On my first day off. Holy shit do I hurt all over. Stamina is increasing, but each day just beats it out of me. It’s below freezing each mornig, and like 25 in the afternoon. You have like an hour of free time each day when you’re not travelling, working, or eating. Camp, foreman and crew are great though. It think it’ll be a decent summer.
Ahh geese, you coulda probably made more money staying in town. Then again, the hairy hippi chicks are far and few between in rupert.
Hairy hippie hotties… stinky unwashed young gals swarming the Internet cafe…
I’m gonna bottle what comes out of the air circulator and sell it to pervs on the Net as Pheremone Soup…
I actually love planting season. New people in town… fresh brains… intelligent conversation… even got requests for my infamous photoshopped Fort St James Visitor brochure they heard of from last year’s shrubbies.
I went out on my first day off. We were all dancing and my foreman was waggling his butt and slowly advancing, ass first, towards this girl on our crew who was dancing beside me. I spanked him and then kicked him in the ass for good measure. Also, I slapped him across the face a buncha times after he hit my sunburnt neck. He’s my most favoritist boss ever.
Finally managed to plant a thousand trees today, the plan was to make a hole in the ground, whack off into it, and then plant the thousandth tree in there, but there wasn’t enough time for that. Oh well.
Hairy hippies? Not in my truck, our girls are the hawtness. One of them squatted down and peed not five metres in front of me the other day cause she didn’t want to walk for a couple seconds towards some tree cover. Waste of 25 cents is what she said.
There is a Nigerian dude in my truck that is always complaining about being cold. The other day, while I was planting without a shirt, he was wearing a black sweater in 20 degree heat. Funny guy.
I split this topic. I thought it would be cool to follow our fellow htmf members adventures in the clearcuts.
Well, as far as money goes, my first week was minimum wage. That’s with major sucking. This being the end of the second shift, I realize that it’s super easy to get at least 100 bucks a day.
My problem is that in between bag ups I spend too much time farting around. I was averaging a tree every 6-8 seconds yesterday, which would get me over 2000 trees at 11 cents each for the day–if I don’t waste as much time.
Jay has already gotten a 2000 tree day, then followed by an 1800 tree day. He’s got a good chance at getting 10k+ dollars this season, and I’ll have at least 7 or 8k even being a slacker. 12 grand would be nice though.
Hey, thanks for the seperate thread BigThumb. I’ll prolly be posting my experiences every 6 days.
Oh yeah, seen a couple bears too. Heh. None have bothered us yet though.
Ivan, which company are you with, and where is your camp? Me and Jay are with Silvaram near PG.
[quote=“rangerwreck”]
Well, as far as money goes, my first week was minimum wage. That’s with major sucking. This being the end of the second shift, I realize that it’s super easy to get at least 100 bucks a day.
My problem is that in between bag ups I spend too much time farting around. I was averaging a tree every 6-8 seconds yesterday, which would get me over 2000 trees at 11 cents each for the day–if I don’t waste as much time.
Jay has already gotten a 2000 tree day, then followed by an 1800 tree day. He’s got a good chance at getting 10k+ dollars this season, and I’ll have at least 7 or 8k even being a slacker. 12 grand would be nice though.
Hey, thanks for the seperate thread BigThumb. I’ll prolly be posting my experiences every 6 days.
Oh yeah, seen a couple bears too. Heh. None have bothered us yet though.
Ivan, which company are you with, and where is your camp? Me and Jay are with Silvaram near PG.[/quote]
I’m planting for Apex and we’ve been staying up at the UNBC residence for the past few weeks, but we’re moving to a bushcamp two hours out of PG today. I’m only doing this planting gig for another two weeks, then I make my real money when I go brushing.
The six person crew I’m on is insane. The two girls hate the two guys and vice versa. Only me and the foreman aren’t a part of this war.
Yesterday, the black guy was riding shotgun, with the female vet being in front bitch. He tried to adjust the heat because he was cold, as usual, and she told him not to. As soon as the foreman jumped out at the reefer, the black guy told us all, in a threatening little speech, that she shouldn’t fuck with him. When she told him that he was going to be fired for threatening her, I thought he was going to beat the shit out of her, right there in the truck.
Wow, that’s intense! Our crew gets along great. Hang out pretty much all the time. We’re one of the non-Christian crews. Drink beer and talk about our sweaty nuts after work.
Nothing is nicer than keeping a can in your tree boxes nice and cool all day, then cracking it at 4:30 on the last day of a shift. Our last block has this lake nearby, so we all had a dip after work, nice and warm!
Everyone in our camp is pretty chill. Havent’ met a single ass out of 90 people. We had one camp drinking night featuring some freestyle singing about people’s sisters and moms.
Work is (relatively) easy now. I don’t even remember how many shifts we’ve worked? Four I think? The time is flying by. My suntan is intense, I never wear a shirt. I feel bug bites, but I don’t swell anymore. I’d say this treeplanting gig is pretty decent!
I have some pictures, but getting them off the camera is a different story. We’re slated for return at the end of July, and then it’s time for sweeeeet EI. Oh I can taste that 1400 a month for doing nothing right now…
Oh yeah, forgot to mention our story of getting from Rupert to PG on the first day. Between Rupert and Terrace the gear shifter broke off (auto trans). We used a wrench to put it in hear. Outside of Terrace the fuel pump went. We were going 80km/h down hill, and 3km/h up long hills. Long lines of traffic and a lot of dirty looks. Truck finally died 10min out of PG. It was a pretty hair raising journey, not nowing where we were gonna finally break down.
That’s intense. Sounds like a stressful trip, yes?
haha it was pretty epic to be Madddd Hung over and see ranger grinding the veh to make a pair of Vice Grips be his shifter
Another (faster) shift done. Grossed 1740 last paycheck, STOKED.
We’ll be in Fort Nelson in a month. Just read in the news about a treeplanter that got mauled by a bear not too long ago up there. Apparently the bears are very aggresive right now, several having already been shot. Woo hoo!
There was a forest fire right beside the land we were planting, this beautiful piece of 16 cent land. Almost got called to help fight it, but another crew beat us to it. Sweet pics of the fire though. Me and a buddy snuck up to the bushline to see it up close and almost got dropped on by a water bomber.
Biting my nails the whole way. I thought we were going to push the truck into a ditch, and hitch the rest of the way.
I was in Quesnel the other day and bumped into some Silvaram guys at the cold storage. They came over and started talking to us. I asked them, “How many girls do you have in your truck?” and they mumbled, “One.” In my most obnoxious voice I taunted them, “We’ve got three,” as though they should be really jealous of us, but in all honesty, we had too many girls in our truck. God bless women, but I don’t want to work with them anymore.
As long as I live, I will never plant another tree. It’s brushing from here on out and I can’t wait for the noise of my saw to drown out all the bullshit.
My last planting story is a tale of revenge. A while back my buddy sprayed huge amounts of shaving cream all over me while I was passed out. He finally received his due in Quesnel.
Having had a shitty day, I decided a little payback might cheer me up. Before he arrived at the truck, I quickly removed my outer work sock and placed the polypro sock liner in my breast pocket. The day was now over and we were standing beside each other at the truck. I sized him up and noted that his caulks could be dangerous and that his pen might be used to stab me. It being weeks after the shaving cream incident, he didn’t suspect a thing as he removed his boots. When he finished his numbers and put down his pen, I saw the perfect opportunity.
Still unsuspecting, he walked to the back of the truck where my foreman was standing inside the box. I trailed behind. As he reached forward to hand over the little piece of paper, I struck! Grabbing him around the neck with one arm, I dragged him backwards to pull him off balance and kicked his feet out so that he fell on top of me. Wrapping my legs around his waist to secure him, I produced the polypro sock from my breast pocket. As he vainly tried to gouge my eyes out, I rubbed the vile sock all over his face.
After giving him a mouthful of sweaty work sock, I let him go and asked him to stay calm, but you can imagine his confusion and anger. He attacked me with a strange, looping punch and we wrestled, ending up in the ditch. Holding him down, I tried to calm him as he grabbed at my throat and attempted to throttle me.
The funniest part was after all the dust had settled, when he yelled, “What the fuck did you do that for?”
HAHAHA right on!!
We had this 30 minute walk in to a fresh piece near the end of the day, and while Jay was sitting down with his bags on, another guy on our crew filled his back bag with rocks. No water, nice and out out… haha, Jay was pissed when he found out. I can’t wait to see what the revenge will be.
We finished our PG contract (Dunkley Timber near PG), went into town and about 30 mins before we are about to leave for Spray Lakes in Alberta, they tell us that our crew only will be assisting another camp near Ft. St. James. Turns out we score big, got to stay in a logging camp with our own rooms, great food, sat. TV, pool tables. And the camp we joined had some hotties. Not even bush hot, but city hot.
Day 6 was a half day where we pounded out the last of the trees in the trucks. Just as we finish, the foreman says another truck with 25 000 trees showed up, and only our crew was going to plant them. So we had a day 7, 28 degrees out, everyone’s water jugs leaked out. In 7 hours 12 people pounded that shit out. On 17 cent land. I made 360 bucks that day with 2115 trees. Felt like shit, but great at the same time.
Brushing? All I’ve gathered is that it’s better work, better pay, but with long hours having to do saw maintainence at the end of each day. Definitely gonna look into it for next year. Heard a story about one guy who would always stop his saw on his chaps, and forgot he wasn’t wearing them one day…
Fun fun