Kenny's Loggin' – Norie Brothers' Mack Trucks

Feb 16, 2023 - 2 years ago

For this story, I’ve consulted with Ian McCallum who worked for Nories in the 50’s and 60’s, driving all these trucks. Ian had pamphlets, newspaper clippings and pictures about these trucks.

Kenny's Loggin' – Norie Brothers' Mack Trucks — *26,000 board feet!*

Norie Bros. obtained six war surplus Mack trucks. They had 671 Jimmy motors and came with a bare minimum cab. Just a seat and a bit of a roof. Nories had cabs and fenders added at Norm Copley’s shop at Mill Bay. Number 1 & 2 were gravel trucks. Numbers 3, 4 and 5 were log haulers and from what I can determine #6 never left Copley’s shop. One of the gravel trucks had the box removed and a tank added to make a fire truck.

Nine foot bunks with about two foot stakes and straight pipes out of the exhaust manifold. Living in Elk Bay in my fifth year, I could hear them coming along the beach road which sent me scrambling to my big rock where I could watch them dump.

Nories purchased a used 34 ton Mack Dump Truck, powered by a Cummins NVH-1200 Diesel engine. Possibly this truck came from a mine in Quebec. The truck was completely rebuilt from the ground up—the cab was moved forward four feet and the engine was overhauled and moved forward about eleven inches. Turbochargers were added. A Twin Disc Converter-Transmission package was installed with the transmission mid-ship mounted for flexibility and accessibility. When rebuilt it would haul 20,000 board-feet of logs or GVW of 120 tons. One load at Port Neville had 26,000 board feet on board.

They also acquired #8 which had a six cylinder Cummins engine. They left this as a gravel truck, hauling ballast, the Eimco rock drill could fit in the box and it was really handy putting stuff in when moving camp.

Henri Norie was pretty proud of his #7, he asked my Dad how it was working out. Dad said, “Well Henri it can haul a heck of a lot of wood, but the trailer is so heavy that it's a struggle to lift the trailer off with the TL 11.”

Number 9 was obtained and rebuilt at Copley’s shop same as number 7, except it only had a half shack for a cab. Henri Norie designed a self loading trailer using a winch to load the trailer. Could have been the first one designed for big logging trucks. It worked really good for backing into steep landings. Back right up to the loader put the trailer down and ready to load. No more trying to get the truck to back up to hook up the trailer on the slippery bark and mud. Lots of times you would have to pull it up with the straw-line from the yarder. Later on, Nories purchased two new Pacific P-16s that came with self-loading trailers. Pacific had used a hydraulic ram to load the trailers. This style never really caught on because it was a pretty big job switching trailers if you had a problem.

Nories were logging on Menzies Mountain just above Roberts Lake. One day, over the radio came, “The motor quit on this truck, I’m just at the top of the hill above the big switch-back. Hopefully I can get it stopped.” When we got there the front wheels were hanging about thirty feet in the air. This was a close call!

Ken Wilson worked in the logging industry in B.C. for over 50 years. Ken is a regular contributor to Supply Post newspaper with his column “Kenny’s Loggin’”, and resides on Vancouver Island, B.C.