GALVESTON, TEXAS – Texas Forestry Association presented Read Logging with the SFI/Texas Logging Council Outstanding Logger Of The Year Award during the Association’s annual convention held Oct. 17-19, 2018, at Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas.
“This outstanding logging company was established by fourth-generation logger Ben Read in 1961,” said Phil Ferguson, Chair of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Committee. “Today, we honor its fifth generation of Read Logging in presenting this award to Ben’s sons, Billie and Wade Read.
When Read began the logging company, he wanted his sons to further their education. Both sons attended Stephen F. Austin State University before leaving college to care for the family business after Ben because ill.
In 1986, Read signed a Cut and Haul contract with Louisiana-Pacific Corporation in Jasper, and has been contracting with LP ever since. Today, the logging company has two crews of six mean and six logging trucks with drivers. The Reads also have two sub-contract crews working for them. At least one employee on each job has Texas Pro Logger Certification. Approximately 90 percent of their timber harvests are from first thinnings.
Read Logging employes 23; three for 25 years, one at 18 years, and four at 15 years.
“The level of commitment from their employees says a lot about Billie and Wade, who continue in their father’s legacy of honest, dependable work,” Ferguson said. “The brothers in turn credit their employees, their mother Cherie, and their wives for the company’s success.”
Billie and wife Stephanie live in Warren and have four children. Wide and his wife, Stacy, live in Chester and have five children.
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Texas Forestry Association, the voice for forestry for 100 years, promotes an economic, social and political climate that will advance forestry in Texas through education, political action and public relations, as well as serving the broad needs of the forest resource of landowners, producers and consumers, and to enhance and perpetuate the Texas forest resource.
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