When loggers began working in the big timber country of the Pacific Northwest and California, they encounter much larger trees than they had ever seen in the east. It was common to find old growth trees that were 12-14 feet across the stump and over 200 feet tall. These gigantic trees included, Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, cedar, Sitka Spruce and Redwoods, plus more.

The volume of timber found in these western woodlands represented tremendous economic value. However in order to realize monetary gain, these trees had to be cut, transported and milled into marketable products. This brought about a need for much bigger and better equipment.

Logging in the old days was very labor intensive and dangerous. Horses and oxen made up the earliest means of transport. Later steam engines filled a much-needed role mostly as donkey engines, with an array of cables to winch in the logs to a designated area. (A donkey engine was a steam engine mounted on a skid that skidded logs from different areas to a central location. When the donkey engine needed to be moved, they just hooked the cable to a substantial tree and winched the engine to it. Slow, but probably better than animal power in some cases.) Great strides in logging were made when the crawler tractor with a rear-mounted winch and a logging arch became reality in the late 1920’s and 30’s.

Cletrac crawler tractors had always been a favorite amongst loggers. With their controlled differential steering, which provided power to both tracks at all times, and their high clearance, they outperformed most of the others. Cletrac developed a model 80 logger’s special, which was known as the Blue Ox. It featured a heavier undercarriage and was fully guarded with belly pans and a radiator guard in addition to a large bumper. The Pacific Car and Foundry Co. mounted their first logging winches on the Cletrac Blue Ox 80.

William Pigott, Sr. founded Seattle Car Manufacturing Co. in 1905 to produce railway and logging equipment. William was an early pioneer in west coast steel production. A few years later the company was merged with Twohy Brothers of Portland, Oregon to become the Pacific Car and Foundry Company. The new company was headquartered in Renton, Washington.

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