This series of articles focus on the MLA’s origins and the continued commitment to the industry since 1976. MLA Legislative Representation When Montana loggers formed the Montana Logging Association (MLA) in 1976, one of the most pressing challenges facing the industry was the state’s workers’ compensation system.  Although there were many other issues going on at the time – including a new state forest practices act being discussed and the rise of radical anti-logging activist groups, the...

The High Price of "Just Another Day": Breaking the Cycle of Complacency It’s 5:30 AM and you’re starting your day, fully caffeinated but still somehow half awake.  It’s been a tough season but break up is right around the corner. The air is sharp enough to cut, the frost is thick on the boom of the feller-buncher, and the crew is moving with the practiced rhythm of men who have done this a thousand times. In our line of work, that "thousand times" is both our greatest asset and our most...

Mud…lots of mud.  That’s what the safety boys have had to say at the weekly staff meetings the last couple months.  It’s been a strange winter to say the least.  Up here in the Flathead we get winter for two days and then two weeks of spring.  My internal hair making machine doesn’t know what to do.  One day I’m shedding summer hair to build my winter coat and then the next my body thinks its spring and I start shedding my winter coat that I just made.  The results are a fine layer of fur...