CPF66 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2024 11:51 am
As a side note last time I went through Brownville Jct, PRL had packed up all the lumber and equipment they had there to load cars, which it appears they decided to stop using CPKC again. I dont think Moose River has shipped a car in sometime and recently has been trucking lumber to Scott, Quebec and Saint-Lambert-de-Lauzon, Quebec on Sartigan albeit in much smaller quantities than what we saw in the past.
Fontaine Lumber is shipping a few cars per week from Jackman.
Moose River was sold to Fontaine Lumber which operates a few mills in the Woburn/Stratton area about a year ago and the sale recently was finalized. Pleasant River Lumber which owned Moose River bought several logging companies and large amounts of forest land in Washington and Penobscot Counties probably 5-6 years ago. Lumber is a more lucrative business when you own everything from stump to store, which is what they have done with the purchase of Gerald Pelletier Inc as well as the creation of A&A Brochu Trucking and Logging, and the purchase of Delaite's Trucking on the logging end of things. Plus the purchase of AW Chaffee Transport, Crescent Lumber, and Ware-Butler on the trucking and retail end of things.
Prior to this they purchased logs locally at Jackman and from companies around Millinocket which were moved via rail to Jackman. When those moves stopped under CP, the trucking from Millinocket or Chester to Jackman was killing them. Jackman also needed major upgrades since the boiler was extremely inefficient, which with the sale I wouldn't be too surprised if they built biomass plants at the two other mills to lower the operating costs. Enfield also has a much newer production line, and the mill itself is pretty much a new mill. Go to 2:52 to see what it looked like 2018 after a fire destroyed it in the 2000's:
https://youtu.be/tfMgHS-CMQs?si=M7iX5nZiRcdp-WrY
Not sure how up to date google maps is, but you can see the expansion of the mill's footprint:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.2509355 ... ?entry=ttu
The Fontaine's and the Brochu's are distant relatives I think, I know the father of PRL's current owners helped finance one of the Fontaine mills in western Maine while the Fontaine's have helped finance some of PRL's recent projects and acquisitions. Moose River better fits Fontaine's business model since they don't harvest any of the logs they use and have worked with a few logging companies up that way. While PRL can use the money from that sale to upgrade the two mills they have, or possibly build a new mill somewhere close to the logging operations.
