With a Saw and a Truck: Alabama Pulpwood Producers

Every time an American sneezes and reaches for a tissue, picks up the morning paper, or gives a home address to a mail-order firm, America's huge paper industry is coaxed into continued action. The pulp and paper industry has grown alongside the growing southern forest, which covers between two and three of every five acres from eastern Texas to Florida. The value of timber harvested and sold from this vast forest exceeds that of any other agricultural crop. The forest products companies built upon this resource comprise the South's largest manufacturing industry, employing one of every nine manufacturing sector workers. 1 The pulp and paper industry dominates the forest products sector. Paper is made from pulp, and pulp is made from wood. A modern pulp and paper mill may use 2.7 million tons of wood per year, equivalent to about three hundred twenty tractortrailer loads of wood per day. The wood is cut and hauled to the mills by thousands of woods workers. In the South, these workers labor at the bottom of an economic and social hierarchy that provides mills with a flexible, dependable, low-cost supply of wood. Mill representatives contract with wood dealers, who in turn contract with wood producers, who supervise laborers and participate in the actual wood cutting and hauling.