Proof it works: The Bayfield County Pilot

Bayfield County ran a pilot on a red pine sale — one product, one tech-forward logger, three truckers. Over the job, about 125 tickets moved through Waldo across four destinations.

What that pilot found:

• It worked. Tickets flowed from landing to mill without manual re-entry, and Bayfield exported the reconciled data straight into their existing Access database for billing and advance payments.
• Records retention was solvable. Bayfield's biggest concern going in was being tied to Waldo for the 7-year records-retention window. Waldo added a photo-export feature during the pilot so scale slip images now live in the county's own system — no dependency.
• Rollout to occasional users is the real challenge, not the technology. Bayfield's frequent truckers had no trouble. The open question is the trucker who shows up three times a year at 5 a.m. and needs to get a load moving before anyone's awake to help.

Bayfield ran e-tickets and paper tickets side by side for the pilot — a laminated sign on the landing told drivers "use Waldo, or fall back to a paper ticket and call the forester." That fallback is what most counties should expect on day one, not a sign of the system failing. The pilot answered the technical questions.

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Talk to Us

If your county wants to explore either path — or just wants to see what Bayfield saw firsthand — reach out:

Jeff Courter,  — jeff@waldologs.com
‍Brady Bekkala — brady@waldologs.com

Steve Probst at Bayfield County has also offered to talk directly with other counties about his experience running the pilot.