FNT Logging

A LIFETIME OF LOGGING

On an unusually warm and sunny November day, Floyd Turner easily maneuvers his new Cat® 329E Hydraulic Excavator to move the piles of brush he’s cleared to make way for a four-lane widening project. He’s working on the tail end of a job to clear six miles along Highway 33 in Knox County, just south of the Union County border.

The Crossville, Tenn. native prefers to be in the field and doesn’t have an office—unless you count his pick-up truck—despite owning his business, FNT Logging, for more than 20 years.

“I would rather be in the woods cutting or looking at a tract or marking boundary lines than in an office any day,” Turner says.

It is the serenity of being out in the woods—and in an area with no cell service—that Turner considers the highlight of his job. With a forestry career that started when he was 14, it’s also pretty much all he’s known. His father, Cleo Turner, had his own logging company and that’s where the younger Turner learned his trade. In fact, Turner still recalls that the first time his family bought Cat equipment from Stowers was in 1971—specifically, a Cat 227 Feller Buncher.

“My father discovered that buying new Cat equipment made him more productive because he had less downtime for repairs and more time to work,” he said.

It wouldn’t be long before Turner followed his father’s lead in both the forestry industry and with his preference in equipment.

GETTING HIS START

By the time Turner was in junior high, school wasn’t as appealing to him as working was, so he quit school to go into the lumber industry. Too young to be around the perilous business of downing trees with chainsaws, he was relegated to the saw mill. When he turned 18, he was finally allowed to work out in the woods.

Throughout the years, he learned a lot from his father and eventually decided to start FNT Logging.

“Daddy made logger of the year in ’93, and that’s when I went out on my own. I took the spare equipment and started up,” Turner recalled.

Using the old equipment from his father’s business was sometimes rough going, and he distinctly remembers his first new machines, which included a Cat 518 Skidder and a 322 Feller Buncher.

“I got to doing a lot better when I bought those,” Turner said.

Tennessee’s hills and mountains can pose a challenge to loggers, but Turner has found ways to be efficient even when on a steep slope. He’ll use a Feller Buncher to take down trees and then one of his five Cat 545 Skidders to pull them to a landing.

He got started with clearing land, but has since expanded capabilities. Now, his company employs 23 people and has 10 logging trucks, and the main business consists of cutting timber for pulp as well as cutting lumber. He clears land for pasture, but also selectively thins out forests, cutting out the weak trees.

“We’re really versatile. Sometimes we’ll just be going in for the big saw timber. But if a landowner wants 100 acres cleared, we’ll come in and do that,” Turner said.

Business has steadily grown over the years, and he weathered the recession well as he already had jobs set up for a couple of years. Turner attributes his success to hard work, but also makes it a point to say he’s not in this venture alone. His wife, Barbara, is an equal partner in the business. She keeps the books and helps run the business.

Together, Barbara and Floyd have three daughters: Melissa, Tiffany and Faith. Melissa and Tiffany are both married and Turner said their husbands may have an interest in carrying on the family business.

“And hopefully, Faith will take more of an interest,” Turner said of his youngest daughter, who is 16.

SUSTAINABILITY AND CHALLENGES

Near the piles of brush that Turner is moving to be chipped are tall mounds of what appears—to the untrained eye—to be mulch. But instead of tree bark, these piles are actually the leftover and more fibrous parts of the trees and brush that have been cleared. Or, as Turner calls it, “energy.” They will all go to a nearby paper plant in Cleveland, Tenn., where they will be burned as fuel. That same plant also gets wood pulp from Turner for the paper it makes.

“You can’t burn in Tennessee. Anybody can clear a pile and burn it, but when you can’t burn, that changes everything,” Turner said.

Turner finds ways to get rid of everything cleared from the land. That means using various pieces of equipment to serve his customers’ needs, including a Cat 299C Compact Track Loader and a Cat 953 Track Loader.

“We take everything out and sell it in a better market,” he said. “We’re still throwing away an awful lot of energy, but they’re starting to build plants just to make electricity from burning [the fibrous leftovers]. There’s a lot of talk of it.”

Plenty has changed since Turner began his forestry career, including these more sustainable practices his company employs. Yet lumber and forestry companies are still challenged by those groups who are concerned that the industry destroys forests. Turner believes some of those concerns are misplaced.

“A lot of people don’t understand the timber industry and are really concerned about the clear cuts,” Turner said. “But The University of Tennessee will recommend that you clear cut a lot of the time, because there are just junk trees left, species that aren’t worth much. We need to manage our forests better.”

WORKING WITH HIS CAT DEALER

Since his father started buying from Stowers Machinery Corporation in 1971, Turner has had a relationship with the dealer. He credits Stowers with responding quickly every time he’s ever needed a repair. There was even one time when a Feller Buncher with an overheating problem was repaired, and the technician spent his free time on Saturday just watching the machine to ensure all the problems were fixed.

“We can take something to the Crossville shop and, within a few minutes, they’ll know what’s wrong,” Turner said.

FNT Logging also employs its own full-time technician who has the same computer programs that Stowers’ shop uses. Like FNT Logging, other forestry customers have relied on Stowers Machinery for generations to serve their equipment and product support needs.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

This story first appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of ForestPro magazine, a national magazine for those who own and operate forestry equipment. Download the story as it appeared in the magazine.