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Overstreet and McCorquodale sends last loads to mills
Joe C. McCorquodale Jr. laughed when asked to estimate how many loads the company had sent to the Jackson mill, as well as others, since then. He said he had no idea. Last crews paid off Last Friday, Overstreet and McCorquodale marked the end of an era as it paid off its independent timber contractors for the last time at its office on Kimbell Avenue in downtown Jackson. The company is going out of business after nearly 44 years of helping to supply timber for area mills. "It was time to make a change," McCorquodale said of the closing. He's 87 and partner Bonnie Ray Overstreet will turn 66 in April. Their ages were factors but both admitted the present slump in the timber business and high fuel prices influenced their decision to quit too. McCorquodale, longtime state legislator from this area who also served as Speaker of the House and ran for governor in 1982, quipped, "I guess I can start a new career now."
Partnership started in 1964 Bonnie Overstreet, Bonnie Ray's father, was the original Overstreet in Overstreet and McCorquodale. A seasoned timberman, Overstreet and McCorquodale, then in the insurance business as well as a young state legislator, partnered in 1964 to provide wood to the new Jackson paper mill that is today Boise. Overstreet died in 1984 at the age of 79 and Bonnie Ray moved into his father's partner slot. The younger Overstreet has been with the company 41 out of the nearly 44 years it has been operating. The wood producers have seen the timber business change drastically since the 1960s. Where the business used to be labor intensive, with lots of sawyers felling trees with chainsaws and cutting it into short lengths to be loaded by hand or with a cable loader on one and two-cord trucks, today it is highly automated with a few operators working from mechanical cutters cutting tree-length wood. One man using a mechanical cutter can do the work that a five-man crew with chainsaws used to do. 67 crews, 4 woodyards once For instance, Overstreet and McCorquodale once had 67 crews operating with three to four people per crew and ran a full-time shop in Jackson to service its equipment. Four woodyards were in operation in Coffeeville, Perry's Chapel, Carlton and Courtelyou in Washington County with occasional smaller "satellite" woodyards operating adjacent to cutting locations. Last week, Overstreet and McCorquodale paid off just three crews as it ended operations. The change from the old method of stick-scaling wood to weighing hastened the end of short wood and woodyards, McCorquodale observed. One reason was that wood tends to lose weight once it is cut and a producer wants to get it to the mill as quickly as possible. Too, the new production methods made it easier to cut and haul tree length wood instead of short "paperwood." Serviced other mills too While Allied Paper and its subsequent owners up to present-day Boise was a primary customer, Overstreet and McCorquodale also provided timber for American Can and its successors at Naheola in Choctaw County and for the Alabama River companies at Claiborne in Monroe County. Kathy Bush Brown has worked for the company since 1976 and is office manager. Both McCorquodale and Overstreet credited her with helping to keep the business running smoothly. McCorquodale and Overstreet said they had appreciated the work of the crews, their associations with area mills and others during the past four decades.
The office won't close immediately as some work and details remain to be completed.
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