CLOVERDALE — Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
It’s one of his classic quotations, brought up not infrequently during debates about some new government initiative designed — in its view, at least — to make life safer for American citizens.
Allen Collier seems to have taken Franklin’s philosophy quite literally. The 6’4”, 260-pound Paragon resident looks like a gray-bearded Paul Bunyan, and surprises no one when he tells them he saws logs for a living.
What may be surprising for readers not on social media is Collier’s massive international following. Few other loggers can boast of 450,000 Facebook followers, and 268,000 followers on TikTok, bridging a generational gap with videos featuring Collier and his 16-year-old son — affectionately known as Green Bean — cutting down trees with chainsaws. Collier’s page had 30 million Facebook views last month alone.
So why are kids and adults alike watching the Timberkutterpatriot, as Collier is known online?
Collier’s videos invariably combine humor, love of God and country, and pass on technical know-how when it comes to the science of timber cutting. And in a social media atmosphere replete with frauds and fakers, Collier comes across as the real thing, warts and all.
Collier also probably owes some of his popularity in no small part to the fact that he does not wear any protective gear when he works — no helmet, so safety glasses, no gloves or ear muffs.
Many of his viewers can’t believe he’s still alive.
One of Collier’s videos, posted to Facebook on Sunday, has 104 comments as of writing, and they’re exactly what you’d expect: people arguing about safety.
“An accident waiting to happen,” one commenter said.
“How is this bloke still alive,” said another, seemingly from the other side of the pond.
“He thinks God will protect him,” said a third, and followed the comment with several laughter emojis.
Ignoring the laughter, that last comment does have a point: Collier does think God will protect him in the event something went wrong on the job. Before every job he does, Collier says a prayer asking God for protection.
“I would never trade safety for freedom,” Collier told The Correspondent in an interview last week. “I’m old school. What did (loggers) do before hard hats were invented? They prayed to their God.
“I’ve made my peace with it,” Collier continued. “I know where I’m going when I die.”
Collier has a point — the many loggers who came before him were probably very religious men who prayed to God for protection in their work.
But it’s worth stating the obvious: A lot of those same men also died on the job.
Old School
It was a cloudy day in Cloverdale, and we met up in a large clearing behind the Holiday Inn, just off of a country road. Near the back of the clearing was a massive pile of chopped wood, and off to the left and the right were big logs that Collier had sawed on previous days.
In the middle of the clearing, and the source of all the chopped wood, was a Tajfun Pro 500, a $110,000 blue behemoth that can chop an entire log down to firewood in the time it takes to listen to a pop song. Given his massive online following, Collier struck a partnership with the European-based company that makes the machine, and he’s shown it off in some of his videos.
Shortly after our interview began, rain started to fall hard enough to wash away ink. Collier waited patiently in the rain as The Correspondent retrieved a small umbrella.
Had the weather cooperated, Collier intended to demonstrate his famous tree cutting, after which he triumphantly yells his trademarked catchphrase, “That’s a big Indiana BOOM BABY!” — carefully worded to avoid copyright infringement on the late Bobby “Slick” Leonard — but instead he showed off the marvel that is the Tajfun Pro.
We stepped up to the machine, and Collier quickly fired it up. A 10-foot log had already been positioned on top of the Tajfun, and the blades whirred as it sliced through the wood. “Man glitter” — Collier’s name for sawdust — was flying everywhere, onto the reporter’s pages, some into Collier’s long white beard.
On the side of the Tajfun, near the machine’s remote controls, were bright blue and white stickers that appeared to show a glove, a man’s face with glasses and ear coverings, and a boot.
“Is that what we’re supposed to be wearing?”
“I guess so!” Collier answered, laughing heartily.
Such is his way.
Collier is a fifth-generation logger, and he learned the trade early in his life, helping his grandfather out with various tasks. If you believe him, Collier’s eschewing of protective gear is not some statement or effort to be “cool,” but simply because his grandfather never wore any protective gear when he worked. It wasn’t the practice at the time.
The Timberkutterpatriot describes himself as “old school,” but pressing him on why he doesn’t wear gear reveals his Franklin-esque theory of freedom.
Collier says he would never tell any other logger to not wear protective gear, and would even encourage others to do so if it makes them feel safe. But, he says, he also wants the freedom to not wear protective equipment, arguing that the only one affected by him not wearing the gear is him — not dissimilar to the arguments made for Indiana’s lack of motorcycle helmet laws, for example.
It’s somewhat of a radical philosophy in 2025, and he applies it to more than just logging. In our conversation, Collier likened mandatory seatbelt laws to “communism,” and said some of his conservative friends were surprised by his attitude toward the COVID-19 vaccine, which he referred to as “the jab.”
“I would say to them, ‘If people want to get it, that’s fine. Just don’t ask me to,’” Collier said. “And that would blow their minds.”
The idea, of course, is that these things just affect him as an individual. But many have argued that choosing not to get vaccinated can potentially affect other people, and not wearing a seatbelt or motorcycle helmet could result in death, which would certainly have an impact on loved ones.
The same could be said for choosing not to wear protective gear while logging and dying as a result. When asked what his wife thought about his decision to try his luck, Collier said she felt weird about it at first, but eventually came around to accepting his choice.
“I don’t bow to no man,” Collier said, “only to the giants that I cut, and to God.”
Influence
Oh, and there is one more reason Collier declines to wear protective gear: He doesn’t think it really works all that well.
“If you think a piece of plastic is gonna save you when a big tree branch is coming down, you’re crazy,” Collier said.
He then points to the bill of his Bary Logging baseball cap and assures that if any little pieces of debris come falling from a tree, his hat will protect him completely.
Regardless of how true that is, Collier’s claim that a helmet may not save you from a falling branch does have some truth to it. Logging is considered the most dangerous land-based job in the United States, with about 100 in every 100,000 loggers dying from work-related injuries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There’s a reason broken tree limbs are often referred to as “widowmakers.”
The danger of Collier’s profession has led some of his viewers to question his social media antics.
“Need to set a better example by wearing eye and hearing protection,” one commenter said on a recent Facebook video.
Others have made similar comments, expressing concern that people will be influenced to try sawing down trees without the proper equipment.
Whether or not Collier is influencing others to act dangerously is up for debate, but Collier himself readily admits that he started his Facebook and TikTok accounts to have an impact on others.
Collier originally downloaded Facebook eight years ago while recovering from back surgery, and he quickly joined some groups with other loggers. Four years later, his son suggested he start posting videos to TikTok, but he initially dismissed the app as “for kids.”
Then he heard about Thoren Bradley, a wood chopping TikToker whose videos have been described, to put it mildly, as more about the logger’s self-image, and less about the logging. (Bradley also doesn’t wear protective gear, as it would get in the way of his chiseled body.)
“Lumberjack!” Collier says. “Dude looks like he comes from a modeling agency.”
And so, Collier — who doesn’t look like he comes from a modeling agency — decided to post logging videos of his own, further inspired to do so because of how much negative content there is on social media.
“All the kids are on TikTok,” Collier said. “There’s gotta be someone good on there for them! Someone they can look up to! It can’t all be bad.”
When he’s not showing off his skills with a saw, Collier often puts up videos with biblical messages, or simple commentary on life, posting a recent video recounting the death of his first son, who was stillborn. Faith and hope are common themes.
Collier has been wildly successful, pulling in millions of views each month across social media, and scoring hundreds of thousands of followers. He’s gotten so popular that social media has almost become his second job, and he spends hours each day making content.
While part of Collier’s appeal is what has earned so many detractors, it’s also not hard to see why he has so many fans: He’s actually really good at his job. He talks about logging like he’s a physicist — he always knows where the tree is going to fall, and what cut to make to see it happen.
To Collier’s credit, he hasn’t died yet.
Nevertheless, Collier has thought about what people might say about him online if he ever got seriously injured on the job. He has a calm response.
“If something happens to me, that is the choice that I made,” Collier said. “In this line of work, you’ve gotta be as tough as the timber you’re cutting.”
And so, Collier will continue to cut videos on social media, exercising his freedom to chop wood protected by the armor of God and the scientific know-how of timber cutting. He believes everyone should be able to exercise that same freedom, as long as that’s the choice they want to make.
That’s his philosophy. As for The Correspondent, we’d advise not to try this at home.
