Just to add a little to Jeff's fine summary and to address a couple comments. I attended the
Wood Products Show in Portland with the Simpson people in 1999 and as an aside we all visited
the Weyerhauser plant in Cottage Grove to view their Dry Side Stacking Hoist. The purpose of
the visit was to gather data to update the Korbel Hoist in a similar manner. Over the next couple years we redid both the Hoist and the Debarker setting new handle and board foot records for the mill in the process. The mill personnel were looking forward to utilizing the 73 foot bulkheads to handle this increased output but alas and to Jeff's comment, the A&MR became inoperable and the reload issues were expensive. To address the cost of foreign production, at the time we finished the upgrades on the 35 Debarker the mill was pushing a million board feet per day on 17 (seventeen) production people, end to end. That included two Pettibone drivers on the log deck and one to two dry side fork drivers. It would be hard to envision production costs offshore being much less expensive BUT in the interim the mill manager retired, the maintenance supervisor was fired over a disagreement with the new manager, the head of purchasing retired, several key maintenance people either retired or quit and there went your expertise. Add in the increased transportation costs and here comes the export business, the logs are still cut but the other costs are avoided. Yes the NCRA or upper NWP or whatever we're calling it was having trouble making ends meet but the unseen ramifications did even more damage.