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Truck, Car or Cargo Shippers

How Hammond Switched from Railroad Roddiscraft, Inc. Appointed To Truck Log Hauling A Formica Distributor

A recent issue of "Redwood Log," a little magazine published at Samoa, California, by and for the employes of the Redwood Division of the Hammond Lumber Company, tells an interesting story concerning the manner in which Hammond has switched from rail to truck hauling of logs to the Samoa sawmill.

Only a few years back this company logged and hauled to the mill by railroad, more than one hundred million feet of logs a year. The main line railroad was 25 miles long, and to the far reaches of the lumber camps there was 80 miles of railroad track. The hauling rvas done by a whole battery of powerful switch engines, and six train crews were busy 24 hours every day bringing in the logs.

Then came the tremendous fire of 1945 which swept that area, and it changed the Hammond log hauling operation completely. The fire rviped oat 23 log road bridges, several of them very large and expensive ones. Immediately the company decided to switch to trucks for all but the nrain line haul. They put truck roads into the timber as fast as humanly possible, and installed 15 great Mack trucks with ten and twelve foot bunks and 200 horsepower Diesel motors, that brought in tr,vo or three carloads of logs every trip. These .trucks picked up the logs in the woods and brought them to the main line railroad. They reached back into the farthest corners of the Hammoncl logging area.

Roddis Plywood Corporation of Marshfield, Wis., anrlounces the appointment of their San Francisco lvarehouse, Roddiscraft, Inc., 345 Williams Street, as a distributor of Formica in Northern California, Oregon and Washington. This product is distributed through all of Roddis Plyrvoocl Corporation's eastern warehouses.

Ed Halligan, manager of the San Francisco warehouse, feels confident that this addition to their line of products r,vill enable them to render a more complete service to the dealer. "This has been proved to us by the distribution of Formica by our eastern branches, and we cordially invite inquiries and orders for this material from dealers," Mr. Halligan said.

First, they brought the logs to Patrick's Point, then the eld of the main line. Then they extended the truck haul to Crannell, which is just 17 miles from the mill. The logs are re-loaded from truck to car at this point, and trainhauled to the mill. The netrn'ork of truck hauls now covers all the logging area in much better fashion than was ever done by branch logging railroads, and the truck mileage is increasing constantly, as the railroad haul gets shorter. The log supply is now more certain than ever before in Samoa history, and from every viewpoint the nerv method is preferable to the old.