History of Poulan Chainsaws

how's it going everyone today after a long time of I've probably researched polling three different times now trying to do another one of these history videos but I'm finally getting around to doing it so you can see here I got my polling Saul's out on display as I talk about you know the history of Poland it's different transitions and ownership and a lot of these dates are gonna be approximate like in the home light video the only sources are pretty much just word of mouth who says what so you know take everything with a grain of salt because it could be wrong all right here we go all right so pull out my piece of paper Clawd Poland he was originally from Monroe Louisiana and when he returned from the war he went to work over in Texas cutting pulp wood he rose to notoriety by not necessarily inventing the bow saw but re designing inventing the bow saw he used a Fender from a truck now I've seen two different brands used of seeing someone say he used a chevy fender and here locally I heard it was a Dodge fender so that's one of those things that unless we knew somebody who knew mr. Poland and heard directly from his mouth there's really no way to know but he fashioned this fender into a bow guide a smaller more manageable bow guide for the two man saws right after that he came out with one of the first one-man bow sauce and that's pretty much what his company was founded on was was the big two-man the less bulky two-man bow saw and the single man bow sauce and his company was launched around 1944 now no that was in 1944 was when he redesigned the bow saw his 1946 is when he actually launched his company now 1951 is when he actually started doing all of his design his engines and stuff in-house previously he had just been creating the chassis and using the engines that other manufacturers had designed and he would just purchase those and put him in his own chassis that was developed in-house in 1951 is when he actually started doing all the manufacturing in-house now from 51 to to 1959 he'd done really well he had come out with a very good line of single-man saws they were the old sand casts they were a really heavy bunch of gear drive some of them were direct and they were really well-built chain saws and he gained a lot of notoriety from that and it took two years but another Louisiana native he's native here in Shreveport were on that mr. Charles T beard he purchased Poland manufacturing or the bowling manufacturing company Pollan chainsaws now from there he moved the production from one facility which is about 55,000 square feet to an even larger facility which was over a hundred thousand square feet right down the road from me it's about five minutes up the road and from there they started getting let's see that was in this seus 59 as one Charles T beard purchased it so in the 60s he started developing like a lot of the other chainsaw manufacturers at the time smaller lighter sauce you know the home light XL 12 to 12 pounds all come out in 1965 so Charles T beard was also experimenting with lighter saws at the same time the 360 ones the 400 ones which were the 65 CC Souls and they were launched mid 60's and really only one saw made it out of the 60s and that was the Poland 361 it was produced well into the 70s but through the 60s they done really well into the 70s in 1974 yeah 1974 Texas Chainsaw Master 1973 is when mr. Charles T beard sold beer Poland because mr. beard didn't want to take didn't want to rename the company because Poland was already a well-established company in the timber industry at the time so he basically just hyphenated it put his name in front of Poland beard Poland I don't even know if there was - earth - in there but anyway he named it beard Poland 1973 he sold beard Poland to Emerson Electric and Emerson Electric appointed him as the director of the beer Poland division of Emerson Electric and then a year later Poland was featured on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre it was a model - 45 or 245 chassis it's they had some prototype I say prototypes they had some really early versions of that saw the 74 CC sauce that were like 222 200 series sauce they also had a lot of people believe there's a big misconception a lot of people believe that it's a 306 in the movie it's not a 306 it's a 245 or a variation of the 245 more than likely a 245 it was 1974 but moving along in 1971 will backtrack a little bit because this is important there's another gentleman by the name of George C ballast who was Louisiana born but moved to Houston and in the early seventies 1971 he started what a lot of people you know would probably know weed eater he invented the string trimmer so basically any string trimmer you see today was designed built off of mr. balises invention the original weed eater well in 1977 mr. ballast after killing it you know he when he sold the company he had over 40 million in sales annually he sold it to Emerson Electric so in 1975 he sold in 1977 we're backtracking a little bit sorry back to the Poland timeline and 1975 that is when arguably the greatest Poland souls Poland chainsaws ever built were developed the 4200 here and the 5200 they are quad Reid pyramid style intake three valves 69 CCS and 85 CC some of the strongest sauce you'll ever run this is a 69 CC saw that can run a 36 inch bar and chain full cop what 60 sub 70cc saws do you know that can run a bar that big and southern hardwoods not meaning so they were very very very powerful sauce some of my favorite probably besides that 655 up there the 5200 and 4200 probably my favorite sauce all right now fast-forward 1977 Emerson Electric purchased weed eater 1982 ish approximately Emerson Electric merged beard Poland division with the weed eater division and at that point in time was bred the Poland weed eater division of Emerson Electric now and 84 in the early 80s these two got a redesign the 4400 and the 4900 and the 5400 now in 1983 nose 1986 in 1986 another movie come out called Texas Chainsaw Massacre number two and in that movie another Poland saw was featured but it wasn't these there's a very common misconception that it was a 4200 or 5200 that's not the case if you look and I've talked extensively on this subject with many Texas Chainsaw Massacre enthusiasts and we have come to the conclusion because if you look at the pictures and you see the foot pad the foot pads were added on the 4400 the 5400 or the 4400 the 4900 and the 5400 and they were even featured on the Poland weedeater versions of the Sol's which were the 6970 780 500 but the reason we know it's a 5,400 or 4400 there's no 100% way to know that I was talking to a gentleman who's a huge fan the guy told him that it was the largest Pollan saw that they could buy at the time when they made the movie which was in 1986 so probably around 85 is when they were filming 84 85 so both if I'm not mistaken both the 4400 and the 5,400 were and production at the time so it could have been either one chances are as a 5,400 but the 5,400 still had the 1p stop the 8500 has a two-piece top with Louisville air filter air filter cover so we know it wasn't an 8500 so it was you know 85 percent 85 to 90 percent positives that it was a 5,400 polar which was in Texas Chainsaw Massacre too all right now in 1984 Electrolux was on a predatory business model is what I call it they were going around buying all of their competition which is kind of funny because Electrolux was a vacuum company from Sweden and I probably mentioned that in the other video I don't know I can't remember but they purchased Poland in 1984 approximately now they ran with the the Poland line until around 1988 now in 1988 came around that was the birth of the Poland six the Poland crow sauce now the Poulan Pro saws were Electrolux they had it in their mind that especially over here in the in the states that no one was brand loyal that as long as it was a good chain saw people over here would buy well that was not the case turned out we were brand loyal and they decided to merge Poland and the pioneer partner sauce which they had already merged to the pioneer partner line the pioneer partner saw is all into one one brand which was the Poulan Pro and you can go back and look at the model list of Poland Pro and even though they have different models you can pick out the Pioneer sauce which is the 655 that was the P 60 P 60 series sauce they discontinued these these big quad Reed saws I don't know why I really don't I don't know why they didn't carry him over I guess because they already had a you know big red valve saws in the form of the the pioneer partner line so they mixed these except the piston ported sauce like this one in this one they kept those and Nix the big counter vibes and you can see if you look at pictures all of them and pick out the pioneers the partner cells that were originally partner before they merged pioneer ant partner and the Poland sauce now Poland was still was still an independent company I mean they they formed Poulan Pro outside of Poland so Poland still had its own line of sauce and Poland Pro had their own line of sauce a lot of them were very similar to the Poland weedeater versions of these counter vibes but they still had the the Poland versions and in the 90s they come out with more pissed pissed and ported versions not versions but more pissed imported saws like the thirty four fifty and 37 pictures and they had their counterparts in the Poland Pro line as well and all through the 90s you know Poland was still pretty strong and it it wasn't until the end of the 90s and right at the 2000s that Electrolux really turned Poland and Poulan Pro into consumer versions or just consumed ourselves instead of actual pro grade saws that you could do production cutting with it was a real shame you know pull Electrolux really killed a lot of companies someone who loves the history of these things like I do it's it's really sad that they did that but realistically with the invention of machines and the accidents that came from using chainsaws in production you couldn't have that much competition you just couldn't that the market wouldn't sustain it and Electrolux just happened to be happy to have enough capital to come out on top so that's pretty much the history of Poland so and I call it Poland anyone you ask around here around where Poland was founded its Poland now depending on your accent some may call it pooling her pool and you know to each his own but you know I'm always gonna know it as Poland and no one's gonna tell me any different it'll always be Poland to me so if you have anything else to add feel free to chime in in the comments also let me know which manufacturer you would like to see a video made of next I know I've already gotten a lot of people wanting McCulloch but I can do anything I know quite a bit about just about all of them I know a decent amount about the Canadian songs but if you're really into the Canadian songs Mike acres and another gentleman from Canada have a book and that book has most all of the chainsaws in it are pretty much all of the chainsaw was the history of chainsaws but their write-ups on the American Souls and some of the German cells and Swedish saws aren't quite as extensive as the Canadian sauce and my guess is just most of your information about each one of these brands is going to reflect how much information you can find out in the area since they're in Canada and they're from Canada naturally they they have contacts and they know a lot more about the Canadian saws than they do any of these others so in my opinion there's they don't do some of these other songs justice these other saw manufacturers like the American salt justice but that's just because you know they're from Canada you know they're most detailed information is going to come from Canadian songs so but if if you're into this kind of stuff and you haven't picked up the book yet I highly recommend it it's an amazing books got awesome pictures in it I enjoy looking at it and reading it but hope y'all enjoyed you know hopefully I didn't get a whole bunch of stuff wrong and if I did feel free to correct me but it's really hot out here and I'm about to put these monsters up here and go back in my air-conditioned shop and start working on more sauce so hope you all have a good one stay safe and I'll talk to you next time

Channel: Bayou Country Power Saws

Views: 12,668

Rating: 4.9014778 out of 5

Keywords: Chainsaw, chainsaws, Poulan, Pro

Id: 4-L4zd4NWJo

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 29 2018