Memorial to the "Flösser" in
Schiltach, Black Forest.
Before the railways came the Flösser would transport logs out of the forests by river, a job which must have required large... character. The rivers aren't that deep in the hills, so the Flösser would compensate by damming them, filling the resulting pool with log rafts and then letting it all go at once. The logs rafts required steering, so the Flösser would ride the wave downriver, fending off rocks and other obstacles with a pole.
I don't know if they coordinated with villages downstream to make sure everything went at once or if they just floated down to the next blockage and crashed into the wood being stored there.