Today, rental is one of the fastest growing segments of the heavy equipment industry. Peterson customer Green Diamond Resource Company is one of the many reasons why. With a regulated and shortened work season, high equipment availability is crucial to the success of their operation. “We used to own all the equipment we ran in the woods,” explains Jim Henson, Green Diamond’s Roads Superintendent, “but when our season shrank to six months, we needed higher availability than the 80% we were getting.” For the first few years, the company went with different rental vendors but five years ago, they turned to Peterson. “We’ve been very happy with Peterson. They have more than 400 pieces in their rental fleet and we always get current model Caterpillar machines with very low hours. We’ve bumped up our utilization to 99%, which makes owning our own fleet much less attractive. And, with Peterson’s store right there in Fortuna, breakdowns are no longer a factor. If a piece goes down during our operating season, they backfill it within 24 to 48 hours.”

Many people in California might recognize Green Diamond by their original name: Simpson Timber Co. “In the timber industry, it’s very common, today, to separate timberlands from the mill and manufacturing sides of the business,” explains Henson. “California Redwood Company is our mill and manufacturing side and our timberlands are now called Green Diamond Resource Company.” Today, GDRC owns and operates tree farms in Washington, Oregon and California including 425,000 acres of second and third growth timberland in northwestern California. Their largest California operation at Korbel, runs from Fortuna to Orick and Eureka to South Fork Mt in W. Trinity Co. During the summer season, Korbel Operations runs 10 company logging sides and 15 contract crews.

“Rentals are a very efficient way to work with a shorter work season.” 

                 - Jim Henson, GDRC Roads Superintendent

Green Diamond has been successful throughout its 118-year history for many reasons. Besides working smart, they’ve adapted to the shifting demands of their industry. Simpson was one of the first companies to step up to the plate over the Northern Spotted Owl. They acquired a Habitat Conservation Plan [HCP] for the spotted owl in 1990, shortly after it was listed as a threatened species. Since then, Green Diamond has spent millions of dollars on two additional conservation plans for fish and aquatic life on their property: an Aquatic HCP in Washington, and one in California. It took ten years to complete preparation, by GDRC, for the California plans approval by the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Green Diamond views these agreements as a way to secure the management of their property,” explains Henson. “In exchange for certain concessions on management decisions, GDRC gets long-range security to harvest their timber. Under the plan, we have to spend at least $2.5 million a year on road repairs, but that’s something we’ve been doing for several years anyway.”

As a career tractor man, Bill Murray, Peterson’s Northern Territory Rental Manager, has absorbed the forestry business by association. “The companies that have survived the logging crunch are doing very well. Green Diamond has been very successful by being proactive with the various government agencies. They have a very strategic approach that partners with, instead of fighting against, the agencies that many still struggle with. They have their own wild life departments, their own nurseries. They study this thing right down to the seed.”

This spring marks the fifth season Green Diamond will be renting their equipment from Peterson. Their 14-piece line-up is already set for a May start. “Virtually all of the rental equipment from Peterson is used on maintenance of their existing roads,” explains Murray, who has known Green Diamond for several years. Road maintenance on the company’s private haul roads is crucial to their success both from a logging standpoint and for the environmental agencies that monitor the woods so carefully. Every summer, Korbel’s road maintenance crew, upgrades an average of 80 miles of road with culvert replacements, and decommissions 15 miles of roads that will not be needed in the future. It’s all part of the company’s efforts at building a healthy balance between business and the environment they live and work in.

Peterson salesman, Bill Murray (L) and Jim Henson,

Green Diamond Roads Supervisor at the

Redwood Logging Conference in Feb. 2008