Vancouver Island, BC. Logging at its Best!

[Paystar]

I think these are the real truckers:drinkup Never mind all the shows about "ice road truckers". They should have made a show about these guys.....coming down the mountains in the "fat trucks". I've been on the ice and there's far more danger in this kind of logging. Awesome pics. It's too bad the glory days of logging in BC are over. There's nothing like a Hayes/Pacific/Challenger.

 

[thejdman04]

Impressive loads, some of them trucks piled way up, the center of gravity has to be mighty high and hard to control.

 

[grapple1]

Here's another big truck unloading contraption. Built mostly by Cypress, there were a few of these up and down the coast. Thorne Bay had an identicle one, but the only thing left off it is the grapple, which is pictured below. Note my friend there standing under it.

If Cypress built it, then it was designed by Mantle Industries as well as partially fabricated by Mantle.

 

[grapple1]

them 7280's need to over haul

 

[Contract Logger]

If Cypress built it, then it was designed by Mantle Industries as well as partially fabricated by Mantle.

May have been all Mantle- One of the Madill/Cypress owners showed me this pic and told me they built them. Alot of things those *&^%$#@ said have turned out to be bogus. Sorry group that last one was, ruined the company.

 

[grapple1]

I guess without Cypress we never would have seen all these juicers liek the 2800, 2850, 3800, 2250, etc, etc. The real shame is the younger generations only know Madill for these units

 

[spitzair]

I came across this thing a few days ago. It's sitting on the side of a log sort right on the ocean. Nobody was around to find out anything about it but it looks to me like they used it to put bundles of logs into the water or lift them out........ Enjoy! If you guys want more pictures I can zip over and take a few more... Maybe if I'm lucky there'll be somebody there to talk to about it...

 

[Contract Logger]

Very cool! Looks like a Manitowoc, maybe a 4100 or 4600? I dont know enough about them. That grapple looks like it means business too! What would be really cool is a pic or 2 of a Hayes or Challenger underneath being unloaded. I understand things are slow so that may not even be possible. Cool pics for sure, and thanks a million for thinking of us and posting. This is a big crane, and it's not common to see a crane in this application anymore, thats for sure.

 

[grapple1]

I vote Manitowoc too. I figure ti was probably dewatering right where it sits on top of those piles. The tops of the piles all damaged from skidding the logs over them. the crane could very well get used this year being in squamish. i can think of 3 dryland sorts on the north island area that still use cable machines to dewater when required. I is an OLD Lima, similar to these pics, one is a 7230 Cypress with a long customized boom and the 3rd I cant remember but i am going there tomorrow, I 'll try to get a pic or 2. I got to price out repowering an old manitowoc 4000 from an old GM to a new 60 series. on a piledriver. Very sensitive splitter box setup if I remember correctly

 

[grapple1]

The picture of the big white grapple with the guy under it, are those jaws hydraulicaly actuated?

 

[Contract Logger]

The picture of the big white grapple with the guy under it, are those jaws hydraulicaly actuated?

Yes they were- 4 small cyliders, 2 on each leg, still on there. Pretty amazing, they hung by block and line. much like the big grapples on the Lima i the Alaska equipment rusting thread I posted last night.

PS- Got yer PM, Gonna get back with you on that. Everything you said about those clowns is the truth. Learned it the hard way firsthand.......

 

[spitzair]

Contract Logger and Grapple1, you guys are pretty sharp! That thing is indeed a Manitowoc, but I have no idea what model... I'll see if I can find some time tomorrow to look at it some more. I doubt it'll get used this year, it's sitting here in Stewart, BC and there's not many logs to be found at the sort... But ya never know... If I do make it down there I'll post more pictures!

 

[Driver625]

These pictures are amazing. I would love to see more of them! Makes me wish I had been born earlier and chosen a different career path.

 

[Dave Hadden]

Having stumbled upon some pics posted at another site by "Alaskan Logger" I discovered he was a regular here and contributed many photos to this thread as well. So, I introduced myself over there with the following, modified somewhat to accomodate this venue. My history....more or less...

So I came to this site and was blown away by the variety of pics of machines I used to buy parts for as well as the guys I know in the industry who were mentioned in the pages I've read...so far.
I started in logging in 1969 when I became the Warehouseman for Tahsis Co. Ltd. at their Gold River Logging Division. I spent four years there and watched the evolution of yarding change from high lead to grapple yarding right before my eyes. When I started we ran six sides but soon bought a couple more yarders (Washington Skylok was one) and then we double-shifted four grapple yarding sides so we were essentially producing 12 sides worth of production by 1972 or so. The best one day production back then was 42 loads to the beach, most carried on P-16s or HDX's although we did have a few smaller Pacifics that ran 4640 Timkens and 1200x24 tires rather than 91000 Clarks and 1400x25 tires. Loaders included a TL-5, a TL-6, a TL-15, a Bucyrus 30-B and another American we called the "Fair Harbor American" which was an electric over air over hydraulic set-up with a centre tube that had about 20 electrical connections on it, each of which controlled air valves that then activated the hydraulics. Naturally I may be slightly off in my recollections so feel free to correct me on technical details but that's how I remember that machine. It came to us from Fair Harbour and was a project we worked on in the shop at Gold River one winter.
Lots of other machines there of interest but like most people I didn't take pics or think it would ever end. We had the first SST Skagit Grapple Yarder ever built, serial #1001 there (Side 6) as well as a Sparmatic, some Madills and a Washington Skylok Hydraulic Tension Yarder.
Can't remember what else we had for yarders and loaders etc. 'cause it was a long time ago.
Some of you might know a fellow named Bob Bagley, mechanic for Trican for many years. He was an apprentice mechanic at Gold River Logging when I worked there, some 41 years ago.
From there I went working for a small gyppo in Campbell River for a few months then went to Juskatla for MacMillan Bloedel as the Warehouse Supervisor there. Pretty standardized fleet there with mostly all 90' Madills and American loaders. P-16 log trucks as I recall. No Cats bigger than a D-7 and much shovel and pad work building roads up there too.
From there I went to BCFP Ltd. at the Renfrew Logging Division as their Warehouseman/Buyer. I spent eight years there and it was much the same as most logging camps back then. They had Skagit SST Grapple Yarder serial #10003 and I think Chum Carley from that area had serial #10002.
Those Skagits mostly ended up at Lemare Lake Logging in Port McNeill where they served a variety of functions for the Duke and his boys many years later.
I got caught in the squeeze of the '80's and was bumped off in 1984 from BCFP and barely survived the next year or so before going to work for Dave Husby at Eden Lake in the Charlottes in 1986. He had six of those Mack CL350-ST logging trucks working as well as a couple of Pacifics and a Hayes.
MB at Menzies Bay had 13 of those Macks as I recall. There were only 26 ever made and I think they all came to BC. He also had a fleet of International dump trucks that had originally been built to work in the desert but were part of the embargo on stuff gpoing to the Middle East during the Reagan years so became available here. Designed to work in the desert and ended up in one of the wettest places in BC. I always thought that was ironic for some reason.
From there I went to work for Island Mack Truck Sales out of Nanaimo and opened a one man store at Sandspit in the Charlottes selling heavy duty truck parts and stuff to MB, Crown, Alliford Bay Logging, Frank Beban, (I was there when he died), Edwards and Associates and a few other small contractors there.
In 1990 we shut that store down (South Moresby Lyell Island diminished market etc.) and I moved to Campbell River where I still live.
I spent four years on the road for Island Mack all around the northern Vancouver Island area and knew many of the loggers/contractors during that time. Sold lots of parts to Butch Carrol, Dennis Dystant, Borer Trucking/Logging, MB Menzies, Canfor at Woss and others too.

Thanks a lot for posting your pics here, those of you that have them. Brings back a lot of memories from the '60's right through to 2000 of my time in and around the industry.
I appreciate your efforts.



Take care.

 

[Dave Hadden]

For my second post I'm modifying one I made at the other site which will give a bit more history as I recall it.

I’ve read a couple more pages into the thread above and am still blown away.
When I worked for Husby at Eden Lake from September ’86 until May ’87 he had a Sikorsky S64-E flying wood and I got to see it in action a few times. One day I went over to what we called the West camp to salvage a bunch of XT3 Cat fittings and in the morning there was no wood along the road when I went in but in the afternoon when I came back out there were logs windrowed for a very long distance and I remember being amazed by how much wood had been moved in the past five hours or so.
Each rotor on that thing was 50’ long and it was 112’ across as I recall. The drive shaft was around a foot thick and the engines were de-tuned to 2400 HP. It had to land to refuel every certain number of minutes (42??) and had a safety release that wouldn’t allow it to lift more than 24,000 lbs . The Premier of BC then was Bill Vander Zalm and he visited when I was there and did a turn in that backwards facing seat they have while the machine flew logs. Most guys puke trying to ride there as it’s very disorienting but he came off it like a giddy school kid and claimed to have loved it.
Husby made a lot of money flying that thing in the Charlottes and when Silver Grizzly gave up their deal with Erickson Husby et al formed Canadian Aircrane and became the agent for Erickson in BC….or something similar. I’m just writing this stuff from memories which may not always be 100% accurate so forgive me my errors should you discern any.
Anyway, really a treat for me to see these pics and think back to those days.
The ‘60’s and ‘70’s were heady times in the industry and I recall that we (BCFP) made the best profit ever in 1979, some 98 million net. That led to investments like purchasing ERT, joint investments with Domans and more investments at MacKenzie too.
Things changed in 1980 of course and within two years we were all bleeding and interest rates were ridiculously high. The ‘80’s saw the beginning of major changes in the industry here in BC both in the methodology of logging and in the type of wood being logged as second growth plantations started to be harvested without using fallers, yarders, landing buckers, chasers, chokermen, rigging slingers and hooktenders. I never saw a load of second growth wood in the 60's or 70's.
Hydraulic machines took over from the older cable machines for the most part and feller buncher type machines aka processors were used in areas suitable for them. The number of jobs available in the industry continued to shrink and some smaller outfits worked claims where at the end they might be lucky to net a small profit but the glory days were gone for good.
As a Warehouseman/Buyer type guy I didn’t often get a chance to watch logging as I worked from my office attached to the warehouse and usually the shop too. I usually had a couple of mics near my desk as I answered all incoming radio traffic to the shop as well as all phone calls. One of the major assets I had when I started was I’d already done three years in the Canadian Navy as a Radio-Operator so had excellent communication skills, something that is important when dealing a lot on the radio or on the phone. I was also used to multi-tasking (no passengers on warships) used to responsibility, used to being organized and had a good enough brain on me that what I didn’t know I was able to learn quickly. I could type like a demon and had good hand writing skills too, a product of navy training.
Working that type of job was always interesting with rarely a dull moment as I basically bought, received, stored and then issued everything it took to operate a large modern logging camp circa 1969-2000 while keeping accurate accounting of what went where and when. Good reading skills and the ability to decipher exploded schematics helped a lot and one of my little finds one day was that the schematic for the brake system on a Galion grader was exactly the same as the schematic for the brake system on a Cat 14-G grader, both being basically identical. Except one had Cat part numbers and one had Galion part numbers. I made two phone calls, one to Finning for a quote on a list of brake parts using Cat part numbers and the other to BC Equipment (I think) who was the Galion dealer then. I gave them the same list with Galion numbers and asked for a quote.
To my surprise the quote from Finning was over a hundred bucks cheaper than BC Equipment. I photocopied the page from the Cat parts book and taped it in the Galion parts book and we bought all those parts from Finning when required from then on.
Lots of ways a guy could save a few bucks when buying parts and stuff and that was something I became half decent at back then.
I had a heckuva time changing from a Buyer to a Seller as my buyers instincts often had to be supressed to complete a sale when I really wanted to tell the guy where he could get it cheaper elsewhere.
Ah well...
More later when I have more time.

For now...


Take care.

 

[Dave Hadden]

For my third post I'm just reiterating my thanks to those of you who have posted so many neat pics, but specially Contract Logger and Trakloader.
We must know some people in common somewhere along the line so maybe we can explore that sometime.
For now I'm hoping I've qualified to start posts, just in case I wanna start something. LOL

Take care.

 

[Autocar]

Great read Dave , I bet you also have alot of great storys about loggers and machines. Welcome

 

[trakloader]

Oooops

This was the result of night shift mechanics trying to move a Cypress 7230R without locking the swing. Nobody was hurt, but one guy was hanging on to the gantry for dear life as she was going over.

 

[trakloader]

Logging Postcard

From the early 60's.

 

[trakloader]

Pictures from the Really Old Days

Juskatla, BC, circa 1955.