Solid Rock and the Logging Job
The septic tank in the gallery photo was set in 2022, but the project that’s letting us finish it traces back to early 2025 — and to two neighbors with a logging company.
How we met
Raymond Jones — Dave’s neighbor — suggested early in 2025 that Dave reach out to Russell and Cody Robertson of Solid Rock Trucking & Excavating, also operating as Treeline Logging LLC, just down Kings Valley Highway in Monmouth. Dave wrote them on January 9, 2025 from a beach cabin with bad Wi-Fi, introducing himself, the property, and the work he wanted done: about 18 acres of 46-year-old Doug Fir that he wanted clearcut, plus help finishing a stalled septic field next to where the fire lookout tower was being built.
The next day, just for fun, Dave wrote them a song.
The song
About Solid Rock
Solid Rock Trucking & Excavating, LLC is a local family-owned business operating out of 16800 Maple Grove Road, Monmouth, Oregon — about a fifteen-minute drive from the Sullivan property. They’ve been excavating, developing home sites, building roads, and installing septics in the mid-Willamette Valley since 1976 — fifty years, two generations strong, with the third now arriving.
That’s the buried lede for this project: Solid Rock are licensed septic installers (DEQ License #39187; CCB #226425). They specialize in road building, home site prep, and septic systems. The “informal advisory” framing for the Kraemer Tower septic completion is generous to us — what we actually have is a fifty-year family business with the exact license and equipment to do the job, advising us as neighbors.
Services they offer (from solidrocktruckingexcavating.com):
- Excavating — land clearing, development, house/barn/shop pads, ponds and springs
- Septic — new systems, tank replacement, drain field repairs, fresh water reservoirs
- Road — development, maintenance, grading, residential driveways, shoring
Contact: 503-580-2626 · solidrock@startmail.com
Note: this section was drafted by Dave for Cody and Russell’s review before going live. Any of it can be revised before they sign off.
The logging job
Russell and Cody (operating as Treeline Logging LLC, 16800 Maple Grove Road, Monmouth) ran the harvest in February and March of 2025. What started as a planned 18-acre clearcut grew to about 25 acres of 50-year-old Douglas fir.
Permits ran through the Oregon Department of Forestry’s FERNS system, coordinated with stewardship forester Joe Koch (West Oregon District). Log brand: “T over Bar.”
It was a clean job, well-run. The proceeds are what’s funding the next phase of the tower work — including finishing the septic system that’s been waiting since 2022.
A feller-buncher arriving past Dave’s front gate during the 2025 logging operation. Treeline subcontracted the felling work to another crew, so the feller-buncher belongs to that subcontractor — not to Treeline itself. The gate is still intact in this photo; the damage that triggered the informal advisory arrangement came later, from a trucker hired separately.
What’s next with Solid Rock
Cody and Russell are advising on the septic completion — informally, neighbor-to-neighbor, in lieu of repairing the gate that one of their hired truckers damaged on the way out. Dave and Eli will do the labor; Cody and Russell will look at what’s there, tell us what’s needed, check our work, and bless it before Polk County’s inspector shows up.
As of early June 2026, with the septic permit issued, this is getting real. Dave talked with Cody, who’s going to drop by to look at what parts we’re still missing — and to lend his excavator, the one with 24-inch and 30-inch buckets, which makes digging the drainfield trenches a lot easier than doing it by hand or with smaller equipment.
And the trading runs both ways, the way it does between neighbors. Dave’s been kicking around building Solid Rock a better website — work for work, the same easy back-and-forth as the gate. Nothing formal, just neighbors swapping what each one’s good at.
That’s the next chapter. This page exists because the chapter before it — Solid Rock’s logging job — is the reason this project gets to move at all. �