Log haulers park trucks in protest
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
Tuesday, June 07, 2005

KALISPELL - Timber truckers idled their engines Monday, refusing to deliver logs for Plum Creek Timber Co. until the lumber giant agrees to pay more for the service.

"We've pretty much quit hauling," said log truck driver Ron Cummings, "and on Tuesday we're going to try to organize in Kalispell."

But organizing has proved tough for the truckers, who are only loosely knit and are not part of a collective bargaining union.
"It's actually been a very difficult thing to organize all these independent drivers," said the owner of Libby-based Cummings Hauling, "but on Saturday the core group met and said they were parking their trucks."

They'll park them, come Tuesday, at the Flathead County Fairgrounds, where drivers plan to meet for a rally of solidarity. Trucks are expected from Libby, Eureka, Kalispell, Missoula and throughout northwest Montana.

The issue, not surprisingly, is money.

Plum Creek, Cummings said, has set a base pay of $59 an hour, a rate he calls "smoke and mirrors," as it is based not on real hours but on estimations of how long a haul should take.

"They completely overestimate how fast we can haul this stuff on old forest roads," Cummings said.

The $59 per hour, he said, generally comes out to something closer to $40 per hour. Even a small three-axle dump truck working around town makes upward of $70 an hour, Cummings said, "and everyone will tell you the cost of running a log truck is way higher, doing 500 or 600 miles a day on logging roads."

But it's not Plum Creek that estimates the time a haul should take. That is done by logging contractors, the middlemen between the drivers and the company.

None of the drivers who've hit the end of their road actually work for Plum Creek, so they're forced to ask the contractors to take their issues up the food chain to corporate offices.

"It makes it tough," Cummings said, "but I think we have the support."

Tom Ray doubts that, though, and on Monday dismissed the "strike" as the grumblings of a very few dissatisfied truckers.

"It seems that the majority of our contractors are still hauling logs," said Plum Creek's regional general manager.

During the past two years, Ray said, log hauling costs have risen by 20 percent, and that doesn't include fuel-price adjustments.

"We've tried to be very fair," he said, noting that trucks from Missoula, Libby and Kalispell were coming into his log yard all day Monday.

"It seems to be a couple minor contractors" who are behind the shutdown, he said.

But Cummings thinks Ray may be in for a surprise.

"Basically, 100 percent of the Libby drivers are in agreement," he said. And Kalispell, Missoula and Eureka are quickly joining the organized discontent. Collectively, they have enough clout, Cummings said, "to just shut it down" until the company comes up with $70 per hour and a realistic formula for determining haul times.

But with a quarter-century in the business, Cummings knows not to count his miles before they're driven.

"We've tried this before," he admitted, "and it didn't exactly work out. Last year, when we shut down, it really ended up blowing up on us."

Plum Creek, he said, pinched the middlemen contractors, placing logging jobs in jeopardy if the truckers didn't get back to work. The tactic pit loggers against truckers, he said, and the truckers backed down.

"But this time everybody's on the same page," Cummings said. "The contractors are stuck in that crappy spot in the middle, but they're working with us."

They have to be, really, given what's at stake, he said.

"We're starved down to where we've either got to quit or get a raise," Cummings said. "It's just obvious."

And if it's not obvious to company men like Ray, he said, "then we'll wait until it is. There's enough alternative work out there that we can do a month or two pretty comfortably."

Ray, meanwhile, watched from his office window Monday as trucks kept carrying logs into Plum Creek's mill.

"We think we're fair and competitive," he said, as trucks rolled in from every far-flung reach of western Montana.

If you're interested

Log haulers will meet informally throughout the day Tuesday at the Flathead County Fairgrounds in Kalispell. They welcome all supporters, but have no schedule for the day's events.