Making Steady Progress: Kirkpatrick Logging

Article by Mike Crouse

The Kirkpatrick family migration from the Midwest to Oregon country dates back to the mid-1800s. Great great grandpa (John M. Kirkpatrick) was one of a family of 14. He initially settled in Weston, northeast of Pendleton in eastern Oregon, where he either owned or worked on a ranch before eventually coming to Portland. While living there, he was asked to survey Port Orford, which he did, and was involved in fighting the Indians there on Battle Rock in 1861.

He had five boys, and eventually the family wound up settling in the Brookings, Oregon area, where a lot of the family is still located.
Kirkpatrick’s grandfather was involved in lumber mills and logging for a number of years in both Oregon and California, thus his son (and Larry’s father) Dan was raised in and around the business, learning both to run and repair equipment at an early age, even working as a millwright—all of this prior to joining the service.

Upon his return from the active military, he got into log trucking around Brookings, where he was raising his son Larry and nephew Rick Haug (who he started raising from when he was about 18 months old). “Grandfather was getting ill by that time, so we moved to Trinity Center (CA), because they needed loggers down there before they built the dam (Trinity Dam) on the trinity river in northern California.” By that time the Kirkpatrick mill in Stoney Ford had shut down, “and dad got some of the crew from the mill to help log, the Trinity Center before it was flooded,” which they logged from ‘55-’56. “He bought timber, and ran the logging and sawmilling for about four years,” Kirkpatrick explained, but the economy of the time ultimately brought that mill to a permanent close and the family wound up where he found work in Redding, California.

By that point Larry was a freshman in high school. “Dad got an old HD5 Cat from grandpa and we logged poles and piling there out of Weaverville, dad, me, and mom too if we could get her out there. That went on for a couple of years. I was out there on the weekends; otherwise dad was working by himself.” With that job’s completion they returned to Brookings, arriving in town 20 minutes before the 1962 Columbus Day storm. Dan Kirkpatrick was 34 at the time, and for the next several years there was plenty of logging available, and Kirkpatrick Logging was right in the middle of it. The ground-based company operated a single side working between Oregon and California the next several years.

The next generation

Following graduation from Brookings High School in ‘65, Larry Kirkpatrick entered Oregon State University in the school of engineering, coming home over Christmas vacation, “...and went logging. We were logging in California at the time, very nearby Brookings,” driving to the job with Blaine Walding, and were hit head on, putting both of them in the hospital. Kirkpatrick explained, “I’m a statistic for no seat belts. I came from behind the steering wheel and dash as it collapsed and hit me,” and while he broke both legs, his left arm in two places, and dislocated the left elbow, there were no internal injuries. “Had I remained inside the cab I’d have been squashed to death right there, so I was fortunate,” he says, but he wasn’t returning to school that year, instead he went through four operations and returned home on March 1st. Then on May 1st he began twice a day physical therapy in a Medford convalescent hospital to get him standing using crutches. He continued to improve. By June he was running Cat.

That fall he returned to school, eventually graduating from OSU in industrial arts and education in 1972, but couldn’t find a teaching position, and again returned to OSU. “I loved education,” he explained with a smile, taking additional classes, substitute teaching, driving school bus and other activities.

“Dad got hurt towards the end of March, mom called and I came home without a penny in my pocket and took over the logging,” he explained.
around mid-summer of that year, “I got a call from north bend principal,” Kirkpatrick explained, “and he asked would I like to apply for the forestry teaching position at north bend Senior high. I took the job, and started the forestry program. When I went to teaching school dad came back to the logging.

After teaching a year and a half, and still a single guy, Kirkpatrick “...took off on a big ski weekend. Skied clear into Squaw Valley over Christmas vacation that year, and when he came back home, relaxing with some friends when he met Pat Davis, who was celebrating her 25th birthday at the same place. They clicked particularly well there, so well that by November of 1975, they were married, then he quit his teaching job to complete his full standard teaching credentials (which he had to do within three years of his start teaching) again returning to OSU. Upon completing those credentials and seeking a teaching post, he was dismayed to find a program through Chemeketa Community College (Salem). The four districts he applied to for the job could hire an applicant for that same position for $4,000 less a year, Kirkpatrick explained, adding, “I elected to return to logging.”

Return to logging

In the summer of ‘76 Kirkpatrick returned to his father’s company, “I’d done a lot of choker setting, and hooking” and his experience evolved “into the log loading long before that, he explained. So upon rejoining the company he, “...ended up on the landing running the shovel, and running the side.

Transition to towers

The company changed from ground based (Cat logging) in ‘66, with his father’s purchasing and rebuilding a machine. “Dad bought a swing yarder from an insurance company and rebuilt it to resell,” Kirkpatrick explained. “It was a PC100 built by Pierce Crain Carrier. You could log and load with the same machine. So that’s what we did.” When it was completed, “someone found a job for him,” using the cable machine, something they had no experience at, when Kirkpatrick explained, “one guy came over everyday and BS’d with us,” as they were rebuilding the machine, “and told us how to cable log, and we told him he should join with us, which he did. There was 10 million feet to log... that was a big deal.” Kirkpatrick smiled noting, “turns out he actually did know and we caught on pretty well, from knowing nothing about cable logging to logging that big a job. We learned, then he went his way and we kept logging.”

Next they purchased a 355 P&H track loader, “putting on a heel boom and we started loading,” said Kirkpatrick. The picked up a logging job in
brookings, and started to log. “Someone came to the job and said they wanted to buy that machine,” Kirkpatrick said, “and dad sold him the yarder, loader, and the job.”

Kirkpatrick’s father then took the money up to Coos Bay and bought 40 timbered acres, which in turn he logged, “with the wooden sled and a rigged tree,” then sold it, and with the profit, “bought another PC 100, put the hoist on it, which improved it immensely, which we used as a swing yarder, and we bought a log loader.”

This started what became a pattern repeated many times over the years, Dan’s buying, improving and selling equipment, which became a second business in addition to the logging the next few decades.

By 1982 they started a second logging side, purchasing a second swing tower, which also doubled their personnel. Tthat same year they bought their first logging truck. “We started getting into multiple sorts and the trucks we had at the time wanted to haul only the best sorts,” Kirkpatrick explained. “So we bought a truck to haul what our truckers didn’t want to get the logs off the landing. Not really the best way to go about things but that’s what we did.”

The BIG tower

By 1986 Kirkpatrick explained, they’d incorporated the company and, “we were looking at jobs and turning down those that required equipment bigger than what we had,” which had them looking for a remedy. “We went to an auction and got a ‘good buy’ on a big yarder,” which was a ‘72 self-propelled M2 berger with a 739 Skagit hoist on it, that was a 110-ft. tower. They sold one of the swing towers at that point, and when all was completed had two logging sides, which continued until after finishing a job that used both towers they couldn’t find another job for the swing yarder, and it sat for two years.

“Finally we got another job for the swing yarder,” Kirkpatrick explained, “and we discovered we were netting as much with just the big yarder (by itself), with less headache.” that led to their scrapping the swing yarder, returning to a single side.

Smaller tower

The shifting fortunes of time came full circle around 2000, when Kirkpatrick explained, “we started seeing small jobs that would have cost a lot to get the big tower into, and I suggested to father we buy a small tower.” About that same time, “a family back in brookings had a yarder they wanted to sell, a Madill 071, which I bought outright myself.”

Upon seeing this 071, you immediately notice it is a bit different, clearly with a Madill upper, but with Caterpillar tracks, painted in thunderbird colors, and Kirkpatrick refers to it as an MTY5071, he explained, “West Coast Tractor was building the West Coast yarder, when in about ‘72 Madill gave them a design for a hoist. It has a Terex Cat undercarriage, three-speeds to the hoist,” and produced some 11 units like that. “Madill came, liked the concept, took it from them and started building them in Nanaimo,” he said. “After that was built on tanks.”

When Kirkpatrick had purchased the small tower, “...we had a job, dad was going to log with the big tower, and I said we should log with the little tower, and it worked out great,” easier move in and out, faster setup, and less expensive to operate. After that they continued to log a single side, working one or the other tower. “When we ran the little yarder I got rent for it.”

Changing of the guard

The weekend before Christmas in 2002, Larry and his wife, who’d just moved to Eugene earlier in the year, had come down to Coos Bay when his father, now 75 said “he was going to quit. We’d bid on 10 jobs and lost everyone one of them,” Kirkpatrick explained, his father noting, ‘we had to bit too cheap to get a logging job and too many loggers were out there’ ...he’d had enough.”

“We came back home,” thought about this turn of events, “and went back down for Christmas eve breakfast at the blue Moon, and I told him, ‘we’re going to buy you out. We’re not sure how but we will.’” and Dan’s reaction, “ok.”

The company consisted of the big yarder, the small yarder, log loader, a crawler, fire truck, the crummy, “miscellaneous other logging stuff, and the seven man crew, including me. At the time we were logging. The job was 25 miles from me and 85 miles for the crew. Within a year, and another break between logging jobs, rick and Steve Haug, with Kirkpatrick’s help, moved up to the Eugene area as well, “and from that point on the rest of the crew was out of Eugene as well.” Kirkpatrick noted nearly 10 years later, “it’d been a good move.”

In the next few years he gradually upgraded equipment, replacing their stroker with a Denharco mounted on a Kobelco carrier. “It was very used as well, but a lot better than the older one had been,” Kirkpatrick smiled.

Next up was upgrading the Koehring 6644 loader, and found a very good buy on a Caterpillar 330 shovel, which wouldn’t start at the auction. With another $5,000 on Cat’s rebuild of the fuel pump, he was still into it for just $31,000. Since then he’s swapped that 330 and purchased another at auction, which he still uses today.

Today’s company

In the past year, Kirkpatrick’s modernized the operations further, “moving the company forward,” and increasing efficiencies and production.

First purchased was Fortronics electronic choker bells. “I’d been listening for a couple years about electric choker bells from everyone else. When these came out everyone who’d ever used them just loved them! So I decided it was time to try them,” Kirkpatrick said. “It was a good move. There are things I can do with them we could not do with regular choker bells, plus its really simple stuff to work on: it’s either one thing or the other. I can replace the battery, otherwise it goes to the shop.” They have nine chokers total.

“You can set that up to release them differently,” he explained. “We have two different frequencies. When we’re presetting, half are painted white and half red, so we can release them properly. It’s also useful in tight chute, where you can release one for the processor, while the other is held until needed. It works very well.”

This year they’ve also purchased an ‘04 Waratah 624 mounted on an ‘03 Link-belt 290LX, which requires less landing space and will be more versatile in today’s markets than the aging stroker it replaced. It’s proven to be a very good move as well. “I was going to rebuild and turbo one, then we stumbled across a new engine that was missing the exhaust manifold and the turbo, so we bought it, and discovered it was a low hour engine,” as well.

The result, in addition to a crew that’s working very well together, has exceeded expectations.

The future

“The people who want to work, the contractors who want to stay in it, are busy,” Kirkpatrick said of the future. He plans to take a bit more time off this year, take in a NASCAR event in March, and taking a cruise to Alaska with family in July. He’s optimistic on the future of logging, and notes, “we’re making progress...steady progress.”

And perhaps most importantly, he admits he’s doing what he loves to do!