Air-Equipped Connected Truck
The Most Practical Skeleton Logging Car on the Market. Equipped With U. S. Safety Appliances to Meet Interstate Commerce Commission Requirements.
This car has done more to make the name of the Seattle Car & Foundry Co. well known among the logging fraternity than any other single one of our products. We instituted their use on the Pacific Coast. They were designed to avoid many of the obvious disadvantages of flat cars and to add the element of safety to trucks without materially increasing cost.
The letter which follows, pictures better than we could, the reception and experience of the trade, from the view point of the actual operator.
NORTHWEST LUMBER COMPANY
Kerriston Mill
Superintendent's Office
Kerriston, Wash., July 19, 1913
Mr. F. W. Chriswell, Chief Engineer,
Seattle Car & Foundry Co.,
Seattle, Washington
Dear Sir:
Mr. Horton our Secretary has requested me to write you of our experience with the connected logging trucks which we have been using for the last three or four years.
In a general way I might classify this under two heads, construction and operation. Regards to construction of these cars will say, while they are seemingly light, we have found them very strong, and more serviceable in our logging than flat cars which we had previously used and are still using. The air equipment as arranged in these cars is very well protected, and we have experienced practically no trouble whatsoever from breakage. Due to the construction of these cars with their three sills as the only woodwork, we have found the cost of maintenance very little, perhaps due to a certain extent to the accessibility of the parts, which permit of a thorough inspection by simply walking past the car. In operating, we have found these cars exceptionally adapted to the hauling of logs, and during our four years experience do not recall an instance where the load has been spilled due to any fault of the bunk or blocks. Our cars, of which we have twenty-four in operation, are built on twenty-four foot truck centers with nine and ten foot bunks, and during the last year and a half we have lost but one log except through derailment. We find that these cars seemingly ride easier than the seven flat cars which we have in service, permit of a larger load and carry their loads to better advantage. These cars are easily loaded, and it is not uncommon that we haul nine and ten thousand feet to the car. Our loads will average between seven and eight thousand feet per car. All of the trainmen who have worked on these cars, and the loaders in the woods like them very much. The fact that they are easy to load leads the loaders to put on a good load on them and in a careful manner, and in an all around way will consider them very much superior to the flat cars we are using, being seven in number of the standard logging type.
Any further information which I may be able to give you and which you may desire, will be furnished with pleasure upon request.