“If you’re not growing, you’re not moving ahead.”

That’s a statement that Kris and Jamie Brander, owners of the logging company Brander Enterprises in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, heard frequently from their father, Allen, as they grew up.

“So…we are always growing,” says Kris Brander.

The two brothers, now in their 40’s, not only own a logging company, but they also have a road maintenance contract for 20 kilometres of improved bush roads, a road maintenance contract for 90 per cent of the Rural Municipality of Meadow Lake, and manage 100 commercial and residential rental properties in town, Saskatoon, Comox, B.C., and in Palm Springs, California.

Because of their diversification strategy, one might describe them as either a real estate company that logs and maintains roads, or a logging and road maintenance company that operates a real estate division. Either way, it keeps the management team plenty busy.

While the Brander brothers focus on the logging, trucking and road maintenance side of the business, Jamie’s wife, Alana, manages their real estate holdings.

Kris jokes that when other people go on vacation, they go to relax. When he and his brother go on vacation, they look for opportunities.

They are also extremely hands-on in their business. Their maintenance shop, where Jamie Brander takes care of their truck fleet, also has dedicated mechanics, and a machinist and a welder on staff to be able to rebuild logging and road building equipment from the ground up. They have the ability to conduct 95 per cent of the work in-house. So this allows Brander Enterprises to hold onto their logging equipment much longer, and they even build bridges instead of using culverts for use on their bush roads.

“We have processors with 35,000 to 40,000 hours on them, and feller bunchers with 15,000 to 20,000 hours on them,” says Kris. “I’ll bring a processor into our mechanical shop and we’ll strip it, including new seats and new windows. You will not find a difference between our one-year-old processor and our ten-year-old processor. We 100 per cent go through every piece of equipment every spring.”

He adds that they operate their equipment to high hours simply because of the cost of new equipment, but they typically do still purchase a few new pieces every year.

The Brander Enterprises success story is another example of what can happen when a large forest products enterprise sets down roots in small town Canada. It can change the destiny of an entire community. There is no doubt that the arrival in 2003 of the Tolko OSB mill as well as what was the Millar Western pulp mill at the time, now owned by Domtar, to the Meadow Lake area had a fundamental impact on Brander family fortunes, as well as many others in the community.

But it wasn’t all just good luck. The Brander brothers brought considerable industry experience to the table.

Their grandfather, Leigh Brander, operated a portable sawmill south of Meadow Lake for years and also operated a truck transport company that for decades delivered goods to northern communities on sketchy bush roads under the Brander Brothers name. Their father, Allen, a millwright, became part owner of NorSask Forest Products in Meadow Lake when it transitioned from a government-owned to employee-owned sawmill, a position he held for 20 years, including after the sawmill was purchased by the Meadow Lake Tribal Council (MLTC) in the mid-1990’s. After leaving NorSask, Allen Brander became part of Brander Enterprises, helping to manage the company’s phenomenal growth, and has since retired.

For Kris and Jamie, it all started when they were fresh out of high school 20 years ago in 2004, when the brothers secured a log haul contract with Tolko while they were employees at the mill. When they noticed a need for rental accommodations in town, they began thinking about becoming involved in the rental business and their real estate division was born. They started working as their own contractors to build duplexes and conducted a significant amount of the construction work on their initial properties themselves. Now they have a journeyman carpenter on staff to manage their ongoing building projects.

“Jamie and I had like five jobs on the go when we were between 18 and 20-years-old and ever since then we have been growing both the logging and real estate divisions,” says Kris. “We were the first company to deliver logs into the OSB mill. Back then, we had a couple trucks and a half share in a log loader, and we have continued to grow ever since. Even before that, on my off days during high school and university, I ran a little edger mill for NorSask Forest Products. So there is a lot of sawdust in our blood.”

About 13 years ago, Brander Enterprises expanded from strictly log transport to full-blown logging when they acquired A & A Logging. They now harvest 450,000 cubic metres annually on contract for Tolko and the Big River First Nation. About 70 per cent of their wood is hardwood shipped to the Tolko mill, but they also log softwood, consisting of about 80 per cent spruce and 20 per cent jack pine, shipped to NorSask Forest Products and the Carrier Lumber sawmill in Big River. Their hardwood averages 16” in diameter and their softwood 14” in diameter. Both the hardwood and softwood is essentially harvested at the same time from the same mixedwood cutblocks. They target 16’ lengths with their hardwood. Their softwood lengths will vary, with the NorSask stud mill wanting 9’ and 18’ logs while Carrier Lumber will accept lengths from 9’ to 16’.

That openness to opportunity and a willingness to learn and try something new to improve operations is evident within their logging fleet. They were the first logging contractor to put the Tigercat ‘gate-style’ feller buncher head into use in Canada. It gives Brander Enterprises an edge by allowing them to accumulate more timber in the head per grab before laying it down, thus delivering notable efficiency dividends.

“We’re able to accumulate more in the head in smaller timber,” says Kris. “It’s not as productive in bigger timber.”

They were also the first to put the Tigercat 568 processing head into commercial use.

The company employs over 100 workers and is one of the largest employers in Meadow Lake. Kris says that their employees are the most important part of their business, with several family members and generations working for them, and they have employees coming from all over Canada.

About half of their logging workforce lives in a modern camp which moves frequently. They move eight to ten times a year, so it is extremely mobile and it can be split up and sent to different locations as needed. They log within a 150-kilometre radius of Meadow Lake. Their logging season starts in June and continues till spring break up, about mid-March. Having the improved bush road contract helps them to determine where they will log in summer and winter. Their road building and maintenance program ensures that they are working in accessible areas, depending on the time of year, since logging in summer can be challenging in the area’s clay loam soil.

When they made the leap into full-blown logging, they had the advantage of already owning a log haul company, and today they own and operate 27 mainly Western Star trucks equipped with Super B Doepker trailers. They subcontract another nine trucks.

So they now have full control over the quality of their haul roads, logging, and log transport, and have the ability to move quickly to wherever their main client requires them.

“Now if there is a mess out there, we have no one but ourselves to blame,” says Kris. “We don’t depend on anyone for anything, whether it is mechanical or road access.”

Their fleet is highly tailored to match their wood profile. It features five feller bunchers consisting of two Tigercat 870 machines, two Tigercat 855 units and one Tigercat 845 which was the first unit outfitted with the gate-style head in Canada, as mentioned. This smaller feller buncher and this head was a good match for the smaller profile hardwood logs in a good chunk of their logging area. Because of its demonstrated good performance, this head style is now installed on three of their units.

“Our relationship with Tigercat, represented here by Redhead Equipment, is pretty important to us,” says Kris. “They take care of us really well and we’ve had people from Tigercat touring people from Australia and the United States through here as well.”

Their skidder fleet consists of two Tigercat 630 units, a Tigercat 623 skidder and five John Deere 848 skidders.

For processors, they have six Tigercat 855 carriers and two Tigercat 850 carriers with either 575 or 568 Tigercat processing heads. Rounding out their processing fleet are one John Deere carrier with a Southstar processing head because Kris says he wanted to try something new.

For log loaders, they have two Tigercat 865 machines, one Tigercat 875, three John Deere 2154 units and one model 2954, all equipped with Rotobec danglehead-style grapples.

“They are lighter at the end of the boom—there is basically one pin to change a grapple out, and there are four hoses that come down to the head,” says Kris. “So we can change out a grapple in 10 minutes if we have to.”

He adds that they have also found that this grapple head requires less maintenance than a power head.

Their bush and block road building fleet consists of a Cat D3 dozer, two Cat D8T dozers, two Cat D6T dozers, two Cat D6N dozers, two John Deere 250 rock trucks, as well as John Deere 250 and 290 excavators and two Hitachi 250 excavators.

Kris says that when he shops for new equipment, operator input and comfort is at the top of his list, as well as parts availability, the company’s relationship with the dealer, fuel consumption, and—no surprise, considering their business model—purchasing something with a history of longevity and that can be rebuilt as required.