Hi again.
Thought there might be a connection there regarding those sanders.
The reason I'll never forget that morning is because I ....not having heard anything about the accident yet.....cracked a joke to Cliff Malazgar, the contractor and driver as he stood next to his truck that was sitting there without a box on it.
"Don't look now but somebody stole the box off your truck," I yelled at Cliff as I walked to my office in the shop.
I laughed and waved as he stood there talking to Cliff Holst, the General Foreman.
He gave me a funny look.
About five minutes later a couple guys came into the shop and I heard what had happened.
You can imagine how much of an a-hole I felt like, and I was later able to apologize to Cliff. He knew I didn't know so didn't pay no mind to it, but I've always felt bad about that.
And I too recall the winter of 67/68, particularly the big freeze-up of the pulp mill at Gold River. It had just started production in '67, the year I started working at it, and during the Christmas/New Years period it was shut down for maintenance for several days. Then, all the lines were filled and preparations were started to flash up the mill again. Unfortunately, that was the night the big freeze moved in and the whole mill froze up solid, breaking darn near every valve in the place. We'd had a lot of snow before then but from then until into March we had daily small snowfalls that blew around and created drifts all over the place and I recall my car being frozen in for nearly two months before I could dig it out. I seem to recall total snowfall accumulations for Gold River as being in the 16 foot area that year.
By far the worst winter I've ever endured on Vancouver Island.
Oh, and you have no idea how many bloody valves there are in a pulp mill.
We had truckloads of them come in for quite a period before we got back up again. I know because I unloaded all the trucks back then.
Also enjoyed your mention of the 121,000 lb Clarks above. As you noted there weren't many around but they weren't unknown. The best way to be set-up was to run 91,000 Clarks and carry either 13.298-1 or 15.033-1 ratios, as they could be changed back and forth via different drop gears. A 12.00-1 ratio had different case halves though so they were unique and not a lot in use either, unless you had a long haul on good roads. Also, it was always better to have the front rears as spares as they could fit either front or rear position whereas a rear could only go in that spot.
Carry a couple of spare rears, a couple sets of drop gears and some Clark brake parts and you were good to go most places and had a couple of gear ratio choices available.
In the 60's and '70's I recall being told that if a guy yarded with Madill, loaded with American and hauled with a Hayes or Pacific he'd have to be real poor at logging to not make any money.
My how times have changed.
Take care.