a question that came to mind while watching this video about log drives in the 50's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AheBqBk0iQ
It shows that smaller companies that can't afford to run a drive would contribute their logs to the drives of larger companies. That one sounds easy, the bigger company can just buy the logs off them and it's problem solved. But it also mentions that at one river convergence an entire other log drive converged with them. What happens then?
Hey, I know this one! The timber companies had a stamp they put on their logs. I live in an area where a lot of logging was done just like this. Have friends that were into recovering old submerged timber and some of them have collections of the portion of the log that was stamped. Picture a carved symbol in the end of the log that was unique to the lumber company, kind of like branded cattle. This was in southeast Texas/southwest Louisiana on the Sabine River
Edit: here’s an article about it