Our Logging Heritage - Saginaw and Bay City

Drew Hanover

Sep 14, 2024

Why Saginaw?

Since announcing our North American expansion with the Michigan office, I've received many comments like "Why Saginaw?"

And on first glance an external person not knowing the history of the region might be right. Looking around the tri-city regions of Bay City, Saginaw and Midland, a savvy individual is likely to recognize a region ravaged by economic struggles. The reality is that the area, once full of manufacturers across the automotive, maritime, and logging industries is a shell of its former self. A conservative estimate on the downtown area of Bay City shows that commercial office space is likely around 50% vacant with minimal perceived progress or improvements on the horizon. Couple that with an aging population, rising home costs, and minimal economic opportunity for young folks, the area seems to be in big trouble.

But when digging a bit deeper into the history of Saginaw and Bay city, you might come across something interesting. Saginaw and Bay City have a long history, of boom and bust cycles with the logging industry. In fact, in 1866 there were 57 mills positioned strategically along the Saginaw river producing an estimated 300 million board feet per year. This was of course before any automation, requiring loggers to consistently work 12 hour days to provide for their families. The region boomed with economic success driven largely by the lumber industry which encouraged major supporting development within the ship building community. The Defoe Ship Building company found success building ships which were eventually purchased on contract by the US Navy for decades. Nowadays, we see the remnants of this industry with baseball teams and restaurants named after the Lumber Barons - those that came before us as champions of the industry.

What Happened?

Overforesting, offshoring of labor, and poor policy making without regard for long term economic consequences has taken its toll over the years. What remains now is a strong community of family owned mills which have survived the boom and bust cycles that those in the lumber industry are all too familiar with. Looking ahead, many fellow Americans have a feeling of uncertainty about the future. As Peter Thiel puts it in his best-selling book "Zero-to-One", the US has shifted its operating persona from one of definite optimism - the idea that America would be the land of opportunity, growth, and success due to the willpower and creativity of entrepreneurs building new technologies - has shifted over the years to indefinite optimism and now to one of definite uncertainty. Americans are more unsure now than ever before of what the future will bring - and that bothers the hell out of us at AVIAN.

It does not have to be that way. In order for the region to return to a time of prosperity, opportunity, and growth, we must encourage entrepreneurs to build. We are doing our best to bring cutting edge technology to an aging industry. Our goals with AVIAN are multifaceted. We aim to defend an aging industry plagued with frequent catastrophic fires that put mills and their employees out of work. We aim to improve the maximize up time with our system via our predictive maintenance algorithms, improving operational efficiency across the board.

And most importantly, we aim to restore what once was by placing our North American operations in a historically significant region, hiring ambitious people to help us meet our goals, and offering ownership opportunities for all employees in our family and employee owned business.

Closing Thoughts

I'll leave you with this last thought.

Rising tides lift all boats. We alone cannot be the tide, but we sure as hell can start by investing in the area and encouraging others to take the leap with us.

Thank you to the Historical Museum of Bay County for the sawmill exhibits where these photos are sourced from. More info can be found at http://www.bchsmuseum.org/

Another thank you to the Michigan Association of Timbermen which we are proud to be a member of. More info about the association can be found at https://www.michigantimbermen.com/.