Who we are and what this covers
AXE USA is a website operated by Leo Alatus LLC ("Leo Alatus LLC", "we", "us"). This policy covers the AXE USA website and the accounts, listings, profiles, documents, and messages on it.
It does not cover the other businesses you meet here. Once you send your details to a logging crew, a landowner, a dealer, or a repair shop, what they do with your information is between you and them - see our Terms of Service for why we are not a party to your dealings.
Information you give us
Most of what we hold, you typed in:
- Account details - your name, email address, password (stored only as a hash), phone number, business or company name, state, and the roles you pick when you register.
- Business profile and listing content - everything you publish: descriptions, prices, locations, photos, equipment, and the contact details you choose to show.
- Crew profiles - work types, equipment, service areas and counties, crew size, and the insurance details you enter.
- Uploaded documents - insurance certificates, business licences, and certifications, plus the data you type from them, including issuer, coverage amounts, expiry dates, and policy or licence numbers.
- Certification records - when you certify that a credential is accurate, we store the exact wording you agreed to, your name and title as entered, the timestamp, and the IP address the certification came from. That record is what proves what was represented and when.
- Job, bid, and marketplace content - job posts, applications, bids and their amounts, repair jobs, and replant requests.
- Messages and reports - what you send through the site or to our contact address, including complaints about another business.
- Payment information - handled by our payment processor. We receive confirmation of a payment and what it was for. We do not store your full card number.
Applying for a listing we read by hand
Lending and real estate are the two trades where a person here reads the application before the listing goes live - see what we check, and what we do not in the Terms. That application carries the business details you enter, the contact details we would use to reach you about it, and any licence, registration, or reference you give us to support it.
What we do not ask for is a government identity document. We do not request, collect, or store a driver's licence, a passport, or a state or national ID card - not for this review, and not anywhere else on the site. The review is based on the business information you give us and the reference you name.
These details are used to check that your business is real and to reach you about your account. Your business name, city and state appear on your public listing. Your licence or registration numbers, your reference, and your personal contact details are not published - they are for our review only.
One thing that is easy to misread: a lending or insurance desk that types its own NMLS or licence number into its desk listing has published it there itself, and it shows on that card. That is the desk advertising, not the review described above.
Information we collect automatically
Our servers log ordinary technical information about requests:
- IP address,
- browser and device type (the user agent string),
- the pages and files requested, and the time of each request,
- errors, so we can find and fix them.
Page-view counts - counted here, by us, without cookies
We count how many times each page is opened, so we know which parts of the site are used. That counting is done by our own server. There is no Google Analytics, no Facebook pixel, and no third-party tracker of any kind on this site - nobody outside Leo Alatus LLC receives a record of your visit.
What a page-view row contains:
- the page path, with the query string and anything after a "#" removed, so a search you typed or a token in a link is never stored;
- the website a link came from, as a bare domain like "google.com" - never the full referring address, because that can carry the words you searched for;
- the calendar day, and whether the page was a public page or an internal staff console;
- a one-way visitor code, described next.
We do not store your IP address or your browser string in these counts, and we do not set a cookie to recognise you. Instead, your address and browser are combined with the date and a secret key held only on our server and run through a one-way hash, and only a short fragment of the result is kept. It cannot be turned back into your address. Because the date is part of it, the code changes at midnight Central time: it lets us count a browser once per day, and it makes following anyone from one day to the next impossible for us, by design. There is no profile, no visitor history, and nothing here that names a person.
These counts are separate from the ordinary server logs listed above, which exist to keep the site running and to investigate abuse.
Share-link access logs - please read this one
When a business creates a link to share its credentials with a customer, we record every time that link is opened: the time, the IP address, and the browser of whoever opened it. We show the business that created the link how many times it was opened and when.
So if a landowner sends you a certificate of insurance link and you open it, that landowner can see that it was opened, and when. Businesses rely on this to know their paperwork reached the customer. We are telling you plainly because it is not obvious from looking at the page.
How we use information
We use the information we hold to:
- create and operate your account and authenticate you;
- publish your listings, profiles, and posts to the people you meant to see them;
- deliver the credential share links you create, and report their access back to you;
- send transactional email - password resets, notifications about your listings, bids, jobs, and account;
- detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents;
- respond to reports and complaints, at our discretion;
- meet our legal, tax, and regulatory obligations, and enforce our Terms of Service;
- understand which parts of the site are used and improve them.
What is public and what is not
Public - anyone on the internet can see it. Your listings and public profiles: business name, descriptions, photos, work types, equipment, service areas, prices and asking prices, forum posts, and any contact detail you put into public listing text. Treat everything you type into a listing as published.
Signed-in members only. Contact details on crew records in the Subcontractor Network are released to signed-in members searching for a crew, not to anonymous visitors.
Private - not published, ever. Documents you upload - insurance certificates, licences, certifications - are private. They are reachable by exactly three kinds of request: your own account, an authorised staff member of Leo Alatus LLC looking at a record somebody has complained about, and a person holding a live share link that you created and that includes that record.
Shared by you, and shared whole. A prequalification packet you release to a company travels complete: your business address, your insurance carriers, your full policy numbers, limits and expiry dates, your safety answers, your EIN if you gave one, and your signature. That is deliberate - a company that cannot phone your carrier and confirm the policy has been handed nothing it can use. Nothing goes anywhere until you name the company and tick the release yourself, and you can switch a link off at any time. A copy the recipient has already printed or saved is beyond anyone's reach, including ours.
Your social security number is never part of it. The tax field on the packet takes a federal EIN only and refuses a social security number as you type it, so an SSN cannot reach a packet, a link, or our database in the first place.
Also private. Your email address and password, your private notes on your own records, bid amounts before a sealed bidding round opens, and the internal notes staff keep about support contacts.
We never sell your contact information
We never sell or share your contact information. Your details go to the party you contacted, and nobody else.
AXE USA is a connector, not a lead-generation company. When you send an inquiry, request bids, ask an organization a question, or create an account, your name, email, and phone number are not put on a list, not passed to a marketing partner, and not resold to anyone who wants to call loggers. They go to the person or business on the other side of the thing you asked about, and they stay there.
Two honest limits on that promise. First, the businesses you contact are not us: once your details reach a logging crew, a lender, or a repair shop, what they do with them is between you and them. Second, anything you type into a public listing or a forum post is published - see what is public and what is not above.
AXE USA verifies nothing and connects only. We do not vet, screen, or stand behind the businesses you meet here, and we do not sit in the middle of the conversation once the introduction is made.
Market statistics and the five-transaction rule
Transaction data on this site - prices, acreage, dates, states, and the like - may be used to produce market statistics: what timber is going for in a region, how bidding is moving through a season. Those statistics are aggregate and anonymized. They never name a member, never name a business, and never describe a specific deal.
No statistic is published from fewer than five transactions. That floor is built into how the reports are produced rather than left to editorial judgement: if a slice of the market - a state, a county, a species, a date range - has fewer than five transactions behind it, the report withholds the number instead of printing it.
The reason is simple. A "county average" computed from one sale is that sale, with a different label on it. The five-transaction floor is what stops a single deal being reverse-engineered out of a market report by anyone who knows roughly when and where it happened.
Your own transaction records stay yours. Nothing in this section changes what is public on a listing you chose to publish, and nothing in it puts your contact details into a report.
How long we keep information
We keep your account and the content you post for as long as your account is active, and afterwards for as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy or to meet a legal obligation.
Certification records, suspension records, and document upload history are kept as an audit trail even after the underlying record is deleted. That is deliberate. Those rows document what a business represented, when it represented it, and what a customer was shown. If deleting a record erased its certification, anyone could withdraw a false claim after it had been relied on, and nobody could later prove what was on the page.
Server logs and share-link access logs are kept for a limited period for security and troubleshooting.
Page-view counts are deleted after 400 days. That window exists so we can compare a month against the same month a year earlier, and it is enforced by the site itself rather than by anyone remembering to clear it out. There is nothing personal in those rows to delete - see information we collect automatically.
To request deletion of your account, email [email protected]. We will remove your account and take your listings and profiles down. We may retain the audit records described above, transaction and payment records we need for tax and accounting, and anything we are required to keep or that relates to a dispute or investigation.
Your choices and your rights
You can:
- see and edit your account details, listings, profiles, and credentials from inside your account at any time;
- delete a listing, a crew profile, or a credential record yourself;
- revoke a credential share link, which stops it working immediately;
- ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account;
- unsubscribe from non-essential email. Transactional messages about your account, your bids, and security cannot be switched off while your account is open.
Make any request by emailing [email protected] from the address on your account. We may need to confirm who you are before acting on a request about someone's data.
Some states give residents specific privacy rights - such as the right to know what is collected, to request deletion, and not to be discriminated against for asking. If you live in one of those states, write to us and we will handle your request in line with the law that applies to you. We would rather say that honestly than claim a compliance programme we have not built: Leo Alatus LLC is a small company, this site is operated from the United States for users in the United States, and requests are handled by a person reading that inbox.
Using this site is your choice - and what you accept by using it
Nothing here is required of you. Creating an account, publishing a listing, filling out a prequalification packet, uploading an insurance certificate or a signed document, and sending any of it to another business are all things you choose to do. AXE USA does not require a packet, does not require an upload, and does not ask you to send one to anybody. No part of this site withholds anything from you because you declined.
What you upload and send is your decision and your responsibility. You decide what goes into a document, whether the information in it is accurate and current, and which company receives it. You confirm you have the right to hand over whatever you upload. Once you release it, the receiving business has it - it can print it, keep it, and rely on it. Switching a link off stops future openings; it cannot recall a copy already saved.
By using this site - and specifically by uploading a document or releasing it to anyone - you agree to release Leo Alatus LLC from, and to hold Leo Alatus LLC harmless against, any claim, loss, liability, or expense arising out of that choice and its consequences. That covers what you chose to send, what the information turned out to be, what the recipient did with it after receiving it, and any decision anyone made in reliance on it. We do not check, verify, endorse, or stand behind the contents of anything you upload or release - see what we check, and what we do not.
This sits alongside, and does not replace, the indemnification and limitation of liability sections of our Terms of Service, which apply in full.
Security
We take reasonable measures to protect your information: passwords are stored as salted hashes and never in readable form, traffic runs over HTTPS, uploaded documents are stored outside the public web root under randomised filenames and are served only to requests we have authorised, uploaded files are checked against their actual file type rather than their name, and share-link tokens are long random values that cannot be guessed or counted through.
No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security. Use a strong, unique password, keep your recovery codes somewhere safe, and tell us at [email protected] immediately if you think your account has been accessed by someone else.
Children
AXE USA is for business use by adults. It is not directed at anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account, tell us at [email protected] and we will remove it.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the site changes. The current version is always posted here, with the effective date and version number at the top. When a change is material - a new category of information, a new kind of sharing - we update that date and post the revised policy before the change takes effect where we can.
Continuing to use AXE USA after an update means you accept the updated policy.
How to contact us
Privacy questions, access requests, correction requests, and deletion requests all go to [email protected], which reaches Leo Alatus LLC, the operator of AXE USA.
This policy is governed by the laws of the State of Alabama, as set out in our Terms of Service.