©IrishFamilyLogging

As the winter logging season begins, people are seeing the values for their timber fall, while their costs to operate are going up. …Today’s loggers are reliant on equipment that makes logging safer and quicker than when Andy Irish and his Rumford-based company, Irish Family Logging, entered the industry in the 1970s. That efficiency comes at a premium, however. Each machine is often imported from Canada or Scandinavia, and can cost more than $500,000, a price that Irish absorbs by selling timber to local sawmills and ND Paper’s mill in Rumford. But as Irish prepares to pass the business down to his children, demand for pulpwood — the scrawny, low-quality wood sold to mills — is falling due to the Trump administration’s latest tariffs on Canadian timber and poor market conditions. Add to that the federal administration’s steeper tariffs on foreign parts and equipment needed for logging, and Irish’s operation costs threaten to dip into his reserves.