Once railroads became an integral part of logging, a means of loading logs onto railcars had to be developed. A number of different machines to accomplish this task were invented. One of the more successful types of loaders in the pine woods of the Intermountain West was the McGiffert Loader. The McGiffert loader was invented by John R. McGiffert, and the machines were manufactured by the Clyde Iron Works of Duluth, Minnesota.

The McGiffert was a large, somewhat awkward looking machine. The boiler and spools were mounted on a platform that was elevated over the tracks. The entire machine sat on legs that rested on the ground on either side of the tracks. The McGiffert was self-propelled, as it had a chain-driven drive axles that moved the machine along the rails. The wheels were retracted up against the botton of the platform when the machine was set up to load cars. When set up to load cars, the McGiffert straddled the tracks, and empty log cars were shoved underneath the loader. The log cars would then be rolled through the loader, with logs loaded onto the cars by a boom off of one side of the loader.

The first McGifferts appeared in the woods around 1902. Nearly a thousand of these machines would be built between then and around 1930, when production ceased. According to a roster compiled by John Taubeneck, the McCloud River Lumber Company owned four of these McGiffert loaders. They were as follows:

• McGiffert #678, built for McCloud River Lumber Company in 1906. Sold to Kesterson Lumber Company, Dorris, CA, in 1925 or 1926; to Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Klamath Falls, OR, 1929; to Collier Memorial State Park, Chiloquin, OR, circa 1961. Currently on display at the logging museum at Collier, one of only four known surviving McGiffert loaders.

• McGiffert #1205, built 1917 for A. Guthrie & Company, Casway, Washington. To Cascade Lumber Company, Cle Elum, WA, 1918; to Forest Lumber Company, Pine Ridge, Oregon; to McCloud River Lumber Company, Bartle, CA, circa 1942. Seen in use on the McCloud as late as the mid-1950's.

• McGiffert #1223, built 1918 for Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company, Bend, Oregon. To McCloud River Lumber Company, Esperanza, California.

• McGiffert #1282. Reported in use on the McCloud River Lumber Company at Burney, California, in 1927? (Cannot be completely correct...Pondosa is far more likely).

The use of McGifferts in the McCloud woods appeared to have ceased by the mid-1950's. As noted, only four of the machines are known to exist today. Two of them are on display at the logging museum in Collier Memorial State Park at Chiloquin, Oregon, one more is on display at a museum in Duluth, Minnesota, and the fourth rests upside down and buried in a lakebed in British Columbia.