Page 199 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
P. 199

   Ben Garner, Pat Good and the Portland weld shop built the rest of the machines between June 2017 and October 2019. “Carl knew everything about the project, and all we had were his notes—the playbook,” says Garner, a 2016 ThinkBIG gradu- ate.“When I took over,serial number 103,104,and 106 were sitting in the shop waiting for cabs. The first three had Cat cabs from the factory. When Cat quit making them, we went to Pierce Pacific cabs. The first one didn’t fit so we had to send it back. The second one didn’t fit either but we made it work. It took months, in-between, for them to redesign it. And when we got them, they were just an empty shell that we had to wire and put in all the linkages. The cab part was a pain.”
It took Garner about five machines before every- thing settled into a routine. By then, all the ma- chines and parts had arrived and were stored on racks or in shop bays according to machine serial number, awaiting their turn. Each unit took rough- ly six weeks to complete. All together there were 87 segments to each TSK build. The cab assembly took one hundred hours each; cutting and fitting the frame took another twenty-six hours. It was an intense project that required focus, flexibility and the drive to get it right.
Top to bottom: Peterson TSK in the woods; Customer Mike Pihl (R) was part of the Ax Men reality TV series, pictured here with his Peterson TSK.
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