Central Ontario logger Tim Bryson is a true free enterpriser who is anxious to see if the proposed American tariffs on Canadian goods will end up being good or bad for his log marketing and custom sawmilling business—it could go either way.
It may create more domestic demand for his hardwood and softwood sawlogs or it could make it harder for his customers to ship their finished products into the U.S., thus stifling demand.
Having no signed contracts with any sawmills, he’s massively focused on what might come down the pipe. For example, one of his prime customers are large sawmills in Quebec who may be looking for more domestic log suppliers once the full impact of tariffs on U.S. origin timber becomes known. Also, China is a massive purchaser of hardwood logs from the U.S. and if they are shut out of that market by huge tariffs, they may look to Canadian suppliers like him.
“We’re lucky because we have a diverse standing inventory,” says Bryson. “So we will go to whatever species is working.”
Bryson is sole owner of Tim Bryson Forestry and co-owner of Homestead Sawmill, a custom sawmilling and retail lumber business he operates in partnership with his son, Kiefer. Both are based in Sundridge, about 75 kilometres south of North Bay, Ontario. The sawmill is only a small part of current operations but there are plans to significantly grow this business (see sidebar story on the sawmill on page 18).
Logging has kept Bryson plenty busy since he started out in 2004, but he has still found time to be elected Mayor of Strong Township, home of the picturesque Village of Sundridge.
A forest technician graduate from Fleming College in Peterborough, he comes from a family with a long history in forestry in that area dating back to about 1878. But due to consolidation in the industry, he is the last family member involved in forestry, and part of a dying breed of independent loggers and log retailers from this area two hours north of Toronto in Cottage Country.
Tim Bryson Forestry is a member of the Westwind Forest Stewardship Sustainable Forest License (SFL) group which is active in the French/Severn Forest in the Muskoka/Parry Sound District, logging in the foothills of Algonquin Provincial Park. But the company also has a long history of purchasing and marketing standing timber from their own holdings as well as from private woodlots in the area. Their annual harvest from both the SFL and private wood is between 35,000 and 70,000 cubic metres per year of both merchantable softwood and hardwood species, with a ratio of about 70 per cent from Crown land and the rest from private standing timber.
Being part of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Forest, the wood basket around Sundridge consists of many valuable softwood species such as white pine, red pine, hemlock, tamarack, cedar and spruce, and hardwood species like hard and soft maple, red oak, yellow birch, ash and cherry. At present, Bryson is logging a bit of salvage timber impacted by the spruce budworm.
His intimate understanding of the volume and value of all the marketable wood species in the highly diversified forest blocks has helped Bryson develop a long and reliable list of customers. While Bryson has no written supply agreements with anyone, he does have a longstanding handshake deal to deliver white pine logs to a local sawmill to produce softwood lumber. He also supplies considerable volume to the Haliburton Forest Group which operates four sawmills in that area of Ontario.
“We operate all on spot markets including shipments to Quebec. Those mills are an extremely free market,” he says. “We have no commitments. It’s all about quality for us and not volume … people just got to know that they can get exactly what they want from us.”
Right from the start and given his training and experience in tree marking, Bryson says he jumped in with both feet. He has spent the past 20 years fine-tuning his business to maximize the potential from his entire wood basket.
For the first five years, they only harvested timber from private woodlots but grew the business over time by purchasing a larger and larger stake in the SFL.
“I started out with an old Clark model 664 skidder and began hiring contractors and built up from there,” he says.
The backbone of Tim Bryson’s mechanical logging fleet is a Doosan 235 excavator carrier equipped with a mid-range Ryan’s dangle head saw (below). Other than a fleet of older cable skidders, he depends on sub-contractors for most of his mechanical logging.
Their diet of harvested wood species has changed considerably over time. Initially, they harvested about 90 per cent hardwood species and the rest, mixed conifer. Today, they harvest 80 per cent conifer and 20 per cent hardwood, representing a greater diversification of their customer base and market demand.
“The biggest part of our business now is custom ordered white pine,” Bryson says. “We deal with over 40 small mills who do custom lumber orders. We’ll take their lumber order and then fill it with custom logs.”
Bryson believes that there is a good reason why he is nearly the last man standing in his part of the forest as a true, independent logger and marketer of raw logs. That’s because he maintains high quality standing timber and harvests no trees until he has a buyer.
“It’s a buyer’s market when you harvest it first, and then try to sell it,” he says. “That’s the conventional way that loggers have done things and I think that’s why it is such a marginal business, because you get the cart ahead of the horse.
“It’s best to get the order first. I think that is the biggest mistake that loggers have made traditionally, is to buy the timber and harvest it and then try to sell it.”
Once Bryson has lined up his buyers, he deploys his logging fleet to fill orders from marked trees, topping and delimbing them in the bush, skidding them to a landing, and delivering them either directly to his yard in Sundridge or to satellite yards.
The Timmins log trailers produced by Deloupe help Tim Bryson Forestry transport hardwood, softwood and long white pine logs to the yard in Sundridge or satellite yards for merchandizing by species, length and quality.
Once in the yard, tree length logs are slashed to length based on species, grade, diameter and length, as needed, to fill orders. For example, he has five different sorts of birch veneer logs alone, and a list of customers for each one of them. There are up to 30 different sorts of a variety of species and grades at any given time in his yard and even more when considering lengths and diameters.
Tim Bryson Forestry relies on 12 employees but also between 15 and 20 sub-contractors providing a variety of services from hand falling to mechanical logging, and everything in between.
From a mechanical logging standpoint, the backbone of their fleet is a Doosan 235 excavator equipped with a medium-size Ryan’s Equipment brand dangle head for falling and topping their logs. It was purchased new in 2021. Ryan’s is headquartered in Michigan. This unit targets timber deemed too large for a feller buncher.
With them being so dependent on spot log prices, it’s rare that Tim Bryson Forestry purchases brand new equipment. They avoid having payments on equipment as much as possible. That would explain the old cable skidders in their fleet and parts machines to support each unit.
Bryson is not a fan of feller buncher use in his type of forest because he believes that the amount of movement required to harvest his large diameter trees causes more damage than he can tolerate to both the logs and residual forest. But they still have a place in his operations and working with a variety of contractors and equipment combinations, he can deploy the right combination for the species and terrain that they are harvesting.
“Our excavator with the dangle head can cut up to a 32” diameter tree in one cut,” he says. “And when it is not logging, we can put a bucket on it and build roads. We can use that excavator 11 months of the year.”
To transport logs to his yards, he uses either his Western Star or Sterling-brand trucks equipped with 160 Serco self-loaders to load logs from the decks. The trucks are equipped with Timmins-brand trailers sold by Deloupe Inc., configured either for hardwood, softwood or long white pine logs. They contract out the log slashing in their yards after they are graded and marked, with the contractor using a 290 Serco slasher or a Hood-brand slasher.
One of his biggest ongoing challenges with logging in Cottage Country is keeping the peace with area cottagers, which is why he spends little time logging in July and August.
“It’s a multi-use forest like no other,” Bryson says. “We are harvesting the forest on Crown land in some cases right next to $10 million cottages. We get a lot of push back, but we have ways of dealing with it and we have forest management plans, work schedules, very selective logging that is highly managed for high values, and we are highly audited.”
He adds that it is also managed for other social, ecological and environmental values.
In addition to high value lumber products, the Homestead Sawmill can also manufacture timbers in a variety of sizes on their Wood-Mizer LT55 portable sawmill.
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Bryson Family’s Homestead Sawmill pursues the high end—and high demand—wood products market
Tim Bryson’s acquisition of a sawmill in 2016—and the launch of Homestead Sawmill—occurred a bit by accident.
The owner of Tim Bryson Forestry in Sundridge, Ontario was able to diversify his business when a sawlog client who was into custom sawmilling decided to pack it in. Recognizing the opportunity and not wanting to lose a source for his logs, Bryson purchased the business built around a Wood-Mizer LT50 portable band sawmill, and relocated it to his yard in Sundridge.
Sawmilling was a bit of a return to his roots, as his father and great uncle operated a small scale sawmill to provide area residents with rough cut lumber. So he was somewhat familiar with the demands of this side endeavor.
Bryson owns this retail lumber and custom sawmilling business with his son, Kiefer, and recognizes its potential as an excellent complement to the well-established log marketing side of his business, given the diversified wood basket growing in his neck of the woods.
Species in that area include softwood such as white pine, red pine, hemlock, tamarack, cedar and spruce, and hardwood species like hard and soft maple, red oak, yellow birch, ash and cherry. Their log basket also includes such unique and extremely valuable high end logs as bird’s eye maple and curly maple and birch.
There are plans to amalgamate both the logging and sawmilling businesses and expand their milling capabilities.
Although only a small part of their business now, the sawmill is also a bit of an insurance policy.
“One of the ideas of the sawmill is that if markets crashed and I was left with 30 loads of white pine at the end of a winter that was going to deteriorate, at least I could square it and try to save it,” says Bryson.
Tim Bryson hopes to take full advantage of his Wood-Mizer LT55 portable sawmill to create high value products from such species as bird’s eye maple, curly birch and maple, and ash, which is growing in scarcity.
The company is investigating niche markets as well for specific species. For example, given the impact of the invasive emerald ash borer, the overall volume of ash is dropping in North America. This species is used extensively for gunnels in canoes. So there is demand for it from canoe manufacturers, and Homestead Sawmill is trying to anticipate that demand.
Other specialty orders are also finding their way to them.
“We got a 5,000 board foot order for three inches by eleven-inch white oak measuring six foot six in length and we shipped it for use in a Vancouver harbour because white oak stands up to saltwater,” says Bryson. “It was a small order but it sold at $12 per board foot.”
They are currently building up a standing inventory of a variety of lumber lengths and diameters from a wide range of species so they can fill customer orders immediately.
The sawline includes the Wood-Mizer LT50 band sawmill leading into a Butler-brand edger. Lumber can be customized on a newer Wood-Mizer MP360 planer/moulder supplied by Wood-Mizer in Lindsay, Ontario.
The Bryson’s have plans for Homestead Sawmill, so that they not only have the ability to saw, plane, and mould their specialty wood products, but also to dry it to maximize their potential customer base.
“What we have found is that one-third of our calls are for rough cut lumber, one-third is for planed lumber, and another one-third wants it dried,” says Bryson. “So if all you are doing is custom rough cut lumber, you have to turn away two-thirds of the calls you get.”
By adding the planer/moulder, they are already able to fill two-thirds of demand, but plan to tie a dry kiln into the heat generated by their Dorwood top-loaded, residual wood burning furnace that currently supplies heat to their buildings. Then they will be able to fill all their orders.
Being located in the heart of Cottage Country, they envision huge demand potential for both their custom sawmilling services and retail lumber products, and have yet to really promote themselves among customers in their own backyard. As their lumber inventory grows, they are excited about the future.
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