THE ONOMEA “SKY CAR”… Old Plantation Days, November 2013
Last months’ issue showed a strange vehicle that was fabricated for moving bundles of from within the field to the portable flume system. In keeping with the theme of “contraptions” this month’s article will tell the story of the Onomea Sky Car.
In the period from the turn of century to about the mid 1940’s the harvesting of sugarcane was done by hand harvest crews. After world war two the plantations made efforts to mechanize harvesting operations thus cutting back on the large crews of hand cutters. Trains were used at plantations that had good even grades for the laying of track…these were primarily on the islands of Kauai, Oahu, and Maui. The Big Island plantations did not have the luxury of using trains and cane carts, but focused their mechanical harvesting method to heavy cranes and bull dozer push-rakes. This was still a difficult operation on the wet deep soils of the Hamakua coast. The plantation engineers were constantly trying to come up with a method of harvesting that could be done without miring the equipment in mud up to 15’ deep!
Thus came one of the strangest and incredible harvesting methods that I have ever seen. The ONOMEA SKY CAR. This is not a story of conjecture this actually was built and operated at Onomea Sugar Company in Papaikou. The plantation engineers took the idea of “yarding” of trees and logs in the Pacific Northwest to the Hamakua coast. Cabling and sky lining of logs in Oregon and Washington states is still an ongoing practice to this day. The plantation engineers of 1948 thought they could construct a similar cable system to move sugarcane from the deep interior of the fields to the waiting cane truck near the primary road. They built models of how the harvesting system would look in the front yard of their houses. (See pictures this issue).
The most fascinating of this concept was the actual car that would suspend and operate a cane grab that would hold an entire truck load worth of cane AND that it would travel high above the ground on cables AND it would be operated by a man riding within it!
The pictures with this issue show the “Onomea Sky Car” in operation. Truly amazing that they conceived it and actually built it. The cable system would allow the Sky Car to travel the length of the suspended cable lines and over and through the support pole rigging. From the farthest end of the cable the car would lift the cane and move it out to the waiting truck.
The system was not without its problems. Obviously it was limited to the working area of the length of the cable and pole system, it could not make right angle turns, it was point A to point B and that was that. This meant the yarding system had to have dozens and dozens of pole lines and many just as many Sky Cars. Another problem was the anchoring systems for the cables and poles. The soils of the plantation were very deep and do not have much shear strength. That meant the poles needed to be buried very deep and the anchors had to just as deep and very large. The photographs in our archives show several pictures of how they buried huge iron plates with cables attached underground.
The Onomea Sky Car did not last long as a harvesting method. It was too expensive and too cumbersome. It certainly was an interesting feat of engineering from the boys at the shop of the plantation. Nowadays when you see Ziplines all across the Hamakua coast and Kohala, just remember these ziplines are actually old-news, as the plantations used them for industry and commence over sixty years ago!
