This 1930s black-and-white film by Caterpillar Tractor Co. was produced by Chicago Film Laboratory, Inc. and shows the uses and benefits of Caterpillar diesel tractors and engines in the logging industry. The film opens with a diesel tractor dragging logs out of the woods through snow to be sent to a mill (1:04). A Caterpillar D7 tractor drags a bundle of logs (1:13) and cleans snow off a landing. An angle dozer clears away brush to carve a new road in springtime (1:51). Bulldozers push away forest debris. In California pine country east of Sacramento, a tractor and bulldozer fill a ravine (2:30). A Caterpillar 22 tractor bunches and ground skids logs, then cross hauls them onto trucks (3:00). The Saginaw and Manistee Lumber Company uses a fleet of five diesel tractors to ground skid logs near Williams, Arizona (3:31). An Idaho logger uses a D6 tractor to bring telegraph poles to a landing (3:51). The Montana Logging Company uses four Caterpillar D8 tractors due to their copper bellows and dust seals (4:12). In Washington, a D8 tractor is used to help pick up a Douglas Fir log (5:12). At the Fruit Grower Supply Company in California, a fleet of D8 tractors haul logs with an arch down a 30 percent grade (5:39). A diesel tractor with a double drum wrench hauls logs down to a road and out of potholes (6:40). A diesel tractor and heister arch haul logs from a cold deck (7:19). The narration mentions that Caterpillar tractors can also do their own unloading. A logger in Oregon uses a bulldozer on the front end of his tractor to pioneer roads or plow snow, and a logging arch on the back (8:10). The first Caterpillar diesel tractor ever built loads logs for George Howell in eastern California (8:40). The Bucyrus-Erie Loadmaster, built on a D7 tractor, loads logs onto trucks for the Casters and Lumber Company of Klarnath Falls, Oregon. Caterpillar Diesel engines switch log trains in a log yard (9:57). A closeup of a 125-horsepower Caterpillar diesel engine is shown (10:06). Boise Payette Lumber Company uses a Caterpillar D17000 diesel engine in its mill. The film ends by reviewing the benefits of Caterpillar Diesel engines, including fuel efficiency and standardization.
Quit school at sixteen and went to work in the woods on the Canadian, NY border. We had a D-6 that was about fifteen years old and I cursed that thing daily. Had a gas pony motor. Get that going with a rope wrapped around the fly and pull yer guts out. Then throw the lever to kick in the diesel and sometimes it kicked back throwing me off the track. Bitch to get either started at zero degree weather. Damn track fell off once a week. A huge wrench with a pipe was used to take off the tension. Then hook the wrench to the track and pull it back on. Then back to the pipe and wrench to tighten up the track. The good ol daze.
ReplyDeleteAhh, there's nothing quite like the experience of working for a gyppo logger. Hopefully, he had enough money to make wages while not having enough money to fix the equipment.
DeleteElmo, I hear ya. I was working daylight to dark, six days a week and making 90 bucks a week. Big money in 66. At sixteen I was making more then a lot of men in town. Paychecks came regular but were late a couple times. Also, I should have written winch instead of wrench but you probably knew that. Take the hook on the winch and hooked it to the track to pull it back on. I put a clutch in that machine. Talk about a knuckle buster. I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Let go of my boyhood and became a man.
DeleteWhen I watched that video, it harked me back to my time gone walkabout 35 years ago... to the day I took to the dirt roads in the Sierra foothills above Nevada City without a map, going over four-by tracks in my brand new Honda Prelude, and running into cattle herder who gave me a cracker snack to tide me over until I found the pavement again.
ReplyDeleteI could almost hear those puppies working in the trees the whole day.
Sounds like you might have come across John Reeder, moving his cattle from his Shady Creek Ranch near Highway 49 to his Forest Service allotment on the ridge above Alleghany, CA. That would be on the lower part of the Henness Pass Road. His family has been running their cattle on that summer range for more than a hundred years.
DeleteJohn is great people.
Elmo! I think you might be exactly right! Because, for certain, that guy was great people. He saved my silly ass. I was so distracted in my need to GTFO of the metropole, I'd plum forgotten I was on a strict schedule of pills I was forbidden to take on an empty stomach. So I was telling him that, just giving him the lowdown on what a twit I'd been not to bring any food along with me, and he just forked over that little snack pack thing, and I can't even remember what the pills were for, but remembered the doctor was serious about the not-on-an-empty-stomach bit.
DeleteJohn Reeder was THE person on the planet to help me out of my meltdown of despair over greedy and STUPID jackasses swarming California... and creepy men hosing on me without letup. I was in a state only serious driving, scenery, music could soothe.
When you see him next, please kiss him on the cheek for me.
Squatch on Youtube is a wealth of knowledge on the old Caterpillars
ReplyDeleteCaterpillar is supposedly coming out with a Pick Up truck in 2025. I'll believe it when I see it.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkQwQ-YgoM0