Meet Our Team
Members and Managers
Consulting Members
Todd Sloat
Finance and Procurement
Todd is a founding Member of Hat Creek Lumber, LLC. His primary role includes Log acquisition and funding. He has prepared and secured grants from the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and CAL FIRE. He supervises the reporting required for grant reimbursement as well as accounting and payroll. He is the primary contact with Licensed Timber Operators and timber land managers.
Todd obtained a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology and Masters of Ecology from the University of California, Davis in 1988 and 1998. He co-authored several articles on plant ecology and meadow restoration. Since 2000, Todd has been self-employed, working first as Todd Sloat Biological Consulting, Inc. and more recently as the President of Forest Creek Restoration, Inc. Todd has a key role in promoting Community Scale Mills throughout the Sierras.
Todd has been married to his high school sweetheart, Kelly, for 35 years. They enjoy spending time together with their family, hiking, exercising, and getting away during the cold winter months to somewhere tropical!
Bruce Main
Administration and Marketing
Bruce is responsible for the day-to-day management of log deliveries, and all aspects of Lumber Manufacture and Marketing. He is key in training staff, reporting on and improving production and recovery and turning the lumber produced quickly into receivables.
Bruce majored in Forestry and Business Administration at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He has deep roots in the lumber industry. His parents founded Big Valley Lumber Company and he managed it for 20 years. He also managed Mendocino Forest Products and Shasta Green. Most recently, he has been a consultant providing strategic/financial and operational advice and establishing monitoring systems to improve individual and team performance.
Bruce spends most his spare time giving to the community. He has coached youth soccer, baseball and is still coaching high school football. He is a member and volunteer in a number of community organizations. He has also served as an officer in several Trade Associations: Timber Operators Council, California Forest Products Commission, Western Forest Industries Association and Western Wood Products Association.
He enjoys living in the Mountains of Northeastern California and finds time for hiking and fishing the many trails and streams.
Beau Shaffer
Project Manager
Beau is currently in charge of the mill wrights, electricians and other staff involved in constructing Hat Creek Lumber’s sawmill. He has been involved since the very beginning, working with the engineers providing permit applications, refurbishing used equipment, installing a new portable mill and supervising the construction of the various tables and conveyors required.
Beau was raised in nearby Fall River Mills, but left home to study engineering at both UC Davis and University of Hawaii at Manoa. Since school he has been employed doing equipment fabrication and maintenance in road building, metal building construction and some carpentry. Recently, he played a significant role in constructing Tahoe Forest Products’ new mill in Carson City. He supervised the Tahoe Forest Products team and worked with contractors and consultants from site preparation to restoring and installing sawmill equipment.
At work or at home, it seems Beau has to have a project. When not working on his own home improvements, he participates in his friends’ projects. However, he loves the outdoors and is pleased to return to life in the Sierra’s where he can hike, climb, ski and enjoy the fresh mountain air.
Lee Greene
Sales Manager
As the first Sales Manager for Hat Creek Lumber, Lee is expected to not only expand the customer base and ensure customer satisfaction, but also to assist in developing new products, and the systems to manage them through grading, packaging, inventory, ordering and delivery. His unique background in marketing and sales as well as beginning to end lumber production, has given him the experience needed to tackle these challenges.
Lee started in the lumber industry in 1980 at Pope & Talbot outside of Oakridge, Oregon, there he became interested in grading lumber and earned his first grading certificate through the WWPA grading bureau.
In 1986 when Pope & Talbot closed their doors, he moved to Douglas County Forest Products in Roseburg, Oregon as a certified grader. There he earned his other grading certificates through both the WCLIB and the JAS grading bureaus.
In 1988 he took a grading job with C&D Lumber that eventually led to scheduling the various machine centers such as, timber deck, sticking plant, kilns, planer, molder and packaging plant and then shipping coordinator. He later accepted the Cedar Sales Manager position and held it until C&D closed in 2024.
Lee and his wife dated in high school and married in 1980; they have three beautiful children and seven grandchildren. They enjoy spending time with their grandchildren, golfing, camping, fishing, hunting and traveling.
Haley Reed
Office Manager
As Hat Creek Lumber’s first full time office staff, Haley is doing a major portion of the accounting, bill paying, grant reporting, payroll and HR work. In addition to the day-to-day work, she continues to establish and refine office and record keeping procedures.
Haley has a deep background in banking, bank management and customer relations from her experience with Wells Fargo Banks in Redding and Chico. Since she returned to Burney, she has had a variety of jobs in banking, retail, and hospitality. Her most recent position at the Pit River Tribe Finance Office brought her back to accounting. In each of these positions her customer orientation and team-building skills have led to increased employee and customer satisfaction and, in turn, improved company performance.
When not focusing on work, Haley enjoys volunteering at her son’s school, watching him participate in sports and being outdoors with her family. They camp, fish, and her favorite place to be is the ocean!
Perry Thompson
Hat Creek Construction & Materials, Inc.
Perry Thompson is the President of Hat Creek Construction & Materials (HCCM), a local and regional leader in construction. He is the major investor in Hat Creek Lumber, LLC (HCL), leasing a parcel of the Hat Creek Construction site to Hat Creek Lumber, assisting with site preparation, and providing advice on management and construction techniques.
Perry has over 20 years of experience with commercial, environmental, and public construction projects including road building, asphalt paving, metal building construction, structural concrete, concrete flatwork, custom home building, landscaping, all phases of underground utilities, fiber optic installation, portable rock crushing, bridge construction, culvert and pipe installation, equipment rental and trucking.
Perry is concerned about the lack of employment and declining population in rural communities. In addition to leasing land to Hat Creek Lumber, he leases a parcel to West Biofuels/Hat Creek Bio Power Plant. This allows Hat Creek Lumber to easily deliver biofuel to West Biofuels and for West Biofuels to provide heat for Hat Creek Lumber’s kilns. These two facilities contribute to local employment opportunities and support forest maintenance and fire prevention.
Perry is heavily involved with supporting the community. He is a licensed pilot and in his spare time enjoys flying and spending time with his wife and family hunting, hiking and other outdoor activities.
Jon Shinn
Design and Engineering
Jon’s responsibilities at Hat Creek Lumber are primarily design and equipment acquisition.
After obtaining his Master of Science in Forestry at UC Berkeley, Jon spent most of his career designing, building, managing and owning sawmills. His work took him to Peru, Massachusetts, Canada, Finland, New York, Seattle, … but his first love and majority of his efforts have been in the California Sierras. He climbed, skied, camped and traveled throughout the area. After years of working for others, he built and successfully ran Sierra Cedar in Marysville, CA for fifteen years.
In 2019 he moved to Tahoe City, CA. The condition of the local forests disturbed him deeply. Since then, he has encouraged the construction of sawmills in the Central Sierras. His efforts resulted in the formation of Tahoe Forest Products, where he did the planning, initial design and engineering for their sawmill in Carson City, NV. He went on to be a founding member of Hat Creek Lumber, LLC where he designed their sawmill and is part of the management team as it goes from a portable incense cedar mill to a full-scale sawmill processing several soft wood species in Burney, CA.
Jon is a sailing enthusiast and in 2008 retired to race, cruise and work on sailboats. The highlight of this retirement period was two years spent sailing to and cruising the West Coast of Europe from Lisbon to Oslo.
Wesley Higbie
Consulting, Retired Attorney
Wesley Higbie is a voting member and consultant for Hat Creek Lumber, LLC.
Wesley majored in Forestry and Resource Conservation at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1972. He studied law and had a successful career focusing on various aspects of the forest products industry as an attorney, advisor and a principal. He was one of the founding partners in Sierra Cedar Products, later North Sound Forest Products. He was also a founder of HFTA, a technology transfer company promoting patented biomass technology owned by the University of California. For four years he taught Natural Resources Law and Policy at the College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley.
Wes enjoys sailing his boat on the breezy San Francisco Bay. His interests are broad and he travels widely–conversations with him are alway interesting!Wes enjoys sailing his boat on the breezy San Francisco Bay. His interests are broad and he travels widely–conversations with him are alway interesting!