The grand gesture — rival Maine log-hauling families spar

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The Pelletiers and the Crawfords of Maine are known far and wide for their success in the log-hauling business in the north woods, the Pelletiers the subject of the Discovery Channel’s American Loggers series, which I wrote about in December when they took delivery of a couple new Mack Titans.

The Crawfords, meanwhile, deserve and have gotten plenty recognition of their own. Their mostly Western Star fleet trucks are not strangers to media treatment. I wrote about the “Crawfordized” trucks in the June 2009 Severe Service supplement to Overdrive (pictured). Note the illuminated C on the grill of tihs workhorse, the standard touch for the trucks of Robin Crawford and Son.

The Pelletiers also have been planning the not-yet-opened Pelletier Logging Family Restaurant Bar & Grill in Millinocket, Maine; adorning its second-floor patio is the shell of the Mack truck Eldon Pelletier’s father, Gerald started his trucking business in the 70s, the Bangor Daily News reported late last week. The Crawfords thought that was a bit much, apparently, and made their feelings known with a friendly joke — someone, sometime in the night of March 3, hung an illuminated C on the Mack’s grill.

“We had to put that on there,” Robin Crawford Jr. told the News, “so that he might know what ‘class’ means, but he still hasn’t figured it out.”

For the rest of the story, including pictures of the Pelletiers’ new restaurant, click here.

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