Its been interesting watching Komatsu Dealers come and go in Alaska. Howard Cooper, Pacific North Equipment and whatever PNE was before that, Wajax, Craig Taylor and now a different Canadian Co just set up shop in Anchorage. Have been seeing some shiny branded new pickups and service trucks running around. Have not seen or heard of any new machines being sold or moved. It's interesting to me because of the timing. Alaska has been in a recession for some time. The economy started improving and now the economy is at a dead stop. Not to mention $20 North Slope Crude. I think they may have set up shop to try and get into the new developing mines, specifically the Donlin Dome project. That would keep a small branch in business, no problem. Your thoughts?
Is gold mining big up there ?
There is Kensington Project, which is outside of Juneau Coeur Mining. Greens Creek Mine on Admiralty Island ran by Hecla Fort Knox outside Fairbanks ran by Kinross. And the Pogo Mine near Delta Junction, ran by Northern Star Resources. Those are the major players that come to mind.
which mine is Parkers? lol
Here is the press release. https://www.equipmentworld.com/sms-equipment-opens-anchorage-branch/ Craig Taylor was the last dealer for the brand in Alaska that I know of. My customers up there wouldn't deal with them at all. When I started for the Komatsu Dealer in Washington it was McDonald Industries and then went to Pacific North Equipment. Pacific North was owned by Mathew G Norton Companies first and then Wajax out of Canada next. Washington Group which owns Modern Machinery bought and joined the companies in their current iteration. Howard Cooper Corp. was never a dealer for Komatsu that I know of. When they were forced into bankruptcy their International and Dresser lines were in joint partnership with Komatsu so they were transferred over to the McDonald Industries dealer ship. Alaska is a hard place to make money for a dealership. It seems most of the parts all have to come out of Seattle and since Komatsu's big parts depot is in Tennessee it might take days if not longer to get a part. Trained and competent service people that are willing to fly and stay at all the remote locations is another problem. It will be interesting to see another player up there with the brand.
John C, Thanks for the history lesson and well thought out response. Maybe we have crossed paths before.? That makes sense about Howard Cooper. I forgot about the early Dresser/Komatsu relationship and McDonald Industries. I shut off the lights at the Pacific North Equipment, Ketchikan branch when they pulled out. I was fairly young and new to the dealership world at the time. PNE offered me the opportunity to transfer to Anchorage, but I had a feeling they weren’t long for the world, either.
SMS equipment can likely get parts out of Canada if required. They have a big presence in Alberta.
Some of those McDonald machines from the 90’s.
This was a brake job I did in Kake for Kake Tribal Timber.
I think this was a Gildersleeve machine. Cholmondeley Sound, West Arm, maybe. I thought the PC300HD with a Pierce front was a helluva machine. 300 size hoe on a 400 UC.
My service truck! The least expensive, short box, two-wheel drive F-150 they could find. Always getting stuck and all my gear wet and muddy bouncing around in the bed. I kept it parked in Craig at Taquan Air. I think the photo was taken in Thorne Bay.
This PC220-5 with a Pierce front, was bolted to a pedestal on a deck where the pulp wood would leave the saltwater in Ward Cove and enter the KTN Pulp Mill. It ran 24/7 and I responded when it broke.
Coaldust, that's pretty cool and love the photos. I worked for them from 1990 to the beginning of 1996. All the field guys were supposed to rotate through going to Alaska from Kent when I worked there. It worked that way for awhile and then as new people came on board, they refused to go north and those of us left got stuck with it a bunch. By the time I left their employment, no one would go. In the Evans Engine days the company used to service a lot of generators and some construction stuff. Logging became the big thing when the service manager from Howard Cooper went to work for McDonald Industries in the late eighties. We all chased those PC400-3 and the later PC300 and 360-5 machines all over south east. The hand writing was on the wall when the government shut down the Tongas. I remember having to fly into Klawock one time where a pickup was parked and drive up to Whale Pass to repack a swivel. The truck had three spare tires in the back. I wondered about that to start with. I had two flats on that round trip and was sweating a third by the time I got back to the airport in Klawock. I think I had only seen that office up there once. We always went directly to the camps or the job sites. You must have been there when Kent Funk was the sales guy. I had a friend tell me they ran into him a few years back in Spokane.
John C, Yes, Kent Funk was who I worked for. The KTN “branch” was divided into two parts, the Detroit engine side and the equipment side. The engine guys did their thing and I reported to Kent. Until, the Wajax buyout, and then I reported to Anchorage or Seattle. But, by then I had enough of a customer base that I was pretty much self-directed at that point. I sounds like you left around the same time I started, which was the end of February 96. The day after M/V Columbia arrived and I drove my U-Haul filled with all my hopes and dreams down the ramp. Lol. I’ll dig more pictures out tonight of that beautiful Komatsu iron. I delivered the last machine Mr. Funk sold in the SE. It was WA600-3 with the PNE logging package and Young Forks. It was sent to Long Island for Evergreen Logging.
I look forward to the photos!
FYI: About 2 years ago, one of the gold miners on the TV show rented a BIG, Komatsu dozer from his lease owner. That was somewhere near Dawson City, in the Yukon. That was about the only Komatsu I have seen on that Alaska gold mining show. Everything else has been Volvo and Cat.
Volvo is a sponsor of the show and leases them machines for next to nothing. Volvo doesn't have dozers and Cat are the most popular. If you watch you'll notice a lot of brand names like Hitachi are blacked out. I'm sure there's a fair amount of Komatsu equipment gold mining. Talked to someone who worked for a Volvo dealer in Alberta. He said someone watches every show and counts how many times the Volvo name is shown. He also said a 20' sea can full of parts (oil, filters, etc.) was sent to Parkers site and when Volvo reps. went to visit the site later in the year, the shipping locks had never even been removed from the sea can. I'm curious how much they would make if they had to buy all the Volvo equipment they used.
John C mentioned Washington Group. I had some up close and personal contact with them about 15 years ago when they were operating the San Cristóbal open-pit slver mine in Bolivia. It was not a very edifying experience but despite that we managed to field test the High Altitude version of the D11R successfully.
Boy, now there is the million dollar question.
Usibelli Coal bear Denali purchased a new D375A from Craig-Taylor around the 2010 time frame. That’s the only large Komatsu Track-Type I’ve seen up here.
Here is a custom PNE WA600-3 Logger splashing a Sealaska bundle for export on Long Island These were cool machines. Extra counterweight. The main frame had extra steel braces welded on for strength. We also jacked the Main implement gear pumps up to 3200psi with Komatsu America’s blessing. Which was unheard of at the time for a gear pump. The local producers liked these machines because they could lift the non-standard, extra heavy, export only, log bundles and the 988F-II, at the time, was a little under-powered. The WA-600 was very popular at that particular moment in history.
Same Machine as the one above. Good ol’e KL593 of Evergreen Logging Co. August of 96. The noseeums and whitesox were eating me up. Maybe the last WA600 logger ever sold in Alaska. Had very few issues with this machine. I remember some cracking on the Forks that Young’s covered under warranty.
On the East side of Prince of Wales Island, Columbia Helicopters was logging a unit at Lymon Anchorage. I probably didn’t spell that correctly. Columbia was flying a Boeing Vertol. They had a pair of Komatsu PC300HD’s w/ Pierce fronts working the landing zone and a orange shovel rented from CMI for clean-up duty only the background. I was there because a grapple on one of the Komatsu’s was drifting open. A leaking P/O check valve. Swapped grapple cylinders. Those guys could move wood fast. No screwing around when the bird was flying. I had a window during the scant dark hours of August to work.
High Tech Komatsu Service Shop Yeah. “It was a different place and a different time. What they called hard work, now they call a crime”. Can’t imagine a modern dealer allowing a little fella like this in the shop getting er’ done, nowadays. No safety glasses, FR, hard hat, safety toes. But, he has his Ketchikan Sneakers. This was the Pacific North Equip. KTN Shop. For the most part, it was just storage. The real work got done in the Bush. BTW, that little feller went into the Airforce when he grew-up. He just graduated from UAA with a EE degree and is keeping the cell phones in Alaska on.
I had to go do an after delivery on a 375 working just out of Cordoba one time. There was a couple of feet of snow on the ground and it was about 33F. It was a miserable day and I got stuck there that night. I had the best sea food meal of my life at that motel that night. LP had a bunch of PC400 loggers working at Thorne Bay. Do you have any idea what happened to them?
John C. I forgot about all the LP/KPC gear. I do recall those PC400HD shovels. They were often excessively roaded (sp?) lol. Thus, they were burning through undercarriage in 4000 hours or less. So, Komatsu America and PNE offered some goodwill concessions. I got to fly in the LP helicopter to each PC400HD to measure the U/C. It was fun day. The weather was good and I got dropped off at Tongass Hwy PNE shop LZ at the end of the day. After the LP auction, I have no idea where those machines went. I might have some sad pictures of the LP iron parked in Thorne Bay consolidated for the auction.
I remember that the one used on the gold mining show, up in the Yukon, was a Komatsu 475. It had a huge blade and a huge ripper on it.
A Komatsu D475 is in the Cat D11 size range. Komatsu had a much bigger D575 but they are few and far between and have been discontinued. Keeping spare parts in stock is one of the issues for such a big machine. I had read that the dealer had to have a $1 million in spare parts stocked if a customer purchased a D575 but don't know if that's correct. It would make some sense though. A dozer that size is going to be working around the clock and downtime needs to be at a minimum. Some parts had to be manufactured in Japan and took weeks to get. Still would be cool to see one. https://web.archive.org/web/20101207065126/http://www.equipmentcentral.com/north_america/data/new_equipment/AESS569-02_D575 New Format.pdf
The D575 was a reclaim machine for the most part. As far as I know they weren't used for stripping. Yes, you wouldn't want one down for long, but on the other hand just because it is not operable doesn't mean the mine stops. Coaldust, did you ever get out to any of the Klukwan machines or maybe any of Gildersleeve's operations?
Thorne Bay October of 96. The last months of the largest logging camp in North America. All the iron was being parked for the Louisiana-Pacific Ketchikan Pulp Company auction.
John C. I worked for Klukwan Forest Products as a mechanic assigned to Hobart Bay and a short stint at their Long Island camp before going to work for PNE. Gildersleeve had some pretty good mechanics, so the only work I did for them was mostly their PNE rental gear. I visited all their camps and got to meet Keaton and Richard.
I love the photo but hate to hit the like on the post. A lot of people lost jobs up there when the Tongass was shut down. As I recall the super up there had a nickname of Buttcut. Does that sound right? He told me they used the Komatsu loggers because they could walk the shovels up and down the lines and the machines would not veer off to one side when they operated the boom or the stick. He said he was glad they didn't have odometers installed as the undercarriages would have been out of warranty in a year.
Buttcutt. I was trying to recall his name. He was the Shop Forman/Fleet Manager for the Thorne Bay Shop. I was a young guy and had a huge amount of respect for him. Super-sharp Dude. Those guys don’t exist anymore. in 98, I was traveling through Centralia and stopped by that machine shop on Lum Road that specialized in towers and yarder repair and he was working there. I can’t remember the name of that Shop. Yeah, It was a terrible thing to see & experience the dismantling of the SE AK timber industry and all the families that got hurt.
When I left PNE I was pretty good friends with the Komatsu rep. He asked me if I would be interested in going down there to baby sit a D575 down there. He told me it was a development machine that was being tested. I had two kids still in high school and was tired of the travel at that point so politely declined.
From what I could find it looks like about 20 production 575's were built. Mine wouldn't shut down but a D475 or D11 would have much better parts support and less downtime. Here's a used D575 that looks like the undercarriage is on it's last legs. I'm not sure who buy it, maybe an outfit that already has one for parts? The undercarriage is probably worth more than the machine is. The other machine I would have liked to have seen a video of working was the Acco Dozer which was even bigger with twin engines and transmissions but never put to work. https://www.machinerytrader.com/listings/construction-equipment/for-sale/192561721/komatsu-d575a
The records out there say there were 53 575s built in different configurations. They have been used quite extensively as a stripping machine in mountain top removal mining, so there is a chance their being down could affect a mine's operations. A bunch of 575s from around the world were recently bought up for a large project in China, where blasting was not an option, so ripping was the way they had to go.
This is what I saw but couldn't find anything else regarding production numbers. The D575A is primarily used in surface mines in West Virginia , mostly operating on Alpha Natural Resources sites in Appalachia. To date, 17 D575A's are in service in the West Virginia Coal Fields. There is one super ripper that operates in Las Vegas , and another 2 operating on New Zealand 's South Island in the Stockton mine.
The one in this video Seems to have a CARB sticker on the side that would tend to indicate it operates or operated in California. Plus the name of the channel that posted it. But it was posted a very long time ago. Is it the Vegas one?
I don't know. It is nice to see someone pull the ripper tooth at the right angle so it doesn't blunt the tooth.
People think, just drop the ripper and go. Did a parking lot extention for a car dealer. They couldn't spare a hoe to cut down the shale in the cut. They dropped off our old D7G and the operator had half the day to rip and shove up the material. When I landed with the grader, there was about a truck load shoved up, and the tractor was gone. I could see the marks where he drug the tooth across the sand stone in the same direction as the layers were layed out. I had no ripper on my old 730 champion, so I backed up, put the corner of the moldboard down, went against the layers, and scraped up almost 60 tandem loads of the nicest sandstone. Would have been more cost effective if buddy had known how to rip, but I got it done.
Since we are discussing old Japanese tractors, any of you fellas remember the early D155A-1 or -2 tractors with the S6D155 engine from the 80's? Trying to remember the details. The S6D155 was fairly problematic and very difficult to start in cold weather. I think it was common practice at the time to swap them with Cummings NT855's. if I recalled, the dealer network could supply instructions and the parts needed to make the conversion. I remember, as a mechanic helper, assisting with two engine swaps.
I worked on a couple of them is all. Most common repair that I remember was getting the fire breathing dragon preheater working again. The later models were easier to get running. Ed and Jack in the Kent shop were the experts on those machines back then with Pete being the engine guy. Al Parker, the owner of Parker Pacific used to buy them up all the time, fix and work them and put them up for sale at the same time. They worked well for them because they understood how to work them. They also had all the special tools it took to fix them. I hadn't heard of a re-power. I can't believe any Cummins engine in that physical size would have the grunt that those engines had.
John C. 30 years has a way of making details fuzzy. The engines used may have been a Cummins KTA of some flavor. I’m trying to find some photos. These machines were working at the Chimney Creek mine outside of Winnemucca, NV.
We have sold some new dash-8 wa600s the last couple years into Alaska and lots of dash 6 machines
Never heard of them. Parkers?
Never heard of them. Allegedly been running 3 years now. Have yet to see their junk at a site. It's usually Craig Trailer, AER, CMI or NC Machine.
SMS is a Komatsu distributor and competes directly with Finning and that includes large mining machines.
Glad to see the thread bumps. Always fun to talk about Komatsu. I believe SMS is doing brick & mortar in Anchorage just for the ability to bid mine contracts. When Komatsu and SMS grow weary of bleeding money, they will high-tail it back to Canada. The small contractor who purchased a single medium sized excavator will be screwed out of product support and warranty.
How are my HEF friends doing? I haven’t been around much, lately. Been on the road, wrapping up Tank Tour 2023, Clown World. And, getting some vaca time in. Still making a few bucks with those big trucks. Got exciting news for 24. Will be expanding into ASTs. That’s cool. If that diesel is drippin’, don’t be trippin’ . Give me a call. Cargo tanks big or small, we fix them all.
Parker from the tv show, Gold Rush.
It's NC Machinery here for CAT. Komatsu stuff is quite rare and the stuff I've seen has been old so don't imagine they're selling much.
Not familiar with it, but I haven't watched TV in about 15 years.
ASTs?
Above Ground Storage Tanks
Ahhh. I was thinking tanks that have tracks and go boom.
That’s fine. Most people believe I work on septic tanks. . Bless the people that do. Both have their hazards, I suppose.