Story by David Abbott,
Senior Associate Editor
In late July and early August my job took me to Ohio and West Virginia, primarily on behalf of companion periodical Timber Harvesting magazine. I was assigned to pick up the story on the Caudill family, which was named that magazine’s Logging Business of the Year for 2014. But my first duty was to see Yoder Lumber Co.’s three facilities around Millersburg, Ohio, deep in the heart of beautiful Amish country. It’s not often that a guy from Alabama gets behind a series of horse-drawn carriages while driving a Prius rental car.
The Yoder family was of course very helpful and hospitable in allowing me access to their operations. I met first with Yoder’s marketing manager, Dennis Hange, who arranged everything. We met at the company’s Buckhorn facility. Of the three plants run by the family-owned hardwood company, Buckhorn is the newest—acquired in 1999, as opposed to 1956 for the Charm plant and 1975 for the Berlin plant. Moreover, it has undergone the most extensive recent upgrades, with a whole new sawmill line added in 2010. Hange took me on a tour of all three facilities, where I met several of the key second and third generation family members in charge of running the various company operations. At the end of the day, Hange and I enjoyed a late lunch with CEO Mel Yoder and company President Bob Mapes. You can read the Yoder story this issue on page 12.
Yoder and Mapes quizzed me about the nature of my work, which is a mystery to many and sometimes difficult to explain to the uninitiated. Mapes in particular was curious about one of Hatton-Brown’s other publications, Southern Loggin’ Times, which accounts for the bulk of my work at the company.
This in turn led to a discussion about drugs in the work force and immigrant workers, a topic about which I had written in the July issue of Southern Loggin’ Times. That article had been inspired by a trip I made to Georgia and Florida in June, when many of the loggers and mill owners I met mentioned these as major concerns. Drug use, in particular crystal meth, has become rampant among young men in rural areas, these businessmen all agreed, making it more difficult than ever to find qualified and reliable labor. In response, an increase of immigrants in the logging work force in recent years has become undeniable. Without exception, these loggers described immigrants who are hard-working, honest, reliable, happy to have a job, and free from problems with drugs and alcohol. Meanwhile, the same week, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his job—some say due to his soft stance on immigration—and thousands of undocumented children were pouring across the border from Mexico. Radio pundits insisted daily that these immigrants would take the jobs from hard-working American citizens because they would work cheap. But the men I met told a different story: Immigrants were taking jobs no one else wanted, and they were getting paid the same as anyone else—sometimes better.
The Yoders haven’t dealt with quite the same problem in Ohio as their peers in Georgia and Florida. The surrounding Amish community, which represents a big part of the labor pool, is widely renowned for its strong work ethic and moral character. That’s not to say that there are no deadbeats or drug addicts, just that it hasn’t become as widespread in all places as it is in some. But as we left lunch that day, my hosts noted that hearing a different perspective on this hot-button political issue had given them food for thought.