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Larger Than Life

John Walter Boyd, of Wetumpka, Alabama passed away on November 25, 2024. He was 62 years old. Johnny had a big influence and impact on the lives of many. He was a true one-of-a-kind.

— Paul Iarocci

Johnny was a constant presence at southern forestry and logging expos and events for nearly 30 years as a Tigercat district manager.
Johnny Boyd worked as a district manager with Tigercat for nearly 30 years before tragically passing at age 62. Johnny was more than a work colleague. He was a loyal friend and mentor to many at Tigercat. He had a similarly positive impact in all other spheres of his life. With his unique gait and booming southern drawl, Johnny was the life of the party. He was also a hard worker, a great thinker, and a talented problem solver.

Johnny studied at Auburn University, and his first employer out of school in 1984 was Koehring’s Canadian Division, a producer of pulp and paper machinery, excavators, and forestry equipment located in Brantford, Ontario. It was at Koehring that Johnny made first connections with a bunch of Canadians, many of whom ended up at Tigercat. As a 22-year-old factory representative, Johnny went on to make an outsize contribution to the southern US logging industry. He travelled extensively, meeting industry professionals and painstakingly shepherding Koehring’s new high speed disc saws into one logging operation after another. The effect of Johnny’s tireless efforts to introduce this concept represents one of the more significant step changes in harvesting productivity in modern times in the southern United States.

Early in his career, Johnny was involved in a car accident that resulted in a serious and significant back injury. The chronic pain he experienced was exhausting, agonizing and life altering. As Jennie Barrett, Johnny’s sister recalls, “The accident happened in Louisiana in 1986. When we were at that hospital, they told him he would never walk again. And he told them he would, ‘Just watch me,’ he said. And he did take a few steps when he left the hospital, just to prove he could. He spent a good bit of time in rehab and then he lived with us for six months. It’s amazing that he was able to do the things that he did so soon after the accident. He would climb up on that tractor or get up under something to work on it. Nobody could really tell, but it was quite a feat for him to accomplish these things.”

Jennie says that her father’s is a family of tinkerers. “My grandfather was known in his community as the person that you take something to, and he could fix it. We called him Bud. Johnny grew up right there under him. Every move he made, Johnny was with him. And my dad and my uncles were equally capable. They were good mechanics and they could weld. I think that’s where Johnny got the skills that he had.”
Johnny spent a great deal of time working with and learning from his grandfather Bud about farming, mechanics and sawing timber among other life skills.
Work smarter, not harder was a truism for Johnny and he was always looking for a way to build a gadget or tweak something to make it easier for him, particularly after the accident. He held patents for some of the devices he had created over the years to make work easier. “He had this dog named Rusty,” Jennie recalls. “He loved Rusty and Rusty loved him and protected him. In fact, he had bitten several people. Johnny could not stoop over quickly and grab a hold of Rusty to keep him from attacking somebody. So he attached a short rope to his collar and Rusty would drag it around. If somebody came up, Johnny could step on that rope. That’s not a mechanical thing, but it was a way to function and to be able to do things without a struggle.”

Sawmilling

Wayne Cale served as a Tigercat district manager from 1998 to 2004 and is currently a dealer principal at CTW, a Tigercat dealer in North Carolina. “Johnny had worked with Koehring and he wanted to get off the road because of his back,” Wayne remembers. “He had met Albert Tarkenton over here. Tarkenton Brothers were big loggers. Back in the eighties when Johnny would go around and see customers, he would stay at their house and then went to the logging jobs with them in the morning. Albert was one of the first loggers in eastern North Carolina to buy a Koehring 618 track feller buncher. Johnny sold three of them to three different loggers over here at one time.”

Wayne explains that Albert was getting out of logging and had purchased a former MacMillan Bloedel sawmill. “They cut cedar and actually the cedar was running out down here, so they were going to convert it to a pine mill.” Craving a change in his life, Johnny became a partner in Albemarle Forest Products and moved from Alabama to Edenton, North Carolina.

“I first met Johnny through some friends,” says Wayne. “We got to talking and I told him that I was getting ready to graduate college. They were putting in a band saw to cut grade pine lumber and they were looking for a sawyer. Johnny ended up hiring me. I helped build the sawmill and I learned a lot from Johnny about hydraulics and welding. He was working, handson, all day. He would go and go until he couldn’t go anymore. And I think that took a big toll on his body. We hung out on the weekends together. I’d go to his house and he’d be in there just lying on the floor because his back was killing him. But then he would get up and we would go out on the boat. When the mill was finished, he trained me to be the sawyer.”
Johnny standing in front of the home of his grandparents, Bud and Granny. Sprague, Alabama in November 1985.
Johnny had reasons for doing everything and often the logic was a mix of objective practicality and a subjective reverence for the aspects of his life and the people he valued most. His grandfather Bud was one of those people. Bud operated a small sawmill in a pasture on his farm. During evenings, weekends and summers through middle school, highschool and into college, Johnny worked with his grandfather and learned how to work with wood and saw lumber. “Johnny was interested in that sawmill because he had grown up with my grandfather... being his shadow,” says Jennie.

Farming

In 1992, Johnny made the decision to sell his interest in the sawmill and move back to Alabama. He purchased a 600-acre farm, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Before his passing, he had developed the farm into a diversified multi-facetted operation employing six people and covering 1,200 acres of owned and rented land. He had five chicken houses and 400 acres of cropland for corn and soybeans – 120 of that irrigated. Johnny developed a cow/calf operation with 250 cows. He produced dry hay during the summer and rye grass hay in the spring. He supplied feed to all his own cows as well as other farmers.

Johnny left the farm to his nephew Justin Barrett. “He had even started a retail beef shop and sold his own meat to the local community. It was a diversified operation,” says Justin. “His goal was to reduce risk across multiple ag types.” Johnny was a critical figure in Justin’s life. “I grew up on that farm. When I was a kid, I probably spent more time at his house than my own – helping and working and that kind of stuff. He basically took me in as his son.” Justin is proud to have the opportunity to carry on Johnny’s legacy.

He takes pains to point out Johnny’s fierce work ethic combined with his talent for invention. “I think work for him was therapy to manage his pain and the stuff that was going on in his life,” says Justin. “At the same time, he was really good at fabricating and fixing things. There’s stuff on that farm that nobody else had because he made it. If there was a way to make something easier, he would make a gadget – even if that took longer than just finishing the job. He would rather be making the gadget.”

HE WAS ALWAYS ABLE TO JUST MOVE ON, AND MAKE SURE THAT THE NEXT DECISION WAS IN A POSITIVE DIRECTION.


— Justin Barrett, Johnny’s nephew

Justin explains that when Johnny first bought the farm, he upgraded the chicken houses and developed a feed mill with 50,000 bushels of storage and his own elevator for grain handling. He grew most of the corn and purchased the other inputs like cotton seed, soy pellets, additives and minerals. He had a feed mixer and produced a half dozen different rations for calves, cows, even deer feed. “The feed mill was really the heart of it,” says Justin. “He loved the feed customers coming in the gate. I think it was the highlight of his day. People would bring their kids to talk to him. That’s what he loved to do – talk to kids and encourage them. No matter what their interest was, he was always a positive influence.”

Jennie agrees with her son. The farm was part of his social life. “He did not like being by himself. Justin talks about people coming into the feed store. Sometimes they didn’t even buy anything. And you know people still come by there. They just drive in and want to look for somebody to talk to – because that’s what they did with Johnny.”

Logging industry

By 1996, Johnny had returned to the logging industry. He had too many contacts and was too well respected to stay out of it for long. This time around he would work for Tigercat, another Brantford-based company, as its second US district manager.

Meanwhile back in North Carolina, changes at the sawmill caused Wayne to question its ongoing viability. He asked if Johnny would help him to find a new job. Johnny suggested the two of them attend some forestry industry shows together. “So Johnny carried me to some of those shows and introduced me to different people.” That effort resulted in Wayne becoming Tigercat’s third district manager. “He gave me that opportunity,” says Wayne. “If he knew somebody would put forth an effort, he’d help you all he could. He was just that type of person. And they don’t come by that often.”
Back to work and out on a logging job in Coushatta, Louisiana in August 1987, just eight months after the accident.
Tigercat US Sales Manager, Kevin Selby first met Johnny in 1999. Over the years, the two developed a close relationship. “Johnny was not only a work colleague, he was also a mentor and a good friend,” says Kevin. “Travelling with him was always an adventure and always entertaining. I will certainly miss riding around in whatever filthy truck he decided to pick me up in at the airport with.” (Among all of Johnny’s talents, vehicle detailing was apparently absent.)

Kevin had a clear perspective on how Johnny worked with people and why he was so successful in his role at Tigercat. “He was very passionate about his job and genuinely cared about Tigercat, his colleagues, dealers and customers,” Kevin explains. “He was bold and honest and that’s what people liked about him.”

Johnny had a unique ability to work through and defuse commercial problems and situations. “Working through conflict is always challenging, but his friendly personality always seemed to make these situations less stressful. He always tried to do what was right and fair. This gained him the trust and respect of our dealers and customers,” says Kevin.
Johnny played to his strengths. He wasn’t a super technical guy when it came to computers and electronics. “It was the mechanics and hydraulics of machinery that made him tick,” says Kevin. “He was one of those backyard engineer types who was good at identifying a problem or opportunity and figuring out a solution.”

Vice President of Engineering, Jon Cooper met Johnny back in 1991 while doing field research for the 726 feller buncher design. “We were travelling in the area near the sawmill Johnny was co-owner of and stopped for a visit. Johnny took us for a tour. I watched in awe as Wayne Cale ran the band saw making boards from logs. The next time I met Johnny was in December 1995 when he joined Tigercat and visited the factory.”
Johnny in his element, his farm shop. He was very good at fixing, adapting and inventing ways to work smarter.
Jon and Johnny travelled a lot together throughout the southern US. “We became friends right away. We had a lot of common interests and values. When he found out I liked to hunt, he invited me to his place for a private dove hunt,” Jon recalls. “He had a special field that the doves loved to flock to. After a week of work on the road, we went to his place. He said we were going to be smoking ribs and doves. However, we first needed to build the smoker. No problem for us. Johnny had already cut the spherical ends out of a large propane tank. We welded them together to make a large sphere, added three legs to set it on and then a firebox and chimney. It was one of the largest home-built smokers I had ever seen; we needed a tractor loader to move it. We fired it up and made some of the best ribs I have ever tasted. The next day we hunted birds and smoked them to perfection. For me, when visiting Johnny, it seemed there was always something special planned. But for him, it was his way of life.”

According to Jon, one of Johnny’s professional strengths was that he always looked for the good in people and situations. “When things were not going the way they should, you could count on Johnny to help bring them back in line. He could speak with people in a compassionate way and empathize with them sincerely. Others could easily see that more than anything, he wanted to help.”

Helping and mentoring

One of Justin Barrett’s best friends growing up was Daniel Jones. As a young teen Daniel went through a very difficult period at home. Growing up playing sports with Justin, he knew Johnny from the sidelines, forever the tireless cheerleader. One day he got a call out of the blue. “I was trying to get out of the house for the summer. And one day Johnny called and said, ‘Hey, you want to come help me on the farm?’ I jumped at the opportunity to learn from Johnny,” Daniel remembers.

“We would ride around at the farm and check on cows and talk about life for hours.” The pair bonded and Johnny mentored Daniel on the farm for years. “I started working out there and he eventually kind of picked me up under his wing, like his son. He taught me so much. Practical things like how to work; how to be efficient. He taught me how to think about debt on the farm, and how to think about cashflow. I learned a lot of things about business, but he also taught me a lot about personal relationships. He always joked I couldn’t hit a nail with a hammer when I showed up and that was true. Four or five years later, I was running the whole farm when he was gone away.”

IF HE KNEW SOMEBODY WOULD PUT FORTH AN EFFORT, HE’D HELP YOU ALL HE COULD. HE WAS JUST THAT TYPE OF PERSON.


— Wayne Cale, longtime friend and co-worker

Daniel describes Johnny as “a weird combination of the loudest alpha male in the room and the kindest person you could ever meet. He would push your buttons to see where you’re at and then he would back off and give you a big hug. He would test me all the time.” Daniel relates that he once put the front tire of a tractor into a creek and couldn’t get it out. “We had to go borrow another big tractor and drive it twenty miles on the road to tow it out.” Johnny had some choice words for Daniel and kept on him for the rest of the day. “Then the next day I show up to work with my head down, feeling like I screwed up. He was fine, like it was over. He said, ‘You’re going to make mistakes. That’s how you learn.’ I made a lot of mistakes, and he kept putting up with me.”

Justin explains that Johnny was like a father, a brother, and a son all at the same time to both himself and Daniel. “He would take care of us like a father would and we’d have fun like we were brothers. But then sometimes we’d have to take care of him like he was our son. We were twenty years apart in age, but it just worked out that way.” Johnny had a challenging life and many setbacks that might drive other people to harden with cynicism. Instead, he did the opposite. “He didn’t mind telling you he loved you,” says Justin. “He didn’t mind hugging you. He supported people and had a very positive outlook on his whole life. He just loved to love people.”

For me, what stands out most was Johnny’s ability to maintain optimism and a smile in the face of great adversity. His philosophy was to acknowledge that whatever happened in the past was not nearly as important as the next decision. As Justin puts it, “He was always able to just move on, and make sure that the next decision was in a positive direction.” This is the quality that I and many others will forever admire in him.