HAROLD BOUCHARD
The Forest Resources Association, based in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit trade association concerned with the safe, efficient and sustainable harvest of forest products and their transport from woods to mill.
“I am very proud that our employees’ efforts have allowed them to receive national recognition,” Comstock President Brian Bouchard said in a news release. “They truly deserve this recognition.”
The winner is selected from the nation’s top logging companies, which are nominated from six regions across the country. Comstock was nominated by the Maine Forest Products Council, which represents all segments of the state’s forest industry. Two other Maine companies have won the award: Don Paradis of Portage in 1995, and David and Kurt Babineau of West Enfield in 2008.
“Thank you and congratulations to all of you again for all the good work you’ve done,” FRA Chairman Tom Norris told Bouchard, who was presented with a plaque and a $1,000 check.
As every logger knows, forestry is as much about transportation as it is about trees. You’ve got wood growing in some hard-toreach spot, but it’s relatively worthless unless you can get it to the marketplace. Comstock specializes in meeting that challenge in the north Maine woods, one of the most remote, challenging logging locations in the lower 48 states.
“We don’t just harvest 205,000 tons of wood a year. In order for us to do so, we have to have the capability to cut right of ways, build the roads and maintain the roads — grading, plowing, sanding in the wintertime — culvert replacements and close-out work. We build bridges. We replace bridges,” Bouchard said.
Three generations of the Bouchard family — Brian, his son Jeff, and his father Harold, who died Feb. 22 at the age of 77 — have helped revolutionize Maine’s harvesting and transport services. They’ve spotted some opportunities and created others through their commitment to their clients and their determination to stay competitive.
“They are star performers out of the 40-plus contractors we engage. They are old school in a way, which is to say that they always do the right thing and their word is their bond,” said Don White, former president of Prentiss & Carlisle and MFPC. “One can have a 50-pound legal contract with someone and still not get what you agreed to or you can get a handshake from the Bouchard family or its crew and you will get what you agreed to, and more.”
Started in 1991, Comstock Woodlands is based in Comstock Township, only 30 miles from Maine’s northwest border with Quebec province. From Comstock’s complex off the fabled Golden Road, 37 employees spread across 25 townships and more than 500,000 acres to harvest wood and maintain roads. The facility has an on-site camp with housing units for up to 50, a connected kitchen and dining area, hot showers, wi-fi and satellite TV.
“A big piece of our success is our people,” Brian Bouchard said. “You’ve got to have good, sound, quality people and be willing to pay them to work hard for four days and spend only three days at home with their families. They come to Comstock from Bangor, Millinocket, Fort Kent and from Saint- Zacharie, Quebec. It’s very difficult, but these are people who are diehards for the woods. It’s their heritage.”
All of Comstock’s loggers are certified by Maine’s Certified Logging Professional program and the company has an exemplary safety record.
“From the top down, management takes a personal interest to promote a positive safety awareness and culture,” said Mike St. Peter, CLP program director. “Supervisors with ‘boots on the ground’ reinforce the safety message daily. This leadership by example makes the difference.”
Harold Bouchard was one of 16 children of Franco-American heritage who grew up on a potato farm in Fort Kent “where English was not an important thing.” When he was 16, one brother was a POW in the Korean War and another had been severely injured by a woods accident. So Harold left school to help his father plant their crop. That was the end of his formal education.
His business career started in 1958 with the purchase (his dad co-signed) of a 1957 Dodge truck. At age 23, he drove off to a two-week job in Bangor, but that job led to another and another.
“When I took off in my truck and left the farm it was quite a relief to get away from the cows,” Harold once said with a big laugh. “But I am pleased that I was brought up to earn a living. Poverty is a great asset.”
H.O. Bouchard became one of the principal trucking firms for Great Northern Paper Co., which built its first mill in 1898 and became a giant of the Maine forest economy. When Great Northern was taken over by Georgia Pacific in 1990, GP didn’t want to operate logging camps, manage roads or have employees in the woods. So H.O. Bouchard was asked to take over Great Northern’s Comstock operation (named for Comstock Mountain), which meant buying the camps, building, plowing and sanding the roads, cutting wood and delivering it to the mills. Since no one could predict the outcome of such an enormous undertaking, a decision was made “to separate the highway from the woods.” Comstock Woodlands was born.
In the early 1980s, Harold played a prominent role in the successful effort to convince Maine lawmakers to adopt a six-axle truck configuration at a more productive weight limit. More recently, Brian and Jeff worked closely with Sen. Susan Collins to help increase the 80,000-pound limit to 100,000 pounds on trucks traveling on interstate highways in Maine in 2011.
“The Bouchard family provided me with specific information and real-life examples, which helped me articulate the problem and convince my colleagues in both the House and Senate that this improvement was necessary for the safety of Maine’s citizens,” Sen. Collins said.
The Bouchards and their employees also strongly support many humanitarian causes in their community and beyond. Most recently they provided a truck to the Girls Scouts so supplies could be sent to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. In September, 22 employees, family members and friends joined the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Bangor and the company recently gave a generous donation to the local Cancer Care of Maine facility in Brewer.
When he drove away in his 1957 Dodge, Harold said, he never imagined how far he and his family would travel from that potato farm.
“At the Christmas party this year,” Harold said, “when I looked at our employees and their wives filling the room, I thought, ‘I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished.’”
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