The Sawdust Runs Deep, Binnie Nash Feature

After more than 40 years in the logging industry, Binnie Nash – Sonny Merryman Trailer Service & Sales Manager – is a familiar face to many. He was recently asked by Virginia Loggers Association to share his story over the years. Below is Binnie’s feature from the Virginia Logger’s Association’s December 2021 magazine. Thank you for your service and support of Virginia’s community and logging industry! We’re proud to have you on our team, Binnie.


I guess my love affair with wood started as an early 8–10-year-old boy growing up with a sawmill behind my house. The sound of the debarker, chipper, and sawmill blade as the carriage sent the log through it always fascinated me!

The men who hauled the logs in, usually on 2 axles/2-ton trucks, had wooden standards that they would cut with an axe or saw, run, and get out of the way and let roll the logs off. The loader operator guys who worked at the sawmill would just pile the used standards off to the side in a pile. My grandfather Hunter Nash bought me a new wagon for Christmas one year. And in the springtime, I would take both ends off and roll it down to the sawmill and load up those wooden standards on Saturday (when sawmill was not working) and haul those standards home. I was “hauling logs” and in heaven…. 🙂

I would get a pile saved up and then my dad would load them in his pickup truck and give them to someone who could use them for firewood. I was always a good size for my age so at 13 I started working at the sawmill in the summertime – my first paying job was $5.00 a day for 8 hours.

I would pack lumber or throw slabs in the chipper as they came off the saw. I guess when I was around 15, I bought a 08 Stihl saw from my grandfather (he was the local Stihl dealer). I started cutting 5′ pulpwood and hauling it on a trailer behind the farm tractor up to Gladys to Continental Can Company. I could haul about a cord and a half on it.

My dad cosigned a note for me to buy my first skidder at 17, a John Deere 440A for $6500.00. I loaded the logs and wood with a 1530 John Deere tractor. (same one you might see in some pictures I sent). I worked after school and on Saturdays to make that skidder payment. By that time, I had purchased a 1968 Dodge 2-ton single axle truck, I got this guy to help me, and we put a dead axle under it. When I was not hung up, I could haul 2500-2800 feet of good logs.

I got out of high school in 1976 and continued to log, bought a Husky knuckle boom and had a 15” Mobark feller – buncher mounted on a 951 Cat loader and had bought a new 518 Cat Skidder and later put a grapple on it. I had upgraded to 2 DM model live tandem Mack trucks. I was doing good until in 1981 when two of my men died in accidents.

The first one wrecked one of the Mack trucks with a load of 24’ long oak wood headed to Riverville between Concord and Appomattox; the other accident happened when a tree I had just cut but was not grabbed by one of the arms in the feller buncher hit my man across the head in Chatham. I continued to log for another 2 years but my heart was not it. I loved logging more than anything I had ever done but the markets were very bad in 1982 and I stopped logging in December.

I went to work at my family’s (two uncles & father) new wood treatment plant and stayed there until they all split up and started working at RockTenn Company almost 4 years. Next, I came to work in 1996 for Sonny Merryman as trailer shop manager. In 2016 as well as looking after the trailer shop, I started selling trailers, mostly forestry trailers like log, chip, and flat beds since I already had a lot of good contacts.

In 1990 a lady from our church, Kedron Baptist Gladys with the WMU (Women’s Missionary Union) asked if I would get a men’s Brotherhood ministry started and we started a month or two later with 20 men!

We have had some men die out or move and have new ones join. I have seen men bring their young sons to our group and now these young men are now adult men of their own. We have a GREAT group of men and we have done a variety of projects. We have built woodsheds, cut grass in many yards, trimmed countless shrubs, painted metal roofs, blown out a million gutter, helped move furniture, pianos, delivered food, and countless other things of kindness. After 31 years we are still going good.

A lot of us are getting older and we do have a few young ones coming along but not as many as I would like. God has blessed me with a good job and the means to buy a loader, log truck and other things to help with our ministry. We have a great bunch of men and some of them have “saw dust” in their blood like me.

We are SO blessed to have my neighbors David Morton and AL Hines who work during the week sometime and cut up and split wood. Last year we gave away roughly 160 pickup loads of wood to people in need in the community.

Bobby Nichols and Bo have donated wood as well as several folks who may have dead or blown over trees that we will go get up and haul away on that good looking brown Chevy Wood Chuck!

God has blessed us as a group in SO many ways with good men, keeping us safe, and support from individuals. We have received discounts on new chain saws we have bought from Philips Equipment in

Rustburg and Sonny Merryman has given me church discounts on the two trailers I bought (one flat we process the wood, and one van sitting on the ground) that stores our saws and supplies and wood splitters. Long Island Lumber and H&S Construction, of Long Island, VA graciously donated several dump – truck loads of firewood for their ministry. I think one of the best things for me was advice from my grandfather and father – “Love the lord, work hard and treat people honestly.”

Binnie made it clear as he shared his story of his love for wood and service to others. Binnie said, “I still love the smell of that fresh sawdust coming out of that sharp Stihl”.