Header

LEOA Graduates First Student Logger Class

 

 

 

Mississippi’s Hinds Community College graduated its first batch of students from the new Logging Equipment Operator Academy (LEOA) in December 2021. Four students completed the 16-week workforce certificate course and received a Professional Logger Manager (PLM) qualification, OSHA-10 safety training, CPR/First Aid and TeamSafe Trucking Module 1-2.

LEOA is located at Hinds’ Raymond, Miss. campus and features a John Deere rubber-tire simulator, two wheeled feller-bunchers, two track feller-bunchers and several desktop models with joysticks for teaching students with little to no experience how to operate in-woods machinery.

The four-month course includes classroom instruction on forestry concepts, business management specific to logging, PLM qualifications, tree identification, equipment maintenance and DOT regulations, as well as several hours of seat time on actual feller-bunchers and knuckleboom loaders.

Mississippi Loggers Assn. (MLA) and Mississippi Forestry Commission partnered with Hinds Community College, Justin McDermott at John Deere, and Scott Swanson, Stribling Equipment, to bring the program to life.

Of the four students who recently graduated, three have already taken jobs within the industry.

David Livingston, MLA Director, says they look to expand the LEOA program to existing loggers interested in training employees to operate other pieces of heavy equipment.

Latest News

Logging Equipment Loss Due To Fire

Logging Equipment Loss Due To Fire

BACKGROUND: On a logging job in the Lake States Region during February, an operator of harvesting equipment had blown a hydraulic hose. He called for assistance from a skidder operator for a tow to the landing where the equipment could be repaired….

New Mississippi Law Simplifies Light Safety

New Mississippi Law Simplifies Light Safety

A new Mississippi law that went into effect in 2022 has simplified low visibility light requirements for log hauling, according to Mississippi Loggers Assn. Executive Director David Livingston. A similar law passed in 2011 to allow log hauling in…

Have A Question?

Send Us A Message