I’m up in Oregon now, on a 12-day trip with some buddies to help our friend, Randy Wood, ship tens of thousands of Christmas trees, wreaths, swags, etc. to customers in California and Arizona. It’s my fifth year doing this. Why I do it I don’t know, because it isn’t “fun”. I guess I’m just stupid.
Oregon at this time of the year is wet and cool. It rains about every other day, and the temps are about 50 high and 36 low, although it can snow. We supervise loading activities at an outdoor lot, so it is common to work all day in the rain, mud, and cold. On big shipping days, we might start work at 6 a.m. and finish at 11 p.m. If we’re real lucky, maybe it didn’t rain that day. If there’s a steady, all-day rain, it’s miserable.
We’re staying at a rented farmhouse in a hazel nut orchard. It’s a very rustic setting: lots of trees and moss, wet mud, fog. Just the way we like it.
I flew up here with a mutual golfing friend of Randy and I, named Don McAuliffe. He’s never done this before; Randy probably talked him into it during a round at Redhawk GC, where they are men’s club members. Don used to be a reporter for the Riverside Press-Enterprise, way back when I was a mucky-muck with Riverside County government. He’s a few years younger than me…and I turn 70 next week.
Here’s Don, trying to choose among 3,000 beer brands at a Fred Meyer store:
On our trip up here, I gave Don the lowdown on the Christmas tree operation, the grower that we work with (Angel Guerrero), and the slick way that we’ve developed to load a couple of dozen 18-wheelers with Yule products. “We’ve got it down to a science”, I lied to him.
The Wood Mountain team arrived yesterday to find that Angel had not set the assembly lot up properly; he designed it for one loading bay, instead of two. This will basically cut our loading efficiency way down, and, on big shipping day, will create a potential nightmare for all concerned. Randy is fit to be tied.
But, he has refrained from using the F-word, and has warned us to keep a lid on that kind of language, as it offends his Christian sensibilities. (Sure, that’ll happen!)
One thing that was cool is the helicopter that Angel is using (he pays $850 per hour for it) to bring certain trees over to the assembly lot. The grove of those trees (Douglas Firs) is about 1,000 feet away, where crews have cut the trees and bundled them. The helicopter pilot, by himself (i.e. no one else in the copter), picks up a load of maybe twenty trees, flies it to the assembly lot, expertly drops it in the right place, and returns to pick up the next load…within 30 seconds. It is a beautiful thing to watch; the pilot is a maestro. On Monday, he flew for hours, and didn’t miss a beat.
Don’t know if it will work, but try activating the movie below by clicking IMG 0020:
Randy’s business (Wood Mountain) is centered around fundraising. Non-profit organizations raise money selling Wood Mountain products, and we deliver the pre-sold items to the school, church, or other organization where their volunteers disperse the trees, etc. So, for example, a high school booster club pre-sells a $100 tree to a parent; the grower gets $20, Wood Mountain gets $30, and the club gets $50 to be used for uniforms, etc. The bonus is that Wood Mountain trees are the very highest quality, and arrive at the customers home within two- to three-days of being harvested.
One of Wood Mountain’s featured programs is “Trees for Troops”, whereby someone makes a donation to “Support the Troops”, Wood Mountain arranges with a grower for the trees (usually 6-7 ft. Douglas Firs), and FREE Christmas trees are distributed to families of servicemen at scores of military bases throughout the United States. Wood Mountain is doing 3,600 trees this year. The thing that makes the program work really well is that FedEx ships the trees for free, as many as Randy can arrange for. It’s a nice way to say, “Thank you for your service!”
Yesterday and today, we shipped 9 semi-loads of Trees for Troops on Fed Ex trucks. It’s a quick and easy process, because there’s only one type of tree per load, and the entire load is going to one military base.
Wednesday (tomorrow) promises to be a cluster fuck. This is because we have scheduled 9 truck loads, and, due to the fact that Angel only set the lot up for one loading bay, it will take his crew (of Hispanic laborers) probably 18 hours to load the trucks. If we had two loading bays, like last year, we would be home having a warm meal by 6 p.m. Instead, we (and the laborers) will have to eat on our feet and be lucky to be home by midnight.
A couple of things have happened to the Christmas tree industry since last year. First, larger growers are squeezing out the small operators (like Angel Guerrero), and they prefer to deal with the “big boys”, like Home Depot, WalMart, Lowe’s, etc. It’s not economical for them to do what Wood Mountain does, which is ship a variety of tree types in a variety of sizes…and fresh cut, to boot. The trees that are showing up at the big retailers right now (end of November) were probably cut three weeks ago. They will be dry by Christmas.
Angel is still working with Randy’s boutique business (i.e. 14,000 trees shipped), still loading trucks with a variety of product, complicated by the fact that the truck load might have multiple “drops”, e.g. locations where the truck driver needs to offload a part of the shipment. So, it’s complicated to load and, also, complicated for the truckers (because of multiple drop locations). Further exacerbating this situation is the impact of Donald Trump, in that most Christmas tree laborers are Hispanic day-workers who hail from Central America. Trump’s policies have made it difficult for these hard working guys to get up to Oregon…there’s a labor shortage. So, Angel (like all the growers) is struggling to keep enough labor on hand to get the job done.
The guy carrying the heavy Christmas tree is the 4’11’ Guatemalan guy. The strapping Caucasian guys in the foreground (Joe and James, backs to the camera) are doing their jobs…watching the hard-working guys.
(This Latino labor situation is going to become a BIG problem in America, as I mentioned in this blog awhile back. Something like 80 percent of agricultural workers in the U.S. are Hispanic, and a good portion of them are illegal. If Trump continues to crack down on these hard-workers via immigration and other Federal program changes, agriculture is going to suffer and prices are going to go up, etc. The same problem is going to impact the health care, building, restaurant, landscape, and housecleaning industries, to name a few. Fewer available workers, higher costs. Get ready for it.)
Interesting story: Yesterday a young Caucasian guy (who looked to us like a meth tweaker) showed up on the assembly lot looking for laborer’s work. Angel’s foreman, who was a bit short of a crew, allowed the fellow to join in. The young man worked his ass ragged, in cold and rainy weather, trying to keep up with the small, wiry Hispanics. At the end of the evening he was wet, cold, and dragging, complaining of a sore back; I felt sorry for him. This morning our guys showed up to the assembly lot to find that a storage shed had been burglarized, and that the Caucasian guy was a “no show”. Angel’s conclusion (which we concurred with) was that the fellow spent the day figuring out how to burglarize the operation to pay for a “fix”. Anyway, Angel has passed the word to his men that he will only employ Hispanics, because they can handle the hard work and he trusts them. It’s racist, but I can’t blame him: those white guys just can’t cut the mustard.
The Achille’s Heel of the Wood Mountain operation has, in the past, been the trucking component…i.e. getting the goods south to the customers. “Unreliability” would be a common complaint about long-haul truckers; even when contracted to perform x-task for y-money, they sometimes don’t show up, arrive hours late at the loading site, get lost heading south into California, and, often, don’t get to their delivery points on time. Sometimes they extort Wood Mountain for more money, threatening a “no show”. And, they make mistakes. Last year, one driver arrived late in Southern California, backed up to offload Christmas trees, and, when the trailer doors were opened…surprise!…the trailer was loaded, stem to stern, with Ramen noodles. Oh, so sorry!
Since we have a very difficult schedule on Wednesday (nine truck loads, using one loading bay only), it will be imperative for the long-haul truckers to arrive at the assembly lot on time…otherwise we will be doomed. Personally, I am a great believer in Murphy’s Law (“if something can go wrong, it will”); therefore, I’m dreading tomorrow. Hopefully, my friend Randy will not have a heart attack or stroke.
Wednesday update:
Well, it was a clusterfuck for sure, but we miraculously made it through the long day.
The trucking (or, is it fucking?) industry tried its best to sabotage us. Word got out that Wood Mountain had a bunch of freshly cut Christmas trees which had to get to market in two days, so many of the 9 contracted drivers decided to extort poor Randy for more money. Our boss spent most of the day on the phone, begging the bandits to show up, and having to offer some of them up to $600 more per load to honor their contract.
It’s shameless what these long-haul guys do, but this is the peak season (i.e. goal is to get trees to So Cal by Dec 1st) and the redneck vampires are well aware of it.
Come next week, however, we should have scores of truckers calling us, pleading for work, and Randy will be able to pick and choose at his rates…take it or leave it. We’ll be the ones bending someone over a log…
Since we had only one loading bay (“Thank you, Angel Guerrero!”), it took us from 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. to complete nine loads. Thankfully, it didn’t rain one drop, but the temperature dropped down to the high 30’s after 10 p.m. We old, white guys were freezing out there, pushing pencils, while the tiny Guatemalans were running all over the lot, toting 50 to 100 pounds on their shoulders ‘and joking around. (A couple of them had a wrestling match in the back of a 51’ trailer, amid stacked Christmas trees, when it was 39 degrees outside, and they had already worked 15 hours straight.) If I were to do their kind of labor for one day, Charlie would have to bury me the next morning. It’s incredible how hard they work, for very low wages, with smiles on their faces. (Of course, their forefathers built pyramids out of stone…for fun.)
Naturally, we had some low points in the exhausting day. The battery on Randy’s truck died, so he tried to jump-start the engine, and proceeded to get a 100K volt shock in his thumb.
Randy also fried the 175 amp fuse in the process. He had to pay about $200 in parts to atone for his sins, and has a very sore thumb to show for it.
Later in the day, some asshole trucker who had arrived early for his load decided to pursue other options, without telling us, and drove off with all of our one-of-a-kind paperwork. This blew Randy’s Plan X to hell, but, “Thank you, Jesus!”, another trucker wandered onto the lot looking for work, and we were able to fill Mr. Asshole’s slot with Jose-on-the-spot. Bless him!
Poor Don, our rookie Wood Mtn staffer. He’s been unable to sleep for a couple of days, due to the fact that Randy absentmindedly secured a rental farmhouse with 5 beds for 6 big guys. Don, who is 6’4″ short, had to try to sleep on an air mattress (then, two!), both of which leaked.
(Artist’s rendition of Don, unable to sleep, but trying to dream that he looks this young, with hair.)
Randy mercifully sent poor Don back to the farmhouse on Wednesday during our 16-hour load so that the poor bastard could catch a few winks. When we rolled into the shack at around midnight, Don looked much improved.
We later found out that the sonofabitch sat around all afternoon and evening, watching TV, cooking, fluffing pillows, and who knows what else…but, didn’t sleep a wink. I think Randy got conned.
After about 5 hours in the sack (of which I slept about three!), I arose on Thursday for another loading day, this time forecast to be endured in the driving, cold Oregon rain. Only three loads today, God willing and the creek don’t rise. Boo-Yah!
Thursday update:
Hay que la chingada! What a messed up day this was… lots of F-bombs were tossed, a few by St. Randy himself.
We were short some materials when our crew arrived at the lot around 7:30. No trucks were there to load, so the Boss Man sent me 25 miles south toward Salem to pick up some stuff at Home Depot. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a trucker pulls in and Randy tells Angel’s boys to begin loading shipment #10. About 45 minutes later, I arrive back to the lot with the supplies to find another clusterfuck in the making…Randy had put load #10 on the truck which was contracted for the #11 run into So Cal.
(Normally, as Site Manager, I handle all of the truckers, confirm their load assignments, provide them with their paperwork, and keep them informed while on the lot. Of course, in this case, I was off the lot when this particular trucker showed up, and Randy “handled” him.”)
Anyway, ,the driver wouldn’t change load assignments, wouldn’t accept more money, and insisted on doing the #11 run into So Cal. So, Angel’s crew had to unload the three drops from this guy’s rig…basically setting everything back at least an hour.
Angel Guerrero, the Christmas tree farmer and boss of the laborers, was mightily pissed off. He and Randy had some tense words, and all of Angel’s workers were annoyed, as well. (In fact, Randy’s own guys were ready to mutiny, truth be told.) Angel’s crew unloaded the truck and then…disappeared on us. I think it was Mr. Guerrero’s way of showing us who was Boss, and that we were screwing up his operation. And, so , we sat in our vehicles, for a couple of hours, while Angel used his laborers to load one of his own trucks, and then gave them an extra long lunch break. When the laborers finally came back to help us, we started over again, loading our first truck at about 1:30 p.m., approximately six hours behind schedule.
To his credit, Randy accepted the blame and moved on. However, he spent about an hour in his truck with Angel after this incident, talking about the Christmas tree business.
Later in the day, it was my turn to be the villain.
Actually, we realized today that I had made a typo error the night before, when Randy and I hastily cobbled together a list of product (number and type of trees that we would need on Thursday) required from Angel. We did this at approximately 11 p.m., when we were dead tired, so I understood how it could have happened. Nevertheless, we were short about one hundred 5-6′ Douglas Firs that we would need for loads 9 and 10 on Thursday. Oops!
Randy just about burst a vein when he realized the error, and Angel’s supervisor, Martin, was similarly enraged. F-bombs were flying, in English and Spanish. I tried to become invisible, as Randy ran around, trying to brainstorm a work-around, for 15 minutes, to no avail. Finally, Martin (Bless him!) got on the phone with some hump back on the tree farm, and…Ouila!…a truckload of 5-6′ Douglas Firs materialized on the lot, just in the nick of time.
(I’m sure that Randy attributed it to divine intervention, but I believe that St. Martin worked a miracle, on his own. Muchas Gracias, senor Martin…a nice bottle of Tequila or case of smokes is coming your way. I love you, Man!)
So, Thursday was a messy day, but it was also a good day. That’s because Randy finally came to the conclusion that this particular business model for Wood Mountain Christmas Trees is ready for the scrap heap. (Actually, I think he and Angel, cooperatively, came to that conclusion earlier today.)
This year’s endeavor, with the usual drama up here in Oregon, was the real-time “intervention” that he needed to make the decision that his wife, Denise, has wanted him to make for several years. The Woods are making good money doing this, but Randy is working harder than a 72 year-old guy should, and he could probably make half the money (still a nice sum) with one-tenth the effort, so…why not? He and Denise are not getting any younger, and there’s lots of fun and adventure out there for them to enjoy.
It was nice to see Randy smiling this afternoon, after the shitstorm had pushed him into making the decision to ratchet back the operation. I’m happy for my friend.
We now have five days to kill up here in Oregon, until our big finale on Wednesday, December 6, when we will load 7 trucks.