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By Shelley IrishStaff Writer Jul 13 2005
The road to greater safety on the Trans-Canada Highway gained momentum last Friday after a meeting of mayors and politicians committed themselves to finding to stable funding.
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A long strike forced him into other jobs, including farming and trucking, before he eventually moved the family to Silver Creek, near Salmon Arm in the BC Interior. There he purchased a small sawmill. That mill was the starting point for the younger Van Ommen's career, as he learned to drive a Cat at the ripe old age of nine.
John's older brother, Herman, also went into the logging business and had a contract to fall, skid and buck for Lavington Planer Mills, which is now a Tolko operation. John started working for Herman as a buckerman, and hasn't looked back since. "I have to admit that I really didn't know anything when I started," notes John. "I couldn't even sharpen a saw."
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Perseverance paid off, and a year later John took a job as a skidder operator with Silver Creek Industries, where he stayed for a couple of years, until he decided it was time to venture out on his own. With a brand new power saw in hand, he started Van Ommen Contracting, and did contract bucking for other loggers in the Salmon Arm area for $35 a load. On a good day, he could do 10 loads, but often it was far less.
Four years later, in 1981, John started working for Dave Stuart, a road builder for the local Federated Co-op mill. In addition to bucking for Stuart, John ran the loader during busy times, and kept Stuart's equipment running as a self-taught mechanic. In 1983, John went back to operating a skidder on contract for a company in Adam's Lake, before eventually taking a "wage job" with Titus, a Sicamous, BC-based logging company.
Taking the plunge
After a year with Titus, John bought the skidder he had been operating for Titus - a John Deere 740 line machine, and contracted back to them.
"I bought the 740 on a rent-to-own deal," recalls John. "Against the advice of my financial advisor, I took $4,500, which was all of my Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) money, and paid the first month's rent of $3,000 and spent the rest as a down payment on a new pick-up truck. The total price tag for the skidder was $50,000 and it cleaned us out completely. We made the first six payments and then tried to find a bank that would finance the balance, but it was the early 1980's when the interest rates were really high and no one would lend us the money. Eventually, the Federal Business Development Bank (FBDB) agreed to give us a loan, but we had to put up everything we had as collateral."
Things were looking up for John, and his wife Carol, until one of the three brothers that owned Titus died and the business folded. With huge payments to make on the skidder and mortgage payments to make on the family home, John was understandably worried. Yet within a few weeks he picked up a job with Ron Kriese of K&S Road Builders, working on right-of-ways in the Malakwa area, near Salmon Arm. That turned out to be a good fit, as K&S kept John busy enough to hire a faller to work with him on the right-of-ways, and then in 1988, he bought out the logging portion of K&S's contract.
"By that time, I had decided that I was in this for the long term," notes John. "I had learned a lot from Ron at K&S, and I was ready to go at it in a bigger way, and on my own as a full service contractor."
A year later, John added a loader to his fleet and hired another operator, and then in 1989 he bought two brand new John Deere skidders. "At that point in time, Carol and I did everything ourselves. We would be up at 3 am to get the paycheques ready, and with the commute out to the bush, 100 hour work weeks were not uncommon."
Growing up
All of the hard work paid off, and in the early 1990's Van Ommen Contracting went through some major growth spurts, buying a Caterpillar excavator in 1992, and the company's first Kenworth logging truck in 1993. In 1995, Van Ommen Contracting bought out another local logging company called Pardix, and took over its equipment, along with its logging contract for Westar's Malakwa mill, which is now predominantly a western red cedar mill that is owned by Louisiana Pacific (LP).
The Malakwa mill, along with Bell Pole in Salmon Arm, have become Van Ommen's bread and butter, although many of the logs they harvest are shipped to other company's mills through trade and purchase agreements between the tenure holders. Last year, Van Ommen Contracting harvested 120,000 m[Symbol Not Transcribed] of timber.
Today, Van Ommen Contracting runs a fairly large fleet of equipment, including a pair of Canadian-made 630B Tigercat rubber-tire skidders, 748G and 640D John Deere skidders, a TD15C International crawler, and an array of Cat equipment that includes two 527 track skidders, a 330RB with power grapple, a 330LL buttn-top loader, a 320L high walker excavator with a power clam, a 325 that acts as a carrier for a Lim-mit 2200B delimber, and the company's latest purchase, a Timberking TK732 feller buncher with a 24-inch Cat hot saw. Until recently, the TK models were built for Cat by Risley Manufacturing in Grande Prairie, AB, but Van Ommen's machine is one of the newer, re-engineered models built by Caterpillar in Peoria, IL
"We had the 732 delivered during break-up this year," notes John. "It has zero tail swing, which is important for the select logging we do for LP, and it has the tilting cab, which helps us with some of the steep slope logging we have in this area. We can also cut fairly large trees with the 24-inch head. When you put all of those factors together, it really limits the number of bunchers out there that can do the job for us. We have also been happy with Finning's track record in terms of parts availability and service, so for us, the TK seemed to be the way to go."
With some of the steep slopes Van Ommen Contracting has to deal with, yarding would be the next step, and John concedes that he may have to look at a yarder in the near future. "We like what we are doing right now, but we are being pushed harder and harder to work on the steeper slopes, and we are challenging the limits of the equipment we have. In the kind of terrain we have around here, it is tough to compete against a yarder."
Big wood & terrain
Even with the new buncher, much of the timber Van Ommen harvests is felled by hand due to the fact that it is larger old growth, and in the winter months, crews can't get the buncher into the blocks because the snow is so deep. "During the winter, we have to dig down by hand so that we can achieve a 30 cm stump height, and then we have to hand fall all of the old growth. We then hoe chuck it, or slide it down the hillside to one of the Cat 527 track skidders, which moves the wood down the first leg of the skid trail, and then transfers it to one of the Tigercat machines, which will deliver the wood to the landing."
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Some of the wood Van Ommen harvests has to be skidded up to a distance of 900 metres, which he says, "is just too far for the Cat to efficiently move it, so each Cat skidder works hand-in-hand with one of the Tigercats." Both of the Cat skidders are equipped with Esco swing grapples, while the Tigercat machines have Tigercats' own grapples. "The Tigercat grapples are about as big as you can get while still being well balanced to the machine," adds John. "We do a lot of uphill skidding with the Tigercats, and they are just tremendous for this, because they have the power and the weight to handle it. In addition, we have been extremely pleased with the service from the local independent dealer for Tigercat, Marcel's Equipment in Vernon."
When mechanical harvesting is used, it is sometimes in flatter ground, and is almost always in second growth, which means the Van Ommen crews can use just the faster, rubber tire skidders. In addition, they try to deck the smaller wood in tree lengths, streamlining the process for the Lim-mit operator.
The work Van Ommen does for LP is stump- to-truck, as in most cases the trucks are contracted directly by LP, while for Bell Pole, everything is stump-to-dump, with Van Ommen taking care of the trucking as well. The company operates one logging truck, a Kenworth, while all of the other trucking for Bell Pole is contracted out by Van Ommen. In addition to the logging truck, Van Ommen Contracting also has two low bed trailers that are hauled by an additional C500 Kenworth. Both Kenworths are Cat powered. "We actually bought the low beds to move our own equipment, but we found we couldn't keep them as busy as we would like, so we started to contract out the low beds to other loggers and building contractors, and that has proven to be a good side business for us," explains John.
The logging business has worked out well for a guy that started bucking logs at 15 years old. John's eldest son, 19-year old Tyson, seems to be following in his father's footsteps, and works with him in the bush bucking logs, and as a part time skidder operator. If Tyson sticks with the logging business, it probably won't be long before he buys out the skidder he is operating and contracts back to his Dad. After all, buying the equipment you are working on has proven to be a winning Van Ommen formula.
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