Mountain Western Log Scaling & Grading Bureau supports 60 to 70 scaling locations and delivers data to more than 200 customers every day. At that scale, the handheld data collectors in the field sit at the centre of everything the bureau does. We sat down with Shelly Kjos and Scott Winn to talk about why Mountain Western is modernizing its field data collection with VDTS, and what they expect it to change.

The People Behind the Data

Shelly Kjos is Mountain Western’s Customer Service Project Manager. Her team works directly with the bureau’s customers every day.

“One of the main things that I have to deal with is interacting with customers to help them understand what our role is, how we provide data, how we give them what they need.” – Shelly Kjos

Scott Winn is Mountain Western’s IT Manager, responsible for a diverse set of platforms “up to and including handheld data collectors, which is where VDTS comes in.”

“The Handhelds Are Old, Really Old”

“They don’t always perform quite like the scalers need them to. The concept that they use, where they batch a bunch of stuff, prevents us from doing things as efficiently as we could throughout the day.” – Shelly Kjos

Batch processing creates a gap between the work done in the yard and the data customers receive. Keeping up with same-day data has meant work carrying on well after hours.

Moving to Real-Time Data

“I’m hoping that we will be able to receive data on a more regular basis so that we can do things more in real time, which should help the efficiency at which we do our job throughout the day. That’s going to save us potentially a person working all night long to do same-day data transactions.” – Shelly Kjos

Real-time data also means the bureau can be more responsive to its scalers and customers as things happen, rather than after the fact.

Cloud Storage and Better Reporting

“Cloud data storage is going to be a big thing. Really looking forward to being able to do that and have that facilitate sharing of information across different platforms with customers, with different web systems, and with our mainframe system that does the data processing.” – Scott Winn

“The online storage, too, will provide us an opportunity to create reporting and access to things that we don’t currently have right now until we run through an entire data processing function, which is quite time-consuming.” – Shelly Kjos

Headsets for Training and Safety

The team sees value well beyond data entry. One of Mountain Western’s operations managers described VDTS headsets as a game-changer for help, training and collaboration, giving scalers a way to record something or communicate with someone in real time on training and safety issues.

“For IT, it’s really going to be a game-changer in terms of how we do what we do. And it should make everything better across the board.” – Scott Winn

“VDTS Just Knew the Business”

Before choosing VDTS, Mountain Western interviewed several companies about writing its handheld data collector software. Some offered to take the bureau’s existing program and extend it.

“VDTS just knew the business. They understood what we wanted better than anybody else that we talked to.” – Scott Winn

“So common in software is a failure of imagination: just create what you’ve always been doing, or keep doing things the same way you’ve always been doing them. And we haven’t had that problem with VDTS at all.” – Scott Winn

Building Without a Perfect Spec

Most software projects start with detailed documentation. Mountain Western needed to move faster than that.

“We came to them with almost nothing, and they’ve been really great about even drawing us into this and saying, ‘What would you like? How would you like this to work? What can we do? How can we make it better?’” – Scott Winn

Throughout the project, VDTS developers asked the practical questions: “Do you really want this to work that way? How could we do this better? What would be a more efficient layout on this screen?” The result, in Scott’s words, is “a very nice program.”

How VDTS Supports Scaling Bureaus

✅ Real-Time Field Data

Move from end-of-day batches to data that flows from the yard throughout the day.

✅ Cloud Storage and Integration

Share data across customers, web systems and back-office processing, with reporting that doesn’t wait for a full processing run.

✅ Hands-Free Headsets

Voice-directed data capture that also supports training, collaboration and safety in the field.

✅ Software Built Around Your Operation

A team that knows log scaling and works with you to build what works better, not just what came before.

Learn More

Still running your scaling operation on aging handhelds?

Contact us today to find out how VDTS can bring your field data collection into real time.