June 2015 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 7. 70S MEMORIES - LONG HAULING WITH A PICK-UP By Lee S. Wilbur
“I had a choice, buy or build a hydrau- lic trailer or go out of business. There was no way I could compete using a fl at-bed any longer. No one was using wood cra- dles. They’d become obsolete.” I fi rst met Ralph Look back in the mid “70s”. Kind of a hefty guy, rather no non- sense get the job done personality, with a ready smile. At that introduction he was loading a fi berglass hull at Jarvis Newman’s shop onto his triple axel, fl at-bed trailer with the basics: 6X6 blocking, pipe rollers, and a come-along winch. Large pickup truck at- tached. I had to take time from a busy day just to watch. Learned something because I hadn’t been at this boat fi nishing game for very long and appreciated the simplicity of the process. Must say, however, when the cradle and hull were far enough up the ramp and forward, bow in the air, balance just to be broken, there was an involuntary sigh of relief and small cheer as it tipped down into place. Ralph fi rst started hauling boats for his
father, Clifford, a lobster dealer and pound owner from South Addison. “Father bought a few boats from the Mcpherson brothers out of Wallace, Nova Scotia. In fact, my Grandfather Delbert who was also in the Lobster business with a couple of pounds probably bought a few up there as well. Wanted me to go up and get them. It was quite an experience watching those guys build wooden boats. First ones I hauled were made out of Black Spruce. Course they didn’t have any cedar up there. Can’t remember what they used for the keels, but when you came into the shops, sounded like machine guns going off. Be one fellow on the outside pounding 8d (penny) fi ne boarding nails for the planking and another
inside clinching. Two blows, and on to the next nail. Sounded like machine guns.” I asked him why local fi shermen “Downeast” would go to Canada for a boat when Beal’s Island and Jonesport were building the models they used. “Well for one thing, the Canadian boats were so cheap. I think at the time you could get a fi nished boat there, no gear of course, for around four thousand dollars. Early on you could only get the “Newfi e” style, with the narrow transom that came almost out of
water...Do you know why they did that?... Think of a duck’s ass, how it rounds back and comes up out of water. They don’t get blown around do they when the wind’s be- hind them.”
“When the Downeast boys started go- ing to Canada they bought “newfi es” but wasn’t long before they had them (Canadi- an Boatbuilders) fl atten out the aft run and widen the transoms. This was a much faster boat, and the Downeast fi shermen, many of them fi shed inside around the islands at that time. Needed speed over something for heavy seas”
“I hauled boats out of Canada (note.
With fl atbed trailer) for several years, un- til the Canadians got real sticky about the weights. They never found anything wrong with my hauls and gear, but sometimes I’d have to go through three different sets of scale on the way to Halifax. It was time consuming and became a real pain. Final- ly, I just gave up. Had plenty of work here in the states anyway. I did haul some fi ber- glass hulls from there, however, and it was interesting cause the Canadians discovered that the women were faster at laying fi ber- glass. They could lay up a hull in two and a half weeks where the men were taking over three weeks.”
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Ralph had bought a garage in Colum- bia Falls back in 1955-56 and ran that for some years up until the mid-70s when he had to make a decision. “I was hauling so many hulls and fi nished boats, mostly hulls, that I had to make a decision. Stay in the garage business or the hauling. I couldn’t do both. So I decided to stay with the haul- ing. Over the years, I hauled for just about all the builders, Newman’s, Jock Williams, almost all of Young Brothers and H&H’s, Calvin Beal, and Willis Beal, to name just a few. I was busy all the time. Didn’t like the garage business anyway.” In the late 70s, Wilbur Yachts had
fi nished one of Jarvis’ “Newman 32s” for an owner in the Chesapeake a cameraman for NBC, Barry Bauer. Barry was an avid fi sherman, his folks had a house down on the Patuxent River. Boat was named after Barry’s wife, “Bobbie B”. Early spring and Barry didn’t want to take her down by wa- ter so hired Ralph and he’d ride along. Had “one of those mini-cams so he could fi lm the trip”, Ralph remembered. Barry told me later, when we were using “Bobbie B” at the Annapolis Boat Show that year, about the adventure. Said Ralph really knew the fastest route, where to make the stops even to the point of where anyone could get the quickest meal and be back on the road again. “He knew where the cheapest gas could be bought. Couple of times the gas gauge would be reading empty and I swear the fumes were gone from the tank when he turned off the en- gine at the station to fi ll up. It was quite an experience.” Barry remembered. By the 80s –When I look back at my notes and sales records, it’s interesting to see the how short a period of time the inten- sity of boat orders in what I call the “Gold-
en Years” lasted—Ralph was facing some fairly stiff competition in the boat hauling business. Hydraulic trailers had arrived on the scene, making life much easier for the builders. No longer would we have to be building 6x6 wood cradles for each boat. So, instead of buying a hydraulic trailer and paying over a hundred thousand for it, Ralph not only built his own, but added improvements. “I never could understand why they never had a guide in the front of their trailers,” Ralph says, “ I could just pull a boat right in, never have to jockey it around, or re-fl oat to get it straight. Worked slick. Cost me four thousand to build. Would have been over a hundred to buy.” “By 2009, I decided to call it quits.
Wife had died two years earlier, and at 79, I fi gured I’d better stop while I was ahead. It’s not an easy business.”
I asked Ralph Look what he did to oc- cupy his time these days. “Well,” He said, “I’ve got a pretty good sized garden that keeps me busy, what with the weeding, the bugs, and the deer. Then in the winter there’s snow plowing. I plowed just about every other day this past winter.” 85 years old (or young we perhaps should say) and still going strong. Hats off to you Ralph!
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