Blue Collar Silviculture

replant · Post by **replant** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 7:34 am

This thread is devoted to gossip and discussion for employees and stakeholders of Blue Collar Silviculture Ltd.

This company is believed to work predominantly in British Columbia.

daleks · Post by **daleks** » Sun Apr 04, 2004 4:39 pm

blue collar is now part of the Coast Range Conglomerate

steve · Post by **steve** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:44 pm

blue collar is no longer with coast range

scotthor · Post by **scotthor** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 11:00 am

since when?

daleks · Post by **daleks** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:31 pm

last year at least

scotthor · Post by **scotthor** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:54 pm

any other info?

kingjames_2nd · Post by **kingjames_2nd** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:19 pm

http://www.bluecollarsilviculture.ca/

wookie · Post by **wookie** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:17 am

I've been hired buy these guys this year. Anyone worked there before who has feedback on them?

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:58 am

A friend of mine worked for them 2 or 3 years back and said they were good; she didn't have any real complaints. *Shrug* Can't promise that means anything.

Seabass · Post by **Seabass** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 12:34 pm

Wookie, whose crew are you on?

steve · Post by **steve** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 5:51 pm

i worked for blue collar for years, they are a good company.

Dogmusher · Post by **Dogmusher** » Sat Jan 09, 2010 8:45 am

Well anymore information ? organisation ? food ? money ?

Richianity · Post by **Richianity** » Sun Feb 14, 2010 4:44 pm

Dogmusher wrote:Well anymore information ? organisation ? food ? money ?

Owner is incapable of making a decision to save his life. "Hurry up and wait", "Need to know basis" etc were all made with Blue Collar in mind. If you're capable of 'going with the flow' and are looking for summer camp for college kids, you'll have a good time though.

ssm · Post by **ssm** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 9:16 pm

anyone else have any info about these guys?

Gualbert · Post by **Gualbert** » Sat Mar 27, 2010 11:39 pm

ssm wrote:anyone else have any info about these guys?

Well what specific info do you want? I think Richianity has a pretty accurate overall take of Blue Collar.

Richianity wrote:If you're capable of 'going with the flow' and are looking for summer camp for college kids, you'll have a good time though.

Personally I would say that they are an alright company to 'settle' for but they shouldn't be your first choice. For a big company they are not thaaaaaaaaaat bad. But that said they going to be pretty rough this year. They pretty much only have BCTS and FFT contracts this year. And since the season was pretty rough last year then its not going to get any better. They lie all the time too. Every single contract was made to seem really good and big money but they would always fall flat. These guys had a really good 2007 contract and they are are still milking that memory- any too-good-to-be-true stories that you hear about Blue Collar likely come from that year.

I guess you could do worst though....

right_arm · Post by **right_arm** » Fri Sep 29, 2017 5:42 am

Owner is incapable of making a decision to save his life. "Hurry up and wait", "Need to know basis" etc were all made with Blue Collar in mind. If you're capable of 'going with the flow' and are looking for summer camp for college kids, you'll have a good time though.

Haha some things sure haven't changed much. Albeit they have managed to acquire 1 good consistent contract in Alberta.

sexyjroot · Post by **sexyjroot** » Tue Dec 26, 2017 7:58 am

Bottom line: What Gualbert and Richianity wrote are very accurate, but if I were to add any details, I'd say that the Blue Collar experience is different depending on which camp you end up in.

I was in Etienne's camp once and I remember planting for a price that wasn't finalized until after completing the block and being told that they decided on a lower price (a whopping 3c lower for most!!) than they had previously estimated. The only thing that was concrete about that contract was the land, not the prices. Contracts were often sugarcoated and then fell flat (usually whatever this guy says is only half true.) I can't say that they were well organized either. Due to their norm of not setting up caches beforehand, the foremen often would not know what the block would look like until we were there only to find out that the access was terrible. The cooks Kerin and Hannah however had their shit together. They had their teamwork and recipes down to a T (seriously, they fed me better than my mom ever has), so more often than not, I'd feel better after a rainy day by the time dinner was over.

Kim is an absolute boss of a woman who tries (I say try because Blue Collar has many higher ups, boo!) to put the planters first and was far more honest when talking land and price. Having worked for them briefly and having friends who have worked for them I got the impression that the foreman in this camp were more professional, frank, and better organized. Planters generally had a more chill and relaxed vibe around here in contrast to the crazy frenchies in the other camp. Food was not as good in this camp (hard to compete with K&H), but James is as fine a specimen of a man as he is a cook.

All in all through its flaws, and I'll quote Gualbert on this, "they are an alright company to 'settle' for but they shouldn't be your first choice." My experience here wasn't great, but I've encountered problems far worse as I'm sure other planters have as well. Tree prices could be better, but I'd recommend Blue Collar to rookies if they're looking for delicious food and some intense dancing and partying. The people are hilarious there, S/O to the 24/7 drunk frenchie vets and both the camps are full of light hearted people. But if you're looking for some serious work and cash, I'd suggest you take your shovel somewhere else.

philnyedaplanterguy · Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:25 pm

Hey some good info on here but was wondering if anyone has any comments on the 2018 season. I got a spot in Jakes camp for 2019, but cant decide if its worth ditchin all my friends in Ontario for. I think Jake might have just taken over Etiennes camp last summer.

JonCedarteeth · Post by **JonCedarteeth** » Thu Dec 13, 2018 11:09 am

Never worked for Blue Collar but I have never heard of anyone regretting making the switch to BC.

fooshmyself · Post by **fooshmyself** » Sun Dec 08, 2019 10:39 pm

Blue collar has been great to me, far far far better than my previous company. Food, prices, organization, community.

Pandion · Post by **Pandion** » Mon Mar 09, 2020 2:45 pm

I worked a shift at Blue Collar before my season started at another crappy Northern BC company once, and they had a planting school where they basically taught their planters how to plant J-roots. Other than that it was pretty much standard Northern BC planting, with inexperienced management and low prices.

_I3^RELATIVISM · Post by **_I3^RELATIVISM** » Sun Mar 29, 2020 9:33 am

philnyedaplanterguy wrote: ↑Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:25 pm Hey some good info on here but was wondering if anyone has any comments on the 2018 season. I got a spot in Jakes camp for 2019, but cant decide if its worth ditchin all my friends in Ontario for. I think Jake might have just taken over Etiennes camp last summer.

both ethiene and jake have camps. they are 5 in total jake, ethiene, kim (usually the most sothern one kamloops etc), the northernBC camp and the highlevel high baller camp(the wilwoods past contract).

_I3^RELATIVISM · Post by **_I3^RELATIVISM** » Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:22 am

My experience with Bluecollar Siviculture was not bad.

Is a pretty well organized company.The camp spots were awesome, amazing food, drying mess tent, really good rental trucks etc.
The ownership passes the test to me, both Mark (Jacks dad) and Jeff are pretty cool guys, the other 2 of the total 5 owners are a bit self-centered from my experience, and the 5th one i never ended up meeting, but are overall good people.

The past descriptions on this thread are pretty accurate. Although the Companie management is good and well organized.
The environment in most camps is a bit like a high-school. Off course the high Level camp is a different storie, the planters there don't have time for bullshit being one of the highest producing camps in Canada. Also because most planters there, are mostly from the past old Wildwoods Companie, but most of them moved to Bluecolar to stay on that contract, after the change of hands.

So going deeper on the dynamics in camp and between planters. A lot of veteran planters are 3/5 year planters from Ontario so their standards are not that high, also you feel a lot of entitlement within planters, I didn't like most people at all, didn't meet many grounded down to earth planters. I am from Europe so the culture shock to this kind of entitled/materialistic attitude might be bigger than usual though. But non the less I felt a very superficial dynamic, people speaking shit behind the back of other people, usually a lot of stupid drama going on, basically a high-school has described before on this thread. And the problem is that a lot of planters being from Ontario might settle for lesser quality and lower prices. So being a rookie in this kind of environment might not be Idealic, you have vets that don't care that much, and just wrongly correcting you and trying to feed their Egos by giving you orders, and specially not being open to be proven wrong by someone with less experience. So if you are good at eating up bullshit it might not be that bad.

I have to say though that from the bigger companies their prices are just better, but would never suggest this Companie to any non-rookies.
Anyway hopefully this helps you having a feel of what is expected in BlueCollarSiviculture. Cheers.

P.S. A good example of this behavior, was in my case this last year (2019), were I was a rookie, after having a disagreement with my crew-boss, and decided to quit/leave the Companie in the middle of July, to go to a smaller better paid companie, with Earl from WatersideVentures (probably the best payed companie for rookies out there). I started hearing rumors that I was fired, including and confirming it after speaking with one of the owners ,that was told that I was fired instead of me quitting. This is a example of how there is this presence, in the lower management,(crewboses and therefore also planters), of a lot of Ego-centrism and Entitlement. Which I defenately do not apreciate.

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