Mike Pearson's Adventures on a Pale Blue Dot

An excellent video on what I assume was one day in the life of an off-highway logging truck operation. I'll include these old posts of logging trucks that are forever parked...just so you can compare the life of a working truck with an abandoned hulk in the forest.   http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2012/07/lost-treasure-trove-of-abandoned.html

Robert Gilmour LeTourneau was a man with a vision. A big vision. A vision that was his and his alone. He designed and built earth-moving machines that sculpted and re-shaped vast sections of the world. Most, if not all of his designs were years or decades ahead of their time. Believing that he was doing God's work,  he didn't have many moments of doubt that he was going to be successful in whatever wild creation or huge contract he took on. The Wikipedia page for RG LeTourneau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._G._LeTourneau Here's a tour of some of RG's machines and ideas. The Tournalayer...a machine that builds a house in one pass. Click on the video icon The LeTourneau house subdivision...click the link LeTourneau houses   More LeTourneau machines An early version of a dirt scraper machine, which became the basic idea for every scraper that any other company has built since. This was in the years before WWII. Here is a video of an older model LeT...

A reader of the blog wrote to me the other day with interesting news. One of the old machines in the posts about the Sterloff property had caught his attention. So, he wrote to say " hey do you know what that thing is?...well, it's very old and very rare. Other Sterloff property posts are here   http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2012/07/sterloff-trucksmid-1940s-peterbilt-and.html    http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2012/01/more-photos-from-sterloff-property.html On the subject of logging skidder oddities...the Diesel/Electric LeTourneau skidder    http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2012/12/letourneau-dieselelectric-log-skidder.html Lost treasure trove of abandoned logging machines   http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2012/07/lost-treasure-trove-of-abandoned.html Jackson Bros Logging   http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2012/05/jackson-brothers-logging.html And, back to old Euclid stories... The log s...

I just found this on Vimeo. There used to be one or two of these monsters on Vic Walters property in Porpoise Bay at the old mill site. Here is a photo of my dad having a close look at one, back in the 60's. Seems to me that the LeTourneau machines were used in the early 50's around the Coast. Likely one of those times when the idea was too far ahead of it's time. It used electric motors on each wheel  and the electricity came from the front mounted diesel motor Link to video is below ( no sound ) http://vimeo.com/35343215 He re is another video of the same technology being used as a log loader http://vimeo.com/18327246   Again...same idea is now a large all purpose transporter ( I have no clue as to why the editor chose that particular music ) http://vimeo.com/18605197   From the "go big or go home" files...the Tourno-train   http://vimeo.com/16138691 The huge and b izarre "Tree Crusher"...looks like something that just makes a big me...

An early hour trip to the industrial part of Oil Town, to catch these hordes of machines in the summer morning sun. Taken at several nearby equipment rental yards. The sea of silver and beige in the foreground is an army of industrial ligh ting plants. D iesel powered units for working at night . T he masts stand vertical and usually hold 4 powerful lamps. The trucks in the middle are deck trucks and tractor units for delivering the rental gear.  

The last film played at the venerable Empire Theater Granville 7 on November 4, 2012....the interior demolition started at 7:30 am the next day. Anything that looked, smelled or in anyway resembled movie night out...was torn down, torn off, hammered, unbolted , unscrewed, pulled away and tossed into the garbage bin of constant progress. It was sad to see the screens get cut apart with knives and the seats getting the sledgehammer treatment. The massive speakers that could have powered a fantastic outdoor concert ( or a window busting house party ), all went to the trash bins. In the end, no one had the time and storage space to put the goodies until a good home could be found. We will be regretting that move one day when the technology swings back around to "retro" mode...and all the gear is gone. Makes me think of all those WW ll  airplanes that got scrapped at the end of the war. Nobody considered them to be of any value...because "new technology" was com...