"Logging on" by David Winzelberg
Branch banking
This far from the company-owned forests of the Pacific Northwest, logging isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when one ponders “Long Island industry.” But suburban logging happens every day – whenever a tree service clears land for development, or cuts down a few towering leaf-droppers in someone’s backyard. More Island trees than you might think spend life after death as tables, cabinets, floorboards, even window moldings.
No matter the reason, when a Long Island tree has to fall, Bob Redick usually hears about it.
Redick, the owner of Suburban Mills in Huntington Station, takes logs from 250 local suppliers, mostly busy tree-cutting services. At his narrow yard on Railroad Street, Redick grades each log, totals up its worth and pays the cutter based on current market rates.
So, how pricey are Long Island logs? Redick said the average log of local wood is worth only about $10, but it’s more about finding that one special piece – he once paid $2,200 for a black walnut log measuring 22 feet by 27 inches.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea and start chopping down the beautiful but relatively worthless trees along their driveway, Redick stressed the rarity of true backyard bonanzas. Since it costs a homeowner several hundred dollars to cut down a sizeable tree, potential returns from most logs will, more often than not, only partially cover the expense of cutting them down and carting them away.
Kristian Agoglia, president of Looks Great Services in Huntington, acknowledged that revenue from the trees his company cuts down helps offset expenses, but said it’s not one of his firm’s more profitable activities. Agoglia said clearing 300 yards of trees – about five big truckloads – usually yields about $1,000 in returns.
For the business owner, the payoff is that the trees are recycled for lumber, instead of dumped as waste. Cutters can take their logs to a dump, but have to pay for the privilege – about $11 a yard.
Wood havens
While the business of clearing trees to accommodate new housing construction has slowed to a crawl, Looks Great has kept busy with storm cleanups and utility company-contracted tree maintenance – and not just in LI. Following a trail of storm damage over the last several years, Agoglia has put a lot of miles on his company’s trucks working across Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Missouri.
This month, Looks Great’s bright yellow trucks can be found along the North Shore, trimming and removing trees according to LIPA’s storm preparation protocols. Agoglia said he was recently summoned to a Lloyd Harbor home to cut down two trees, which the homeowner wants to mill and use for flooring inside her house.
“We’ll go there, cut it to spec and bring the logs to Suburban,” Agoglia said.
Long Island wood can be hit-or-miss. Many prime Long Island logs are blue-stained on the inside from nails, screws and hammock hooks – the poisons of metal implements spread towards the center, Agoglia noted – but Long Island has a larger variety of trees than anywhere in the country, according to Redick, who also buys logs at his Tyler Hill, Pa. mill.
Most of the Island’s choice wood comes from the North Shore. Close to 70 percent of the logs from the South Shore becomes waste wood, mulch and pulp, but just the opposite is true north of Route 25A, where Redick said nearly 70 percent of logs are good for lumber.
Several hardy and marketable tree species – red and black oak, beech, hickory and sugar maple in particular – are native to Long Island. One of the reasons for the wider variety of trees, especially on the North Shore, was the importing of non-native tree species by owners of Gold Coast estates; those trees have multiplied on and around those properties over the last 200 years, creating an unprecedented arboreal system. You can find Atlas Cedar from North Africa, Metasequoia from China and Royal Paulownia from Japan in places like Glen Cove and Oyster Bay – and very few other places on Earth, at least not all together.
The value of Long Island trees was realized early on. When Europeans explored the Island in the 1600s, they cut tall trees for ship-building. Trees marked with a cross were reserved for the English Navy, which threatened poachers with death.
Today, some villages and towns have imposed strict regulations on tree cutting. No one’s been hanged for breaking these rules, at least not lately, but the effort to conserve hardwood trees is clear.
Eddie Meyer, a foreman at the Conserv-A-Tree tree service in Huntington Station, said it can take several weeks before cutting permits are granted. Restrictions help keep out fly-by-night loggers, who just want to cut and run, according to Meyer.
Fighting imports
Meanwhile, despite the myriad ways tree-cutters keep busy, the slowdown in new housing has definitely affected the wholesale lumber market. Suburban recycled at least 1.5 million board-feet in each of the last three years, but much less this year.
“We’re way down,” Redick said. “If we get a million feet I’ll be surprised.”
Even though Suburban recycles a lot of logs, many of the larger clearing companies don’t, opting instead to grind them into chips. That’s what happened to hundreds of trees on 20 acres in Yaphank recently cleared – perhaps illegally – for a truck/rail depot, according to Redick.
He added that convincing clearing companies to recycle trees is tough, because unless they see a large return for the logs, they don’t want to waste the time. “I have to promise that we wouldn’t slow them up,” Redick said.
Like prices for most commodities, wood prices change along with the demand for certain species. A few years ago, light-colored woods were hot for kitchen cabinets and floors; lately, darker woods are more in fashion.
Redick has been championing the use of black locust for decks and boardwalks, instead of the wildly popular ipe lumber from a Brazilian rainforest tree that wears well outdoors. Ipe takes 200 years to grow, according to Redick, but black locust grows quickly and would probably outlast its South American competitor. A section of black locust from the former 117-year-old Roslyn water tower, he noted, never rotted.
Black locust is also less expensive, about half the price of certified ipe, which currently sells for about $13 per square foot, about half the price of certified ipe, which currently sells for about $13 per square foot.
