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SOUTHERN STUMPIN’ By David Abbott • Managing Editor • Ph. 334-834-1170 • Fax: 334-834-4525 • E-mail: david@hattonbrown.com
Ralph Metcalf: Industry Icon ogging technology has progressed in just a few generations from mules and crosscut saws to the high-tech, high-production, highdollar operations of today. “I’ve logged many a day with mules,” recollects Ralph Metcalf, who has been a part of that technological evolution over the several decades of his career. “It has been interesting to see it develop and be involved from crosscut to high production hot saws. I have been really fortunate.” Metcalf, 82, is well-known in the industry for his involvement in sales and marketing for both CTR and Union Grove, NC-based CSI. I had lunch with Mr. Metcalf and his wife Annie and son Chris at Expo Richmond back in May. Ralph and Annie have been married for 21 years. Chris Metcalf owns RCM, an outdoor power equipment dealer for Scagg and Red Max in Asheville, NC. Ralph’s daughter Dorinda is a phlebotomist.
ber-tired skidders in these mountains,” he was told repeatedly. “Everyone was logging with something like an HD6 Allis-Chalmers or a TD9 International, a crawler tractor or farm tractor with winches, or in a lot of cases horses and mules.” Undaunted, Ralph had ideas for a better method. “My thought was to use the crawler tractors as setout machines and use the rubber-tired skidders to run the long skid roads up and down the mounFarm Equipment Co. tains because they were faster and running on rubAfter later selling that mill, Metcalf was talkber instead of slower and running on steel,” he ing one day to Ged Roberson, co-owner of Farm explains. “It was a new concept. That increased Equipment Co., a Ford tractor dealership in production tremendously and also cut down on Asheville. Roberson wondered what Ralph expenses, so the skidder was a big help to the guys planned to do next. working in the mountains, especially where they “I don’t know; maybe I’ll go in the equipment had long skids.” business,” Metcalf teased him. After the initial survey was completed, Rober“Really?” Roberson raised an eyebrow. son wanted to know how many Franklin skidders Ralph thought he could sell in the first year. “I don’t know,” Ralph considered. “I think I could sell Water Boy maybe four or five in a year.” Ralph didn’t just grow up in the “If you think you can do that, business, he chuckles; he was literalwe’ll take it on,” Roberson decided. ly born into it. “Actually, I was born That first year Metcalf sold eight in a sawmill shack,” he says. “That’s Franklins. where my mom and dad lived. They “Once the reps for Prentice, had a midwife, one of my great Ramey and some of the other loader aunts.” It was July 10, 1939, when manufacturers learned that we had his journey started. Franklin skidders, they started callJust about all of his family worked ing, wanting to set us up as a loader in agriculture and forestry. “They dealer too.” Soon, Farm Equipment logged in winter and fall and farmed was selling Prentice. “Nobody used in the spring and summer,” he remiknuckleboom loaders at that time nisces of those bygone days. “They basically. Prentice had no continugrew corn and wheat and kept cattle. Ralph Metcalf, left, at Expo Richmond in May with his wife Annie and son Chris ous turn loaders. They were all 180 One of my uncles had a sawmill.” degrees, or 90 degree turns to one “Because I’ve been thinking about hiring someWhen he was old enough, Ralph helped his dad side or the other. But it worked, the business body to set up an industrial division.” So Ralph and uncle in the woods. His first job was carrying grew and we did pretty good with them.” went to work for the company selling industrial drinking water to them while they worked a crosstractors and backhoes. When Farm Equipment cut saw in the summer heat. Soon enough, he’d go Bucking Trends on to man a crosscut himself, but in a way that first took on Bobcat skid-steers, Metcalf became the Metcalf recalls that a Minnesota man had first Bobcat salesman in western North Carolina. job of helping loggers do their job would set the While in this position he continued to further his patented a buck saw that was powered by a Brigpattern for the rest of his career: finding a way to gs & Stratton gasoline motor and worked in taneducation via correspondence courses in business be of service, to make someone else’s job easier. management with La Salle University in Chicago; dem with a knuckleboom loader. “It was electric Upon graduating high school, Ralph began a that took two and a half years to complete. He also over hydraulic, running a cord up from the saw four-year enlistment in the Navy, serving in the to the operator platform with a toggle switch to aviation division. He spent a year and a half on an attended annual sales and equipment operation run the bar up and down,” Ralph recollects. The training at Ford’s test farm in Valdosta, Ga. aircraft carrier, then the rest of his time at the By the late ’60s, Metcalf was successful enough Heikkinen family, who owned Prentice then, got naval air station in Norfolk, Va. While there he the marketing rights for that patent and started but didn’t especially care for industrial tractor attended some night classes at William and Mary building and selling the saws. sales; he wanted to get back in the woods. MeanTechnical Institute. “They gave a lot of trouble with the valve syswhile, Franklin skidder dealer Tidewater had When his time in the service was up he went tem,” Ralph reveals. “Every time it would rain signed Farm Equipment as a sub dealer for the home and back to helping his dad log while also those electric over hydraulic valves wouldn’t Franklin line. “You know a lot of loggers around looking for work through the employment office. work very well.” here; why don’t you stay with me and sell skid“They called and told me they had a job opening Some customers grew frustrated. One of them, ders?” Roberson persuaded him. “Take a few posted I might be interested in,” Ralph says. Bill McNeely, asked Ralph, “Why don’t you weeks to do a survey and see what they think “Actually they sent me a post card because we guys build a saw to run hydraulically off the about skidders.” didn’t have a phone. Since I had experience in loader system?” Ralph did talk to a lot of his friends in the logging they said they had a sawmill that was Metcalf wasn’t sure, so he asked the engineers at woods; they laughed at him. “You can’t sell rublooking for someone.” The sawmill, located in
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Asheville, NC, was part of Wood Mosaic Corp., which had headquarters in Louisville, Ky. and Huntington, W.Va. It cut walnut, cherry and hard maple. When that yard closed he went to work for another company, Hardwood Corp. of America, for a few years before deciding to go in business for himself, buying a sawmill with a friend.
SEPTEMBER 2021 l Southern Loggin’ Times
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