MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. Red & White Iron, Past and Present....

Nice to hear that Gary retired without any issues.

Ronald Sprout

For anyone who worked at Kelsey Bay in the 60's, 70's, 80's or 90's you would remember this man's name. Along with his twin brother Donald they were two of the biggest characters in camp. Sadly Ron passed away from health complications this past week.

The brothers were great loggers and kept everyone on their toes! Lot's of good memories about them.

These are the last of the KBD 50th booklet.

My parents dug these pictures up of Dad and I checking out the trucks at Franklin R. HDX may be able to nail down the year better but I would say it's around 89-90? I don't have a scanner so I took pictures of the pictures on our kitchen counter. It didn't help the quality any but at least they are pictures from a time when things were still in good swing.

Well done Reg,trucks everywhere,nice to see.( I will not mention H-17 missed a wipe down).

HDX,did Franklin have more Pacifics than the 92-93-94 preloaders?

HDX

Question for you, H-257 Hayes truck from Menzies Bay. Can you give me any history on this truck? A friend of mines dad drove the truck at camp 5 and they came across a couple of pictures.

BTC H257 s/n 7073291 Delivered July 12 1967 Caterpillar mod 1693-TA Allison-59-60 6 speed auto BD 90,000lb rear diffs 15.1 ratio so top speed was 33 MPH Was "Kemlustrial Special Red and Superior White She was one of the first Hayes Trucks with the wood grain on the dash. Tires were 14:00X25 20 ply Dominion Super Contractor Standard drivers seat "Viking Bostrom T bar" Ribbed rubber floor mat so she was the standard M&B truck. She came with two sisters H-255 and H-256 All three were spec'd out the same and were delivered with LT53T trailers. These were some of the first Hayes trucks M&B bought that came in their new color scheme. The 5 earlier trucks Menzies got were H 216 H217 H218 H219 and H220 in June 1966 all these were Apache Yellow when new and also came with the 53 ton trailers. Tell him I'm sorry but the trailer "X" numbers were not available Will try and check some other avenues to see if we can find them Maybe Danny Brown would remember them tell him to phone him and ask

Blk prince We only had those three until 1989 when there was two more delivered H139 and H140 along with three conventionals H138 H153 and H155. H140 was given to Gary Cathers new (He was driving the P16 Pacific pictured above- H66- with the load of logs on in the yard. He had a Mack Bulldog on the top of the brushguard in front of the rad-- kind of his trademark If you look close you can see it on there) That truck had the Mack E-9 V8 installed in it along with the Mack 12 speed manual trans. He had it pulling the low bed down in Sarita for quite some time before M&B put Franklin and Sarita back together. Not long after H140 came to Franklin it was discovered that there was already an H140 still on the books and hauling down at Shawnigan Division so Gary was told they had to change the number of H140 and it fell on his shoulders and he came up with H14, Shortly after that Mike Murphy(Pt McNeill) got hold of George Pichor the Franklin Shop Foreman and had a trade deal for him He traded a set of 121 rear ends complete for the set of 91's that were in H14, so now there was another semi-super truck preload at Franklin! She still to this day carries that same unit number . She is one of the lowbed trucks we have at IPL down in Sarita When Hayes Forest took us over they took both H139 and H14 . H139 ended up having 121 rear ends also installed in her by HFS She was sold when HFS left the industry and ended up in Campbell River area pulling a lowbed also

What happened to Pacific H66?

Thank you for the info on H-257 Steve. Also have a picture of same driver (Gordie McDonald) when they tested the Butler Truck at Menzies Bay, interesting stuff. Mr. Brown needs to come check out the archives and his H-440 hauling pups from Iron River as well. I was able to chat with him at a retirement party a few months ago and invited him down. Hope to see him sooner then later.

If i heard correctly the other day H-139 is for sale along with the lowbed she is under.

BTC That is good to know. Wouldn't that be something To get her back where she started I will pass on the info. Just gotta dig up some of the pics I took of her hooked to that lowbed when I was up there some time ago. Has anybody seen the old H317 that SureSpan bought then re-sold She was parked in the Middlepoint yard late last year hooked to an ancient lowbed and still had the surespan unit number on her front bumper. Is painted a very different light yellow. Would love to spend some time taking measurements for the 3408 install. Talked to Danny a week ago, he spends time at the Campbell River Museum working in the archives. Kind of our HEF inside man. Wonder if he still has the door off H113 ???

PacificEd Good to see you back. After Gary got H14 the H66 became plagued with maintenance problems. As with H60 the regular driver off her when he got a new Challanger (H159) and that truck also became a shop queen. New to us shop foreman decided Too expensive get rid of them!! Trade was done with Sproat Lake Division, They got H60 and H66. We got their H154 that shook like a dog crapping razor blades and H75 that had some issues. H60 was parted out and her remains were up at Saratoga Ventures , you might still have pictures of her frame from your trip up there. Easy to tell H60 frame Had a huge steel plate welded to front bumper for pushing. H66 I think went to Lemar Lake in PtMcNiell and then parted out.

I lurk a lot and read. It is hard to believe it has been almost 9 years since I was last there. I did a google map search and I was within 100 yards of the WFP yard and a mile from the LLL shops when I was in Port McNeil. I was kicking myself hard over that.

I do have a bunch of pictures of the frame up at Saratoga Ventures along with measurements and a crude drawing I did. I also have pictures of a HDX and KW 850 frame too. The HDX frame was also a M&B truck. I've seen you mention the truck number here before.

H-317

H-317 is owned by JLG Road Building. They use it quite regular to move their gear around. When you go over the oyster river bridge on your way into Campbell River Steve she isn't too far from the beaten path.

I think these are from Kennedy Lake Division but I'm not sure. When I was there the dryland sort was in operation and the A-frame was gone. Any ideas?

A brand new truck, 40 years and 650,000 miles ago.

I was hauling out of South Main 5 just the Franklin side of the big Nitinat Bridge. This was one of our big spruce areas. The BCFP 6-231 was on his way to their spruce flats on Nitinat mainline. We were cross hauling with these guys. They hauled their big spruce to Caycuse and we hauled ours to the Coleman dump on the Alberni Canal. Funny thing was we never had each other's radio frequencies. We had an ambulance at each side of the bridge, so old Doc(BCFP) would let their drivers know when one of us was coming and Marlene Pynn our first aid lady would do the same for us.Was really interesting to see what shovel operator could pile it on the highest. One of us would see a huge load on a BCFP truck so you just HAD to beat his load size. And vise vice versa. It was without a doubt the best time for all of us. Good bunch of guys back then!