RHINELANDER, Wis. (AP) — Longtime professional loggers in Wisconsin say they are dealing with the most challenging times their industry has ever faced.
Paper mills that buy pulp wood have closed creating an oversupply in timber markets that has sent prices plummeting.
The logging bust in northern Wisconsin has forced some loggers to pick up side jobs in construction or related fields. Some have left the industry.
“There’s no profit anymore. The profit is gone,” said Dennis Schoeneck, who founded Rhinelander’s Enterprise Forest Products in 1978. “Like always, we keep getting kicked down the road, and we keep trying to survive.”
A huge timber buyer, Verso paper mill in Wisconsin Rapids, closed last year. More recently, the mill in Rhinelander announced it would idle one of its machines, scaling back its production. And a century-old mill in Park Falls that closed in 2019, reopened in 2020 and closed again in spring 2021, was bought last month by a company that may seek to liquidate it, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
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