LOGGING IN THE DOUGLAS FIR REGION, 175 



PEPBECIATION. 



The Forest Service in connection with timber-appraisal woi-k has 

 placed the life of loading engines at eight years, and has assumed that 

 the engines at the end of that time will be worth about 10 per cent of 

 the initial cost. The depreciation on a loading engine that cost 

 $2,700, together with the fuel-oil-burner equipment, water and oil 

 tank, sled, etc., amounts to about $125 per year, or about $0,035 per 

 thousand feet. 



RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION. 



The ;bulk of the timber logged in the region is conveyed over 

 standard-gauge railroads to the mills or large bodies of water for dis- 

 tances ranging from a mile or two to 30 miles or more. The entire 

 length of line may be owned by the logging operator, or the logging 

 road only be used to deliver the logs to some point on a common-car- 

 rier railroad. 



Bryajit, in "Logging," states that the successful use of steel-rail 

 logging roads began in 1876. The number of logging railroads in- 

 creased rapidly, and by 1881 there were 71 in operation in Michigan 

 and 5 in Wisconsin. The j&rst on the Pacific coast was operated about 

 1885. Eailroad transportation was used on the coast practically as 

 soon as the length of haul made it the most economical method, so 

 that it did not have to supplant other methods, except in a few cases. 

 Now it is the preferred form of transportation, the Grays Harbor and 

 Willapa Harbor districts being the only ones where it is not exclu- 

 sively used. 



Railroads have made accessible large bodies of timber which other- 

 wise could not be logged, since the conditions in the region, for the 

 most part, are not favorable for driving. This mode of transporta- 

 tion has several other advantages over other forms. The logging op- 

 erator does not have to wait for flood waters to float the logs to the 

 mill or market, to anticipate market conditions in advance, to have 

 large sums of money tied up along the banks of streams, or to lose 

 logs in transit. Furthermore, the railroad delivers clean logs to the 

 mill, which results in an appreciable saving in cost of manufacture. 



COMMON-CARRIER RAILROADS. 



While some of the long hauls are made over railroads owned en- 

 tirely by the logging companies or closely affiliated companies, most 

 of them are made over common-carrier railroads. 



In Table 28 is given a list of specially quoted log rates charged by 

 common-carrier railroads in Oregon and Washington in 1913. 



