I have met many people over the years but only two that have worked in the logging industry. One fellow was an old timer who had logged up in Maine, and the other was a younger fellow who was tramping around the logging operations in the American Northwest.
In both instances it was obvious by the weathered faces and leathery tough hands that logging was hard work. A great deal harder than anything that I would want to attempt but something that Josh Woodcock had to get back to.
Josh is a young man whose family runs a logging operation in the Missouri Ozarks. Josh was rendered a c-5 quadriplegic following a car accident, but that disability didn’t last long. Eight weeks in a rehab center then back home and back behind the controls of a massive log loader where he racks up nine hours a day and 30 tons of logs every 10 to 15 minutes.
As is most often the case, access issues and assistive technology take a hard turn in rural areas. Curb cuts, and electric scooters light enough to heft into your car trunk take a back seat to finding technology that can help get someone behind the wheel of a tractor or behind the sticks of a log loader. Hunting around for off-the-shelf technology is not an option. In many cases the technology just doesn’t exist.
In Josh’s case family members leaned on their “redneck ingenuity” and some spare parts to modify the cabin and the controls of the log loader. He uses a manual wheelchair, goes to work in an adapted pickup truck, climbs on-board the loader with the help of a wench, and tames the log-grabbing monster by way of the do-it-yourself adaptive hand controls.
There is no legs to wheelchair superstar story here. This is all about good folks who rose up tall to the occasion and made a big thing happen.
You can read the article by Eric Syverson in Rural Missouri.
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Nice article!!!!