I decided to go log hauling. I bought a log trailer, rigged it up and
found work. I hauled logs for a small gippo logger, dumping into Lake
Washington near Renton. He was logging on a hill and the only road out
was down several hundred feet so steep that the empty truck could just
make it up in low gear. The hill portion was laid with fore and aft logs
with side logs to keep the wheels in line. In order to get down this
steep hill with a big load of logs the operator had got a great long
piece of steel cable discarded from the cableway on Yesler Way in
Seattle. The cable was twice the length of the hill. At the top was a
large tree around which the cable was wrapped once. When a truck load of
logs came, the cable was hooked to the rear of the truck. The weight of
the huge cable plus the friction pulling it
around the tree was enough to hold the truck back. Of course the truck
was kept in low gear. At the foot of the hill the next truck hooked on
to the other end of the cable and repeated the process.
One day as I was about half way down the hill I felt something give and
the motor started to scream. The cable had broken and I was running
free. I put my foot and hand brakes all the way and could do nothing
more. As the motor in low gear was screaming down, another truck driver
ran up toward me and yelled "you are running away!" I yelled "do you
think I don't know it?" I finally reached the road below and got
stopped. Luckily there was no traffic then. My motor did not seem to be
hurt. After I finished this job the man did not have enough money to pay
me in full.
From there I got a job hauling from a camp 6 miles north of Marysville,
down to Marysville, across the R.R. and to a dump in the Tulalip Indian
Reservation. We were hauling by the foot and used solid rubber tires. I
remember cracking up the edges of the highway pavement. The cracks got
worse every day.
One day I was passing near a Marysville school. The kids had just gotten
out and I was
watching them carefully for fear they would get under the truck or
trailer. I had made the turn off the highway and was approaching the RR
crossing which was elevated steeply from the road. My muffler was burned
out and the exhaust was very loud. I approached the track in low gear
and was about on it when I heard the wild continuous howling of a RR
whistle. I had not known it was coming until then. I made some very
rapid calculations. If I stopped and jumped I would have no truck. If I
continued at my slow low gear rate I just might get the truck across. I
did this, looking straight ahead. For some reason I never looked once at
the train after the first whistle. A few seconds later there was a
tremendous crash, and I was left driving a perfectly empty truck. The
locomotive with a string of passenger cars from Vancouver, B.C. was
spouting steam all over. Some logs were on the trackside, some against
the motor. The crash was heard all over town and a crowd soon gathered.
Another locomotive was sent to finish the run. The conductor took my
name, and I wondered if I would have to pay for a locomotive. I never
heard more.
The next day I came back and dragged the logs one by one down to the
bay. My log trailer was buckled up some, but in one day I had it running
again. One day as we were passing the log camp, the steam whistle began
blowing without a stop. It was a signal that a man was killed and work
was shut down for the day. I had a good friend a little older than me
who worked on several jobs with me. For some reason I left this job for
another. Shortly after that I had word that my friend was killed. He was
a man who always hurried. On this occasion he was unloading a load of
logs. The logs were piled on the truck with steel wedges under them. The
log dump was made sloping so the logs would roll off into the bay. When
you released one wedge the load usually rolled off the truck without
releasing the other wedge. It was always a rule never to go in front of
the load after a wedge was loosened. This time my friend had not the
patience to walk around the rear of the load. To save a few seconds he
hurried across the front and the whole load crashed down over him. He
left a very nice family of a wife and 4 or 5 children.