PLC Logger's Voice Winter 2017

M
ANCHESTER - It’s a cold December
morning, snow is falling lightly, and in the
woods west of Augusta you can hear the
steady sounds of grapple skidders and a
slasher/loader working to keep logs moving onto trucks and
out of the woods.
This is a John Khiel III Logging & Chipping, Inc.
job site at the Jamie’s Pond Wildlife Management Area, a
900-acre property managed by Maine’s Department of
Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and used for a variety of
recreational activities.
It’s been a good year for this job. Dry ground
followed by frozen ground; big machines moving big loads
with low impact on the land, just the way it needs to be for
a site like this where many citizens weren’t excited about
the idea of logging it in the first place.
“The harvest is in the middle of a popular
recreational area where there are a lot of people and hiking
trails. This makes it a sensitive area,” Travis Khiel, who
has managed the company for his father for the past
decade, said. “The state wants the majority of the job done
with a processor, but there were some areas that they
wanted a whole tree crew on. We are working those areas
now with a buncher and grapple skidders, and plan to move
a cut-to-length crew up here soon.”
Mark Martin is the state forester on the job. He
freely admits he’s not an easy guy to please but says he has
to give credit to Khiel Logging for being among the best
and most professional logging contractors he’s worked
with.
“This crew that (Travis) has here for me is
awesome, I give them challenges and they love it,” Martin
said.
It is that kind of reputation and professionalism
that the Khiels - Travis; his brother, Greg; his father, John;
and the rest of the family - have been working to build for
4 Professional Logging Contractors of Maine Loggers Serving Loggers Since 1995