Nice to have a driver in the blue ox!
Yeah that probably is nice-nice load. I drove to Pasco this morning to look at damage a driver accomplished. Got lost, panicked tried to turn around in a area he should have never drove into. A sand bowl-imagine that in Tri-Cities-Sand. Stuck it with a load on 59,000 net and managed to explode a drive line yoke-1810 series. Idiot.
Just when you think you've seen it all......
The way you say that is it sounds like you have a hard time finding drivers for it? What will that gross? Those trees logs my mind compared to our little toothpicks. Need about 4 to heat the house for the winter haha.
The trucking company that hauls for us sent out a (new to them) truck the other day with a (new to them) driver that upon leaving the landing,forgot to pull his bunk pin. He missed a slow right hand turn with a load of nice Doug Fir and harvested a snag with his left fender.He tried telling his boss that the steering wheel worked just fine,and then for some reason didn't. They s-canned him back at the yard,and then called us to see if we "knew any good drivers".We said yeah,but their busy driving their own trucks.Hard to find good drivers.
That is just it, 90% of the top drivers are owner operators these days
The big problem around here is that with the big burns last year,SPI wanted 500 loads a day off just one burn. That didn't work out because the roads couldn't physically handle the traffic,but still,log trucks are hard to come by so much so that on our green sale,under a different land owner,we'd get docked on our holdback for underweight as well as overweight by a margin of 2000 lbs.,because of the scarcity of trucks.Hence the scraping of the bottom of the barrel. Add to that the pushing out of the picture of owner operators by many forces including land owners that buy many of their own trucks and don't like the competition. I do love passing through Chester at 3 AM listening to 17 and hearing the local old timer gypos warming up their rigs in their driveways and spinning yarns on the radio.
flip the lever, ease into it and if it spins even a bit both ways make the call. I see guys just wheel-hopping and hoping. They don't own the iron if they do.
I loaded outta Chester a bit for Roseberry 10 years ago or so.
Yeah,Roseberry came rolling into this area like they were going to take over this country.They hired everyone the could and then found out this country ain't like back home.Logging here is very area specific and tribal because of the geography and climate. You don't own this country,it owns you.It almost chooses you for the fight.Myself,an electrician by trade,I didn't even see it coming 30 years ago when a high school buddy asked me if I would weld the Esco grapples on his 518,...and WHAM!A month later setting six chokers behind an old TD20 out on the steep west side.I was hooked and sucked into this whirlpool of not a living,but a way of life.
He drove it into loose sand probably 2 to 3 feet deep, there wasn't going to be any easing of anything. Had he got out and walked it before, nothing would have happened. But that requires getting off your ***.
Actually I thought the logging down there was pretty easy & the wood added up quick! The only downfalls I saw were them keeping cull employees because they were ass kissers, local law trying to run them off as they didn't want out of towners there, dirt roads weren't too bad unless it poured & the incense cedar was tricky to load as it was so fragile.
It depends on location.Just a mile difference can send you out on steep ground with volcanic karsts. Roseberry was on pretty good ground.I was asked to run hot saw for them,but their company politics quickly gained a reputation and I stayed away. Incense Cedar...every shovel operator,and truck driver hates it.There is a train overpass on 89 where a full load of dry cedar can't make it under,and it has to go that way. if two operators are sharing a shovel.the assh@le of the two will skip loading the cedar. In the 70's they were shipping and milling the pecky cedar,and it was a fad here in the North state to cover ones living room walls with it.
The politics being ass kissers to the front?
Yeah,and affirmative action type side rod with an attitude.Just a whole can of worms. A good ,hard working outfit is appreciated. An outfit that tries to get by on anything else is pushed out. The only thing a guy owns is his reputation,and many don't give a $!it,and become the unwanted clown. I don't have time for those clowns.
Candace is who hired me, I was only there a short while (race season) as it put me 9 hours closer to the track.