Despite the ongoing construction slump, lumber continues to ship west from St. Maries, though not necessarily in the quantities of previous years. What has changed is the way in which logs are being shipped to St. Maries. STMA's Branch Train was indeed a more efficient way to bring logs into St. Maries than truck, in most cases. But the sort yard/reload at Clarkia is no longer the geographic hub of local logging that it once was. Trucking from some of the newer harvest sites to Clarkia was beginning to make less and less sense. And according to Potlatch, the additional handling involved in unloading from trucks, stacking, then reloading onto trains, was having a negative impact on time and product quality.