Jerry cans to tankers: Northern Ontario contractor Claude D'Amours celebrated his 25&snot; year in business this June, a remarkable career that began hauling jerry cans of fuel to a rented Tree Farmer in the trunk of a borrowed car. He has since become one of eastern Canada's largest full-service contractors

Canadian Forest Industries, Jun/Jul 2003 by Jamieson, Scott

As maintenance superintendent for all operations, Dan is based in the company's main shop just outside Moonbeam, where he is joined by a welder, two full-time mechanics, and the company's dedicated purchasing agent, Glenn Degrace. With all that iron and employees dispersed across northern Ontario, Claude feels that single-source buying is the only way to avoid chaos.

"Nobody buys a nut or washer if it doesn't come through Glenn. It gets shipped here, and then is sent out to the proper operation in one of the pick-ups that are always traveling between operations, whether the crew on Sunday night, or mine or Dan's. We have $300 000 in parts inventory - we actually have dealers who buy off us - so mistakes add up fast."

[Graph Not Transcribed]

Dan also oversees the Moonbeam Machine Shop, a separate division that he and Claude bought a few years ago as a 50/50 partnership. It was then doubled in size last summer to handle the logger's needs, as well as a good deal of local machining work. Dan visits the new Ramsey/Spanish River operation every Wednesday as well. This mobile garage houses a mechanical supervisor and three mechanics.

Finally, the Foleyet operation has a full garage of its own, with one mechanical supervisor, two mechanics, a helper and a clerk.

"Basically, all 250-hr and 500-hr services are scheduled through me and done in the bush," Dan explains. "We try to arrange to have machines at one of the garages for the 1 000-hr services, although we have a fully tooled service truck that can do everything in the bush as needed, including pumping out the waste oil. The whole thing is to keep the machines working during scheduled hours, and keep downtime to a minimum."

In summer, scheduled hours are two 11-hr shifts, four days/week, while the winter push requires the same shifts five days/week, plus perhaps a weekend or two to ensure the volume makes it in before break-up.

As for gear, Claude runs a wide range of equipment that even he has a hard time remembering, an indication of the capital involved in bringing such volumes out in this neck of the woods. On the logging side this includes Tigercat bunchers (2), Timberjack, Deere grapple skidders, Komatsu/Denharco stroke delimbers, Hood and Timrick slashers, and an assortment of Rotobec, Liebherr and Arbro-Fer loaders. Hauling is largely contracted out to owner-operators, but Claude has 11 Western Star and Kenworth tractor-trailers as well as a few International self-loaders with a variety of floats and Timmins log trailers.

Roadbuilding is handled by a fleet of Komatsu PC300 roadbuilders, Cat Dozers and Cat graders. Rounding this fleet off is an assortment of wheel loaders, a half-dozen Quads, a Bombardier swamp buggy, sand, gravel and snowplow trucks, a pair of Denis-Cimaf TRH-150 brush-cutters, Cat line skidders that act as service machines, gen sets, dozens of excavator and loader attachments, water trucks, 100 odd Motorola 2-way radios with repeater towers to connect the three main operations, eight portable welders, and lots more. Fortunately, he no longer uses his father's old car to haul stuff around - he relies instead on his 25 Ford pick-ups, four GM service/crew vans, three 45-ft portable service trailers, and fuel trucks, including an Advance 35 000-litre tanker.