Valid Drivers License shines like a college degree these days.

I am so weary of perspective climbers that ignore my ALL CAPS request not to turn in a resume' if they don't have a valid DL. I can't bear to hear another rant about how great a climber someone is while they downplay their lack of a drivers license. To me a drivers license implies a basic level of stability for me to start from.


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Amen brother! Or a running vehicle would be good.

Convenience, and I guess stability if you say so, August, but i think it is cool if people can manage without driving. It's another stress giver being behind the wheel, for yourself and maybe to others , plus the expense. I've known a few people that certainly could have learned to drive, but chose not to. Sure helps to live in a place with good public transportation. As an employer in your situation, no doubt you want/need people that can drive. The states is really undeveloped in that regard. Mostly inconceivable to not be able to drive and figure to get along, but it's not like that everywhere.

I particularly enjoy riding the trains, sitting on the left or right side gives a different view, and some really haul A.

If a guy can get to and from the job/yard fine but I may need them to drive a truck from time to time, and all the guys that I have seen without a DL are worthless on the job. I am not saying one follows the other but around here it seems true.

No license, no job here.

yep

No license around here generally means they had one and lost it for too many DUIs, etc.

I thought it was just a problem around here.

woodworkingboy said:

Convenience, and I guess stability if you say so, August, but i think it is cool if people can manage without driving. It's another stress giver being behind the wheel, for yourself and maybe to others , plus the expense. I've known a few people that certainly could have learned to drive, but chose not to. Sure helps to live in a place with good public transportation. As an employer in your situation, no doubt you want/need people that can drive. The states is really undeveloped in that regard. Mostly inconceivable to not be able to drive and figure to get along, but it's not like that everywhere.

I particularly enjoy riding the trains, sitting on the left or right side gives a different view, and some really haul A.

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My buddy Lawrence Schultz doesn't have a car. Has a license though. Rides subways trains buses etc. in New York City. Totally different world here but it sounds like an interesting life there. Still, I like my pick up truck on a country road better.



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flushcut said:

If a guy can get to and from the job/yard fine but I may need them to drive a truck from time to time, and all the guys that I have seen without a DL are worthless on the job. I am not saying one follows the other but around here it seems true.

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This is what I have found also. That's what I mean when I say that the drivers license implies some level of basic functionality in their lives. No license equals no job working for me. It weeds out tons of guys that I would hire and then their employment would be similar to the campfire that you sit at and no matter where you move to you keep getting smoke in your eyes. Clockwork frustration. Always something.


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It's so easy to get a license in the states, and cheap. Other places, it can well cost you thousands of dollars, and you are almost sure to fail the test the first time around..

Sounds like in those places the ones that have the drivers license would really be the cream of the crop, unlike here where it's just sort of a basic starting place for a sign of having it somewhat together.

It will cost all of these guys thousands of dollars to get their licenses back to. Court fees, etc. I've helped many of them down that road. No more though.


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woodworkingboy said:

It's so easy to get a license in the states, and cheap. Other places, it can well cost you thousands of dollars, and you are almost sure to fail the test the first time around..

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You're in Japan?


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Yea, Jay lives in Japan. Pretty cool, eh! You should see the furniture he makes... works of art!

Thanks, MB. Yes, August, I've lived here more than twenty years. Very paradoxical country with hot springs to relax in and earthquakes to kill you. I could simply convert my California driver's license to the local one, but for people first starting out driving here, everyone goes to expensive driving school. Three or four grand is it now? No learner's permit things. I had to take a test though, and of course failed the first time. On the course that they have on the license place grounds, I was driving along with the examiner on a nice spring day, and the light turned yellow as we were entering the intersection. It was one of those cars with the passenger side having a brake as well. The nutter slammed on the brakes so rad that no doubt without a seat belt I would have died with a steering wheel embedded in my chest. It screwed up my neck for ten days. No doubt he knew it was coming, nobody reacts that fast. Whether I failed because of that or the guy understood the expletive in English that I yelled out at him, I'm not really sure.

As to whether such a formal driving school program makes one a better driver, I would say that it does for like six months.

I remember when I first started working in the woods in Maine in 1977 (I mention the year simply as it may relate to higher dui instances), obviously green to the woods and life in general, I was amazed that probably 75% of the cutters had lost their licenses due to drunk driving, they all got a ride to work from the wives/gf's.

I was a cutter that the boss had to send someone to my house and pick up in the morning. I could cut and so they put up with me but I wouldn't put up with a guy like I was at this stage in my life.… At least I don't think so.


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August Hunicke said:

I was a cutter that the boss had to send someone to my house and pick up in the morning. I could cut and so they put up with me but I wouldn't put up with a guy like I was at this stage in my life.… At least I don't think so.

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LOL! I remember one of the guys, Clive was his name, he showed up on a fairly spotty basis, no doubt due to drunkeness, I asked one of the guys why the boss put up with him, and was told "because when he's here he will get right down in the mud and do whatever it takes to get the job done"

Another guy, Earl Record, he was the very first guy I ever logged with. He was quiet but kinda intense, and crazy, I'm sure. Um yeah, he had no driver's license. He was famous on the crew for both his legendary cutting productivity and for getting in such a wild bar fight that the bar was basically destroyed, it had to close, was the story. I lasted about a week or 2 with him, he wanted somebody more productive. I couldn't keep my saw sharp on the landing for more than 10 minutes, and of course I couldn't sharpen it either I could work hard stacking pulp logs with a pulp hook but that alone wasn't good enough.

One day it started raining torrentially, just down pouring, too much to work in. So we walked down the road from the landing to the bosses house a half mile away. He had just purchased basic high heel logger boots at Sears a couple days before and the heel fell of one of them. I ask him if he's gonna return the boots. He says frig no why the frig would I do that. I say cuz the heel fell off 2 day old boots. He says I don't give a frig about that. And on we hobbled in the down pour.

Livermore Falls, ME.

Finding workers with drivers licenses is hell. For me, no license, no job. No vehicle to go with that license, no job. Im not judging, but Im not catering either.

Word.

Yup. It's a hard world, you make a bed of nails, you have to lie in it, fool.

Yeah, they put up with a lot from me. I didn't miss any days but I slept the whole way out into the woods every morning. I was very hard on myself back then. Stay up till 1:30 in the morning drinking and smoking. They'd pick me up at 3:30 and it was 5:30 or six before we got where we were headed each day. Sometimes we would camp, and that was great. I think I would probably be dead if I had kept up the way I was going. I straightened up in 1997. I did limit my boozing though to when I was not working. My Yoda at the time was 44 years old and ridiculously skilled with all aspects of cutting. Like me a hard-core drunk, but also a heroin addict. I remember having to step out of the truck well he shot up each day because I didn't want to see it. He would drift off in microsecond naps standing there talking to you. He could cut perfect face cuts all day long, totally high. He overdosed and died when I was about one month into sobriety. Sort of gave my willingness to quit a little extra momentum. His wife was beautiful. He had a 12-year-old daughter. Lovely people. She gave me all of his stuff. I still use one of the saws regularly in my videos. I put a sticker on it, "Excalibur." It's an 046 he had modified when it was new. Still going strong. It has 210 pounds of compression. I remember lots of times after he died I would have a question for him and I would start walking across the street to his house and get halfway there before I realized he was gone. The guy took so much great information with him and left behind so much.


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I inherited an 090 from a guy that likely drank and smoked himself to death, I called him "Uncle". A tree cutter all his teenage through adult life. He also taught me to drink sake at work, but that was during a different time, and I was a quick learner, but no longer. Reminds me, I need to go over to his house and light a stick of incense.