Post by muleskinner on Mar 9, 2011 17:35:14 GMT -5
Just finished this unit last night. It represent and old Lumber Carrier from the late twenties to early thirties which made their appearance in the lumber industry for use in the saw mills for transporting and moving units of lumber around the mill. This one I built from memory of one I remembered seeing on the back lot of Fairhurst Lbr Co. in Fortuna Calif, when my brother-in-law and my Step Dad worked there in between trucking jobs. It was there for many years until being sold to Carlotta Lumber Company East of Hydesville on Hi way 36 where I again saw it when I was fishing in Yeager Creek. It was grown over in the weeds and they were getting ready to finally send her to scrap.
It is an older manual cross fork unit where as before hydros, they had swing forks on each side that were manually operated from the upper deck. The carrier would drive over the unit of lumber and the operator would manually turn the levers to his left first until those forks were under the unit and then the ones on the left until the forks locked together. Then the ground crew would remove the lifters under the unit of lumber and the carrier would drive of with it. It was still hard work until the squeeze type units came along and made work simpler. I have tried to reproduce it to the best of my memory to make it an accurate model for my collection. I'm really not sure what make or model it is as I was told it could have been anything from an early model Hyster or it could have been a CARCO unit by PACCAR as the 1:1 had no markings on it other than the Fairhurst name. I couldn't really get close to it at the times I saw because of my age and the safety restrictions of the lumber industry concerning juveniles at the work site. But no matter, here is the model as I remember the original both times I saw it.
It is an older manual cross fork unit where as before hydros, they had swing forks on each side that were manually operated from the upper deck. The carrier would drive over the unit of lumber and the operator would manually turn the levers to his left first until those forks were under the unit and then the ones on the left until the forks locked together. Then the ground crew would remove the lifters under the unit of lumber and the carrier would drive of with it. It was still hard work until the squeeze type units came along and made work simpler. I have tried to reproduce it to the best of my memory to make it an accurate model for my collection. I'm really not sure what make or model it is as I was told it could have been anything from an early model Hyster or it could have been a CARCO unit by PACCAR as the 1:1 had no markings on it other than the Fairhurst name. I couldn't really get close to it at the times I saw because of my age and the safety restrictions of the lumber industry concerning juveniles at the work site. But no matter, here is the model as I remember the original both times I saw it.