Our family-owned and operated small business provides 140 jobs on Prince of Wales Island. With 30 years in operation, we know that year-round jobs in rural communities keep grocery stores and schools open.
Viking Lumber employs 46 Alaskans living in rural communities like Craig and Klawock. Employees at Viking Lumber receive family wages, health care, dental, vision, life insurance and a retirement plan. School-age children of Viking employees are equal to one full class of students in our already shrinking schools.
Viking’s operations also support 90 employees of contractors due to our work on timber sales. These are the hard-working woodsmen, the engineers, fallers, cutters, truckers and operators who get the trees to the sawmill and ultimately to our customers all over the United States.
Viking harvests 0.0016% of the Tongass National Forest per year. Trees are renewable. They are a crop that need to be harvested before they rot and die. At Viking we help create long-life wood products while providing year-round employment in an area with limited employment opportunities.
Viking is the sole supplier to several of the largest piano companies in the world and provides wood for most of the acoustic guitar tops to all the major guitar companies. Our lumber is manufactured into doors, trim, garage doors, gazebos, fences, staircases, railing and the trim you see around windows and baseboards.
Furthermore, our byproducts are used to heat our local schools and public swimming pool. Sawdust is dried and compressed in our brick plant and replaces expensive heating oil with clean, green energy.
All of these jobs, which depend on Viking’s continued operations, benefit the local economy and help support the social structure of our local communities. It’s nearly impossible to find a state that doesn’t have a wood product that originated from Viking Lumber. Our operations support thousands of remanufacturing and quality production jobs around the country.
Since the 2016 Alaska Mental Health Trust land exchange, our operations on Trust lands have generated millions of dollars in revenue for support programs that help our most vulnerable populations in Alaska. When state land is utilized for renewable resource development, the economic benefits help our children and families right here in Alaska.
The real issue is that the federal government owns and operates 94% of Southeast Alaska. Isn’t it time that Alaska state and citizens have more control over their destiny?
Sarah Dahlstrom-Lehnert grew up onsite at Viking Lumber. She is a school counselor, mom of three, owns a construction company with her husband and advocates for the timber industry in Alaska.
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