Michael Preminger started his forestry career in California, working around fire cleanup and prevention crews, when he was struck by how wasteful industry practices could be. Damaged or unwanted wood was chipped into mulch, or otherwise discarded.
“I saw first-hand how that material was treated like trash,” he says. It’s a problem that’s industry wide. “The forest products industry, it’s a very old industry, it changes very slowly. There’s a lot there that’s still to be modernized.”
Starting in 2022, Preminger and his co-founders, Ryan Glossop and Yuval Levy, started working on Forward Forestry, a software and logistics company that helps tree service companies assemble cut wood—that was previously discarded waste wood—into truckloads that can be sold to lumber mills. The company created Mill Market, a service that tells tree services how to prepare logs. Once they have more than 40 logs, Forward Forestry connects them with a mill and arranges pick up.
As Preminger explains, lumber mills are used to dealing with loggers who can deliver truckloads of homogenous logs. However, tree service companies that specialize in removing problematic limbs or trees from properties don’t get to pick the trees they cut, so they can’t generate the same kinds of loads that loggers do. However, collectively, they’re still generating a considerable amount of wood that could be converted into value instead of mulch.
Forward Forestry’s model is already working locally, and Preminger sees no reason for the model to be limited to New England.
“We figure the average tree services is throwing away around $25,000 worth of wood each year. Nationwide, there’s 120,000 tree services,” Preminger says. “There’s a lot of tree services out there, and they’re producing a lot of wood…. Anywhere you’ve got trees and mills sawing them, there’s opportunity there.”
In 2023—its first full year of operation—Forward Forestry helped turn previously wasted wood into 1.4 million board feet of lumber. Preminger hopes to help his clients generate 2.5 million board feet this year.
“If we can make it an easy process for tree services to make something out of [waste wood], why not make everyone win,” Preminger says.
Current Issue - January 2025