Water: Logged Ply the River Company Secret - Finning Canada

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SPACE AGE: Modifications including a custom cab and an oilfiltration system designed by NASA set this 345CLL apart.20 tracks & treads Spring 2011www.finning.ca
BY DAVID DICENZOhere’s a new fixture dotting the landscape when you drive by theFraser River in Richmond, B.C. Underneath the Knight Street Bridge sits a massiveCaterpillar 345CLL log loader, owned by Richmond Plywood CorporationLimited, which operates a mill right on the banks of the river. Twenty-four hours a day,seven days a week, the Cat sits stationary, yanking logs from a boom. The logs will soonbe stripped to make plywood before being delivered to destinations around the globe.“The machine is absolutely huge,” says Gary Sigsworth, Finning’s general line salesrep at the Surrey branch. “It’s in such a spot that you can see it whenever you drive bythe mill. You see this big Cat monstrosity pulling logs – it’s great.”Sigsworth’s exuberance comes from a simple fact. This specific log loader is thefirst Cat owned by Richply (as the company is popularly known), which was originallyfounded by a group of 300 men in 1956. The company is one of North America’slargest producers of plywood, peeling almost 500,000 cubic metres of logs per yearand creating product that goes to Japan, England, Scotland, Italy, Germany and theUnited States, among other countries.The province once had plywood companies numbering in the 30s but is now downto nine mills, with Richply and its almost 400 employees one of the biggest producers,and the lone one left on the Lower Mainland.Any business that has successfully operated for more than half a century goesthrough change. And Richply is no exception. When longtime mobile equipmentsupervisor John Robinson, a dedicated employee since 1975, was in the market for anew loader for Richply, he decided to go with the Caterpillar. The decision, he says,was based on one factor: Finning’s superior service. Robinson was familiar withmany members of the Finning family, employees who had often helped him obtainparts in the past.What he has come to learn since getting the 345CLL running in early October isthat the iron Finning sells and services is pretty good, too.“It’s a beautiful piece of equipment,” says Robinson, a Montreal native who grew upin Toronto before settling in British Columbia. “All of our operators – and we havea lot of them on the one machine because we run it three shifts a day, seven days aweek – they all say the same thing, that it’s like sitting in their living room at home.“We put 2,000 hours on it in just four months. And we haven’t had to touch it.”But Robinson’s loader is no ordinary piece of equipment. Given its unique application,sitting by the river and removing logs to put onto the conveyor, Richply hadmanufacturer Weldco-Beales make some modifications, namely a customized boomstick, heel and grapple and manufactured cab. Weldco-Beales raised the operator’sseat by two feet at Robinson’s request to provide better visibility, making it a “Westwww.finning.ca tracks & treads Spring 2011 21
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Water: Logged Ply the River Company Secret - Finning Canada

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