Sierra Pacific Industries Quincy sawmill is among the area’s largest employers.
Housing is both bread-and-butter and biggest business challenge
SPI was founded in 1949 by father-and-son business partners Curly and Red Emmerson in Arcata, on the northern coast of California. Today the Emmerson family is the largest private landowner in the United States, according to the Land Report, with more than 2.4 million acres, 1.9 million of them in California.
SPI purchased the Quincy sawmill in 1976. It’s close to the timber supply making it a perfect location, said Mark Luster. He is an SPI communication relations manager serving a dozen northern California counties from Lassen to Tuolumne. It’s also a great place to live and work, added Matt Taborski, the division manager for SPI’s Quincy sawmill, responsible for overseeing the site.
The facility houses two sawmills tailored to different log diameters and employs roughly 300 people, shipping about 270 million board feet annually, Luster said. He estimates that’s enough lumber to build around 16,500 homes. It’s a meaningful gauge, because much of the wood product from the Quincy sawmill and SPI’s other facilities goes into construction.
For that reason, “house starts” are a leading indicator of performance in the industry. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, house starts fell from about 1.5 million down to 500,000, said Luster. The impact on the wood product market was dramatic for SPI: In 2009 the company shut down its Quincy facility “to weather the economic circumstances.” It used the downtime to modernize the facility, so that when it reopened in May 2010 it did so more efficiently, he said.
Neither Luster nor Taborski anticipate similar issues in the near future. Housing has been underbuilt for a number of years, said Luster, indicating a healthy market for wood products over the next couple of decades. “The future here in Quincy is bright,” said Taborski, adding that the organization is always looking for opportunities to grow and invest.
Ironically, housing is also the major challenge facing the Quincy sawmill from an employment perspective. Wildfires have caused a housing shortage in Plumas County that makes hiring and retaining employees challenging, said Luster. Many mill workers commute from Portola, and several from farther afield, including Susanville in Lassen County and White Lake in Washoe County, Nevada. SPI is currently working with entities throughout the county that are looking to address the shortage of affordable housing. “We have a seat at the table,” Luster said.
Managing forests to meet environmental and business goals
In addition to supplying timber, SPI aims to supply recreation areas and wildlife habitat, and to be good stewards of the land, Luster said. Wildfire poses a risk to all of those goals: it’s a threat to air quality, water quality, habitat, wildlife and business. In the wake of fire companies can capture a significant percent of value if the timber is harvested within the first 12-18 months. After that the wood becomes so damaged that it’s no longer cost effective to harvest and run through the sawmill.
SPI manages its forests with an eye to both sustainability and wildfire resilience. The company aims to plant an average of three trees for every tree harvested, said Luster. At the same time, mitigating wildfire risk necessitates thinning to reduce stand density. Company foresters determine what to harvest and what to plant. The main forestry team is based at SPI’s Anderson headquarters, with local foresters in each office. They develop a timber harvest plan similar to an environmental impact statement, explained Luster. That plan is approved by relevant agencies before it is implemented by independent contractors, who handle all logging on SPI land.
In recent years, greater recognition of the issues underlying wildfire risk has led to better conversations and more collaboration across businesses and agencies, said Luster. As an example, he cited efforts to create fuel breaks spanning multiple agencies and landowners.
Forest management, he said, “is not for the short term.” The company’s tagline: is “growing forests for our future.”
Investing in technology and people
SPI’s size is an advantage in more ways than one. Across the timber industry, jobs that were once manual are transitioning to machine operator positions, as companies search for ways to increase yield and decrease downtime, said Luster. SPI is unique in that it operates a fabricator shop in Anderson, where custom machinery is developed and built in-house. That makes the company less reliant on third-party vendors than many competitors; the “fab shop” builds whatever is needed to specification with limited wait times.
As important as capital projects and equipment updates may be, the company’s greatest asset is people, Taborski said. Luster agreed: “One of the most gratifying things is to see people grow and develop…to see people rising from labor to management over 3-5 years.”
Taborski himself has worked for SPI for “going on 32 years.” His father also worked at the Quincy sawmill. He got his first job there washing logging trucks while he was still in high school. By age 19 he was pulling chain. He’s grown with the company over the years, working in many different areas, and describes his career as “pretty phenomenal.”
Having a parent who also worked in lumber is fairly common among people who have been in the industry a long time, said Luster. He has himself been in the business for nearly 40 years, 31 of them with SPI. Like Taborski, he’s also the son of a lumber worker.
“We’re here for the long haul, and we want to be part of helping the community grow and prosper,” Luster said.
Taborski sees his work at the Quincy sawmill as preserving the forest for future generations using knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation.
It’s “almost like carrying on a legacy,” he said.
