Over the Edge Recovering a Pacific P16 Logging Truck from an Oregon Cascade Canyon

Описание: A Pacific P16 logging truck 34,000 pounds of hand-built Canadian iron went over the edge of an Oregon Cascade canyon road in the 1970s and dropped eighty feet down a forty-five-degree embankment into old-growth fir. The driver walked away. The truck didn't. What followed was a three day recovery operation using two Caterpillar D9 dozers, high-tensile steel wire rope, and the kind of rigging judgment that only three decades in Oregon timber country can produce.
This is the story of that recovery and the story of the Pacific P16 itself.
Pacific Truck and Trailer Limited started in 1947 in Vancouver, British Columbia, founded by three former Hayes Manufacturing employees who believed the logging industry needed something heavier, tougher, and more capable than anything on the market. They were right. The P16 running a Detroit Diesel 12V71N engine, Allison CLBT5960 automatic transmission, Clark rear axles rated at 91,000 pounds, and 14.00×25 off-road tires was built for terrain that would destroy a highway truck inside a season. Oregon's Cascade timber operations, with their switchback roads and grades approaching twenty percent, were exactly the environment the P16 was designed for.
At Truck Buff USA, we tell the stories of the machines that built this country the trucks that ran the routes, hauled the loads, and sometimes went over the edge and came back. The P16 is one of the most capable, most durable, and most overlooked logging trucks ever manufactured. This is its story.
In this video:

The full story of the Oregon Cascade canyon recovery
Pacific Truck and Trailer history and founding
Pacific P16 technical specifications: engine, transmission, axles, tires
Three-day recovery operation: cable rigging, D9 dozers, snatch block geometry
How the P16 survived the impact and returned to service within six days
The legacy of Pacific trucks and the surviving machines still working today
Pacific Truck and Trailer closed its North Vancouver manufacturing plant in October 1991 after decades of hand-built production. Today, Coast Powertrain in New Westminster, British Columbia still supports the P16s remaining in service across the Pacific Northwest. These machines outlasted the roads they worked and the companies that bought them. That is what Pacific built.
If you work in logging, have driven a Pacific, or know someone who did we want to hear from you. Drop your story in the comments. Subscribe to Truck Buff USA for more documentary stories about the trucks, drivers, and operations that defined American and North American trucking history.
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