Logger Resume Examples & Writing Guide (Timber and Logging Jobs)

This sample is for a logger with about eleven years of ground and machine work on private and state timber sales. The person and the contractors are invented. Replace the equipment, ground type and production numbers with your own.

Logging outfits are small. The person hiring is usually the owner, sometimes reading your resume in a truck. Four things decide whether he calls.

• The iron: which machines you can run and how many hours you have on each. Feller buncher, processor, forwarder, skidder, loader, delimber, yarder. A brand name helps because seats differ.
• Production: loads, tons, cords or thousand board feet per day, and on what ground. Twelve loads on flat pine ground is not the same as six on 50% slope.
• Safety: this trade has one of the highest injury rates in the country. Lost-time injuries, near misses, and your training record are worth as much as production.
• Whether you show up: seasonal work, mud season, fire closures and long drives to the unit. Say what your travel radius is and whether you will camp out during the week.
• A CDL, even a Class A you rarely use, makes you more useful and gets mentioned in the first call.

“I hire on two lines. How many hours do you have in the machine, and how long since your last injury. If a resume gives me both without me asking, I call that person first. Everything else, I can find out on the unit.”

Three or four lines: years, what you run, one production number, then safety and training.

Nobody needs to be told a logger cuts trees. Each bullet should say what ground, what machine, and how much.

Put machines with hours where you can. 'Grapple skidder, 4,000+ hours' is far stronger than 'skidder'.

Machines:

• Feller buncher, tracked and wheeled
• Harvester with processing head (cut-to-length)
• Forwarder
• Grapple skidder and cable skidder
• Knuckleboom loader, delimber and slasher
• Yarder and cable systems, if you have worked them
• Dozer or excavator for skid trails and landings
• Log truck (with the CDL class you hold)

Hand and woods skills:

• Directional felling with face and back cut, wedges and bore cutting
• Falling hazard and leaning trees, hung-up tree recovery
• Bucking and limbing to length and diameter specification
• Chainsaw filing, chain and bar maintenance, carburetor basics
• Choker setting and rigging
• Log scaling basics and grade sorting
• Reading a sale map, unit boundaries and streamside buffers
• Winter and mud season operations

The things that keep you employed: showing up in the dark, driving an hour each way to a unit, doing your own machine service, and calling out a hazard even when it slows the side down.

Logging is covered by a specific federal safety standard, OSHA 29 CFR 1910.266, which sets requirements for logging operations including first aid training on the crew and required protective equipment. Contractors care about your training record because their insurance does.

• First aid and CPR, current. Logging crews are required to have trained first aid providers on site, so this one is close to mandatory. List the year.
• Chainsaw safety training. The Game of Logging levels are the best known in the US; there are also state and university extension chainsaw courses. Name the exact course and the level you completed.
• State trained logger or master logger programs. These are run state by state or regionally and the names vary, so use the exact name of the program you completed and the state.
• Sustainable forestry logger training, where the mills you supply require it. Say which program and the year of your last continuing education.
• Class A or B CDL with any endorsements. Even if you are not driving daily, contractors like being able to move a truck.
• Machine training from a dealer or manufacturer, written as 'dealer training, 2 days, harvester head calibration' rather than as a certificate.

Most loggers start on the ground: swamping, setting chokers, clearing brush. Nobody expects a resume full of machine hours. They expect proof you will last past week two.

1. 1Say up front you are applying for ground crew work and want to learn a seat. Contractors respect that more than a claim of experience you do not have.
2. 2List outdoor and physical work with a number: farm work, roofing, fencing, construction, firefighting, fire crew, trail work, hunting guide. Hours in cold and wet is the point.
3. 3Get first aid and CPR before you apply, and a chainsaw safety course if you can. Both are cheap next to what a crew loses to an injury.
4. 4Say you own your PPE: hard hat, chaps, cut-resistant boots, hearing and eye protection. It signals you know what the job actually is.
5. 5State your travel radius, whether you will stay out during the week, and whether you have a reliable truck. This decides more hires than anything on the skills list.

• One page. Contractors are not reading two.
• Reverse chronological, with the type of outfit and ground next to each employer.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. That is the US convention.
• Put machines with hours in a block near the top so the owner does not have to hunt for them.
• Add a line for travel radius, willingness to camp out, and whether you have a CDL and a reliable truck.
• Many outfits still want a phone call or a printed copy dropped at the shop. Have a clean one-page PDF and a printed copy in the truck.

For the larger timber companies and state agencies that do use an applicant system, mirror the posting's words: timber faller, feller buncher, skidder operator, forwarder, cut-to-length, landing, bucking, log scaling, tailgate safety meeting, 1910.266, first aid. Those exact terms are what a filter is matching.