When you look at the logging being done in the British Columbia Interior, you might get the idea that it is all being done with mechanical harvesting, with feller bunchers and harvesters.

But that’s really not the case—there is still a fair bit of hand falling being done in the B.C. Interior—and Big Bark Falling of Barriere, B.C., is one of those outfits that is successfully meeting those falling needs, and more.

The small logging company, set up by James and Amanda Lane, got started by hand falling (initially by James), which it still does, now with a group of contract fallers.

Over the past several years, Big Bark has expanded, and added equipment, and these days also does full scale logging, site prep, fuel mitigation, firefighting and, as James and Amanda put it, “so much more”.

They are looking to be a “go-to” operation for any of those services, in this region of the southern B.C. Interior.

This solid husband-and-wife partnership is working hard to expand to meet the needs of forest industry customers in the region—and raise a young family.

Big Bark Falling has gradually moved into purchasing equipment over the past few years. They now have nine pieces of equipment—including a Hyundai 3026 processor with a Southstar head, and several John skidders. Generally, they buy used equipment, mostly from local equipment dealers.

These days, they still do a good deal of hand falling, but James is more often in the cab of a piece of equipment than he is out hand falling.

And he’s got an extensive background in operating equipment. Before starting up the company, the couple lived in Revelstoke, and James did a fair bit of yarding operations there for various logging operations. He also started working towards his falling ticket.

The young couple started Big Bark Falling in 2017, in the small community of Barriere, about an hour north of Kamloops. “For the first four years, it was pretty much doing falling, and helping out some contractors with equipment operation here and there,” says James.

“The thought back then was that we do something smaller scale—and we eventually just jumped into it,” added Amanda. They bought their first machine in 2021—and have added more pieces since then.

And James’ place seems firmly in the cab of a piece of equipment these days. “I hardly do any falling at all now,” he says. “We have a handful of dependable guys that we use.”

Contrast that with when they first started out, and he could be running skidder, decking wood with a loader, and falling, all in one day. “Those were some long days,” he says. The days are still long now, but are more manageable.

Amanda takes care of the safety side of things, making sure the paperwork and safety equipment is all in order, ensuring their people have everything they need. “We want to make sure they are safe, and are ready to go,” she says.

A lot of their work is for forest company Interfor, which has its Adams Lake Sawmill in the region, near the town of Chase, an hour east of Kamloops. The sawmill has a production capacity of 375 million board feet, hence a good appetite for timber.

Interfor has its own safety regulations for its contractors, including Big Bark.

But for Big Bark, safety goes beyond regulations—it’s personal. “When James was doing hand falling, I just wanted him home safe at the end of the day,” says Amanda. Now that they’ve expanded, and have employees, they, of course, want everyone home safe at the end of the day.

“We do whatever we can to make sure they have all they need in safety gear,” says Amanda.

On the safety front, they recently signed up for the services of Technical Evacuation Advanced Aero Medical Society (TEAAM), an advanced life support Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) non-profit that responds to remote wilderness and industrial settings outside of the scope and capability of the British Columbia Ambulance Service. TEAAM, which is based in Squamish, on the B.C. coast, recently expanded operations to the Interior.

“TEEAM probably saves us an hour in terms of getting someone out, if we have an injury,” says Amanda.

As James knows first-hand, it’s important for fallers to be able to be focused on the work at hand—and not wondering how they will get out of there if a tree falls the wrong way.

As the ground has become steeper for logging in the B.C. Interior, the industry has adopted steep slope equipment solutions—but James says there is still a need for hand fallers. Lately, they’ve been working around the Scotch Creek area, near the Adams Lake sawmill, for Interfor. But they are also happy to help out the larger logging contractors in the region, many of whom are just doing mechanical harvesting.

“We’ll do the hand falling where a contractor does not want to do this kind of work, or where Interfor does not have a contractor in an area that does hand falling,” says James. “It’s usually smaller volume work—we’re kind of a bolt-on contractor. We can jump in there and do the work the larger contractors don’t want to do.” A lot of times, it’s one-off work in a particular area.

As noted, Big Bark has gradually moved into purchasing equipment over the past few years. Getting back into the groove after falling, James ran a contract processor for the operation for a couple of years, before they started buying their own equipment.

They now have nine pieces of equipment—they had 10, but they lost a yarder in the Adams Lake fire in 2023. The equipment line-up includes a Tigercat 870 buncher, a Hyundai 3026 processor with a Southstar head, a John Deere 748 GIII skidder, a Deere 748 LII skidder, a Deere 2454D log loader, a Volvo 220 excavator, a Hyundai 3030 excavator, a Komatsu D65EX dozer, and a Volvo ECR50 mini excavator.

Generally, they buy used equipment, mostly from local equipment dealers. “It helps with the financing,” Amanda notes.

They wanted to avoid the big outlay of capital involved in purchasing new equipment. “We want good, reliable used equipment,” says James.

They’ll often need it on short notice, when a piece of used equipment finally gives up the ghost. Big Bark deals a lot with Nors, which is the B.C. dealer for Volvo and Madill equipment. Nors has a good trade in used equipment, and usually has a variety of brands at its dealerships, including the dealership in Kamloops, that Big Bark does business with.

“We’ve built a good relationship with Nors—if we had a major issue with a piece of equipment, and they had something available, they would get it to us, just to help us out,” says James. They’re also starting to build a relationship with Brandt, the Deere dealer, in Kamloops.

It’s key, James says, to have solid relationships with the dealers when you are working with used equipment—it’s likely, but not certain, that used equipment will go down more than new equipment, and a contractor is thus more dependent on dealers for parts and service.

“We can just text Nors information and photos, and they will have the part ready for us.” It helps, says James, that they have a good neighbour in Barriere who works for Nors, and he can be the courier to getting a part to them quickly.

There may be more equipment on the horizon for Big Bark. They are looking, longer term, to grow and become more of a mid-sized logging operation. “It’s a big undertaking, but I think we can definitely achieve it,” says Amanda.

As they have already done, they will look to further broaden the services they offer. “Right now, we can basically do everything except cruising, treeplanting and layout,” she explains.

Along the way—and as they have done all the way along—they want to work with the existing larger contractors. “They have definitely helped us out,” says James. “They like the larger blocks, and we’re happy with the smaller blocks.” They are in regular communication with the other contractors, to see if there is any work that Big Bark can help out with.

A lot of the work for Big Bark Falling these days is for forest company Interfor, which has its Adams Lake Sawmill in B.C.’s Southern Interior, near the town of Chase, an hour east of Kamloops. The sawmill has a production capacity of 375 million board feet, hence a good appetite for timber.

Next on the list is replacing the yarder that was lost in the 2023 Bush Creek forest fire. “We had planned to do a fair bit of high lead work, and that changed when we lost our yarder in the fire. We want to get that side of the business back up and going.”

A service truck might be in the cards, too, but James says they seem to be doing pretty good now, working with his pick-up truck. Perhaps like a lot of loggers, the front seat of the pick-up is like a mobile office, and the back seat, a service truck.

They sometimes call on Nors for major repairs, and they will also bring in some local mechanics to help out. There are quite a few contract mechanics out there that are good, that have the high tech equipment to troubleshoot equipment issues, says James. And they are happy to see the work go to local guys.

“I do a lot of the work, and one of our guys, Scott Nelson, is very handy, and the operators are good at the day-to-day things,” says James.

They’ve talked about setting up a shop, but that may come down the road, with acquiring more equipment.

James runs the processor for the most part, but with his background, he can operate all of their equipment. He’s able to jump in the cab of any of their machines, if needed, to make sure they make their commitments to deliver the wood.

“But I have a good crew—they follow the maps, and efficiently take the wood down. They are versatile and can operate multiple pieces of equipment, which we need because we’re a smaller outfit.”

James notes that it can sometimes be a challenge to fit the right fit, in employees. “I’ve talked with guys I’ve thought of hiring, and they are like, ‘I just want to run the skidder or the processor’, and I’m thinking that really won’t work for us.”

As mentioned, they have nine pieces of equipment, but at times perhaps only four are being used, so flexibility is key with operators.

“Someone, including me, might have to jump off the skidder, go to the roadbuilder and build some trail, and then do some processing.” The variety of work can also make it more interesting, and challenging, for operators. They’re not doing one thing all the time.

They rely on their employees to be pro-active, and have initiative, to keep things moving along in the operations—they are not just pushing buttons, and operating levers, again making the work more interesting.

As the operation has grown, both James and Amanda have developed management skills that have proven helpful in the company’s growth. A relatively happy, upbeat crew can have a tremendous impact on an operation—and that’s true of the opposite, too. If there are personal issues on the crew, James and Amanda are happy to help them out, if it’s appropriate.

With all the logging work, it’s important to be focused—but, as James knows well from his falling, it’s especially important for fallers to be focused on the work at hand; ideally, they should not be thinking about the argument they might have had with their kid or wife the night before. “You have to be fully focused on that tree in front of you or there’s a good chance you might get hurt.”

Their management skills were really put to the test in 2023, with the Bush Creek fire, when they lost their yarder.

“We were helping out a lot with fighting that fire—we had our guys all over the place,” says Amanda. “We would sit down at night and figure out where all our machines were because they were all at different sites, which guys were going where, and we needed to make sure the guys had the safety gear they needed, and the fuel they needed, in going out to the equipment.” The adrenaline was definitely pumping.

The hardest part in starting the business, they say, was staying on top of the financials. There’s definitely been a learning curve in starting and operating a business. But they are definitely up to the challenge. “If you haven’t learned something new, it’s a wasted day,” as James says.

As the new kid in the block, they had to gain trust among the area’s forestry community, and show they knew their stuff, and could deliver. Some folks might have had a not-so-good experience in the past, dealing with an outfit who was not reliable, and left them on the hook.

“We had to build a reputation, show that we are a good logging operation,” says James. Unlike many in the business, neither James nor Amanda came from logging families. And this is in a region where some logging contractors go back three generations. But they more than make up for that in initiative and energy.

Big Bark Falling would like to complement, rather than compete with, the existing logging players in B.C.’s Southern Interior. “We’re all in it to make a living, but we’re a community,” says James Lane. Other contractors have proved to be extremely helpful, and they’re very grateful for that, says James.

Some of the industry people in the area know James from when he was a kid, and was heavily involved in sports in Barriere. That might have opened the door a bit to possibly doing work for them, but they still had to prove their stuff.

They want to complement, rather than compete with, the existing logging players. “We’re all in it to make a living, but we’re a community,” says James. Other contractors have proved to be extremely helpful.

“During the fire, we had one low-bed guy grab a machine for us, that was not insured. He dropped everything to do it, to help us out,” said James.

In doing planning, James and Amanda know full well that the industry these days is subject to a lot of changes, and they are ready to roll with those changes. “Our biggest plan is to be diverse, and have something, whether it is a service or equipment, that the industry needs all the time,” says Amanda.

In looking back, there seems to have been some serendipity in James getting into the bush, and becoming a faller, and he and Amanda starting a logging business.

Years ago, before they started the business, James had just quit a mill job, and was walking home, when a local guy, Grant Bradford stopped him, asked what he was up to—and if he wanted a job hooking chokers.

James said, yes.

“Grant asked me when I could start,” says James. “I said to him, ‘how about tomorrow?”