I thought I'd give a breakdown of my most recent season which I did with Dynamic out of William's Lake. I also did my season in Jeff Flight's camp where you will notice contract details may be similar some years later. In case nobody wants to read a blurry recap of my season, Dynamic is a great company with seemingly fair to great pricing. I assume that we may have had it better in our specific camp (friends in another camp did not have as good of a season
) but Jeff Flight was a well rounded supervisor that was easily approachable and foremen seemed to know what they were doing. Since there are quite a number of Dynamic camps now, keep in mind that this experience is directly associated with the camp I was in and may not be in line with how the season was in other camps.Delayed from the original April 21st due to snow pack, we arrived May 7th. The camp we showed up to was on farm land in Alexis Creek about an hour west of William's Lake. Camp was already set up due to crews from another camp starting a shift before us. 3-1 schedule with a ramp up for the first shift. There's about 50% turnover from the previous season with maybe 2 rookies per crew (6, 6, 6, 12). Management was well experienced and vets average around 6 seasons. Our camp had 2 rookie cooks that get help from a 3rd experienced cook for the first couple shifts and to accommodate the bigger camp.
Misc. Info
Camp setup is typical with shower trailer, cook trailer, mess tent, and no need for a dry tent due to the weather. Dish sinks weren't getting fully filled at the beginning for whatever reason so dish water got dirty quickly. Utensils and plates are provided. Mess tent had a fridge/freezer, outlets, and kettle for planter use. No service, no wifi all season. Showers were nice and water was normally filtered, planters did complain about chlorine. Payments were bi-weekly but the first paycheck arrived post contract. Small nuisance but all money was received sooner or later. Timing became more consistent later in the season. Typical unpaid labour such as loading trees, camp setup and teardown.
William's Lake/Alexis Creek May 7-24th
Tolko pre-work for the first day with a 1.5 hr drive to the block and then a short walk in. First tree at 10:30, last tree at 4:00. 17 cent fill. Second day we moved to another part of the block, no walk in, 16 cent fill, first tree at 8:30, last tree 4:30. Ended first shift in 2 days to share night off with the other camp. There's leniency for density with 1400 stems allowing for 6-8's for plots. Foresters emphasize on faulting for tree damage telling planters no boot prints when foot closing. The rest of the contract ran full 3-1 shifts with the same 1 to 1.5 hour drives and overly hot weather. There are 2 planters a day going with Bob on a 4x4 to do full days of burns (17 cents) and we saw some raw for 15-16 cents. We start our last shift on the 19th after being told we had 3-4 more shifts before closing (?) and tear down camp morning of the 22nd. Takes around 3 hours as everyone takes their time. We leave at 11:30 to head into William's Lake for a 3 day camp move.
Overall: Good land, good prices, lucky if you got some burns for a big day. Not many bugs and hot afternoons. Experienced planters should be making $250/day while getting back into gear for this warm up contract.
Smithers May 25-June 9th
Crews have the freedom to do as they wish with the requirement of making it to Smithers by the 24th. Camp stayed the night in PG before heading to Smithers for another night in town. Next camp was around Fort Babine next to a logging camp where Hybrid-17 is already lodging in. This next contract was 3 hours from town so we did isolation and only went into town every other shift. The camp was in a nice spot next to some water. We contracted for West Fraser for 4 shifts.
First day of shift started day 1 with pre-work. Contract runs 2m minimum with leeway down to 1.6m. FH planted with emphasis on straight trees, mixed bags planting pine, spruce, larch, and fir (4 rows of spruce against the tree line, larch and fir in high elevation ground only). Half hour drives to the block and supervisor gave us the option to plant till 6. Land was fast and creamy, weather was sporadic with a few days of rain. Prices range from 13 to 14.5 cents with earnings rising to $300+/day. It's a fun shift from doing fills back to putting in numbers. Days off in camp are relaxing with $10 camp cost for 3 meals. Planters were able to occasionally sneak over to the logging camp to steal some wifi. The contract finished on June 9th, camp tore down June 10th. We lost a 6 pack to a camp that needed help closing out in Bear Lake (north of PG) and the rest of the camp headed to Hazelton.
Bear Lake June 12-17th
We showed up to super-camp similar to the first one. With an extra 6 there are around 60 people. Just north of Bear Lake planting for Apollo, we got our own pre-work by the forester. Guy has a weird hard on for trees and what seems like a superiority complex. Threatened to send planters home for things such as missing silvis and trees not straight when bagged or unbundled one at a time. Anywho, never saw him on the block. Food was great, camp was buggy as all hell, and drives were decent. We started off in "the big block" with a 45 minute walk in. 14 cents in the front, 18.5 cents at the back and prices varying in between. FH plant with full spruce and the block was fresh cut so very slashy and duffy in some parts. Density 8-10 with 2m minimum and 2.4m maximum. Some $300/days on well priced land. Bit of a shit show as we showed up for 5 days and got told we're needed back at the other camp. Packed up and moved again.
Hazelton June 20th-29th
Arrived back in our old camp on the 19th where they had day off. Camp morale was low and stories passed about how poor the contract was. We planted for BCTS aiming for 7's with spruce, fir, cedar, hemlock, and larch. We ended up getting 2.5 shifts on the contract with opinions of land being slightly underpriced to start but still earning okay money. Land was extremely slashy, rocky, and a little steep at some points. We're told "duff plant". Forester didn't give one shit. Someone on the crew hit a wasps nest at least once per day while we were here so it wasn't great on that end. Blocks were 45~ minutes from camp and final blocks of the contract slowly became more lucrative. Camp average ended around 1000 at some points, our crew averaged 1600 for our short time here. Pricing ranged from 17-21 cents, 5-7 density with the occasional 8. Planters on crew earning around $250-$300/day. As contract ended, we were estimated 5 shifts left for the season with 4 days off for the contract break.
William's Lake/Alexis Creek July 4-22
1.5 hours from town, same idea as the Spring. Camp was across from a ranch next to a river. Lots of cow shit. We also set up showers next to a wasp nest for some reason. Every tree has cow shit under it. Pricing ranged again from 17-21 with frozen IWRAPS before hitting live trees in 2 shifts. Fill plants ranged from low to extremely stocked with some rock. Lots of burns to plant that ranged from 17-20 cents depending on access, absolutely incredible money. The pricing on this land was surprising and considerably high to me. Same as Spring contract, higher prices. Planters on crew had $300 to $500 days with some shifts averaging $400+/day. As the summer contract progresses, Jeff Flight moved up to a "project coordinator" position with another camp supervisor coming in with x amount of planters from his camp - the rest of their camp dissolved. Apparently summer trees were not very popular this season. Had a day or two on a very bad block - 21 cents, extreme amounts of rock and overgrowth, land looked like it had been blasted. Very strange turn of events, maybe I'll add a picture in later. I believe that block got bumped later on. Blocks got subsequently better with 20 cent walk ins and 19 cent burns, back to making money. Apparently not all blocks had been so lucrative, but this was also heard on our last contract. Found it easy going up to this point, earnings got considerably higher.
Expanding on that point, there was a point of contention where some crews had been having earnings much lower than ours. There were words in camp being floated that our new supervisor had been placing his own crews on mostly burns as we did see some of their planters having quite good days (eg. rookie and 2nd year planters clearing a $500, $800? day) who were not known to regularly earn "highballer" numbers. For context, two planters on my crew were able to put in 2500 on 19 cent burns planting from noon-5 on the same block.
We finished our side of the contracts on the 22st and packed up to move across the ?river. Apparently access had been cut due to a bridge being decommissioned or something. I didn't really care to pay attention. We moved locations to join another camp and finished the season together.
William's Lake/Alexis Creek July 24-30
Camp was quite large. Our head cook moved to help out another camp while assistant cook stayed to work with new camps two cooks. We shared a shower trailer, mess tent, and amenities. More fill planting and more walk ins. Specs began to get very strict on the 2m minimum with what sounded like a very high amount of planters replanting for double plants too close to naturals and planted trees. Morale seemed low from some members of the other camp. We had an issue distinguishing the difference between spruce and balsam, where balsam did not need to be respected with regards to spacing. Note that even the checkers had trouble explaining the differences to planters. We all figured it out and the end of the season was getting to meme-levels of ridiculousness with regards to the tree identification. Ended up getting another checker to keep up with all the planters, with quality not looking great and everyone seemingly confused as to whether or not we were doing well and when we were scheduled to finish. Morale got lower, sun got hotter, money was still decent. For the last shift or so, some shit cropped up about cows eating our plastic flagger. Fuck me, right? Everyone was given rolls of blue paper flagger instead to flag trees. Rolls were much shorter than the plastic flagger and much harder to tear until you get used to it. Didn't like it at first but now I prefer it. Bonus points: our truck was given a box of paper flag for the day... 6 rolls??? Last day of planting ended with every crew moving to the same block to bag out trees, very unorganized, but finished nonetheless. The last bit of my notes are pretty sparse as I was tired. But I hope there's enough information still.
The food at the 'super camp' was mediocre, others thought it was pretty terrible. I felt the food at our original camp was quite good and portions were fair for the average person - block treats were good, mostly packaged items such as cookies and bars, but I'd prefer that. Breakfast and spreads at the bigger camp were pretty bad. A lot of complaints of the cooks there and I'm pretty sure we had pulled pork for dinner half the time we were there. I also heard some weird shit about them spending some food budget from the last day dinner on dog snacks and what not to put on some dog show at the season end. Alright. We had a quite a handful of dogs in camp. Anyway, it's all conjecture and the season ends with 57 days of work.
Overall
I had a great time at Dynamic. As a vet who doesn't try to ball, I had a fairly easy time making money (aiming for a $250/day min). To anyone looking to switch companies from your large rookie mill or what not, I suggest coming over for a season to see what it's like. Pricing was usually fair and block drives not bad. I enjoyed the camp and numbers did not normally come up as dinner or fire conversation. There was a crop of much more experienced planters as well as a smaller camp (30 ish people). The ability to claim RWA worked out as $80/day(?) of your earnings not deducted, a good chunk back in your pocket. Stat/vacation included in the tree price. Unfortunately, I am not returning to Dynamic for the 2019 season although I wouldn't hesitate to recommend rookies or other planters. Jeff's camp showed strong company, with actual competitive pricing.
57 days planted
$25/day camp
¢17 average
lots of cows
personal post camp-cost earnings
$259.41/day spring average (36 days)
$332.91/day summer average (21 days)
$234.75/day average (daily average earnings of one of our rookies in camp)