The Beginning

Pacific Airport

and

Pacific Air Cargo

Hi there. My name is Jim and I am one of the owners of the Pacific Air Cargo Company. I use to fly cargo out of Portland, Oregon for a company that treated me real well. But I was never satisfied with working for someone else. I had three buddies that worked there and they felt the same way. Now we own this company together. Here is a little background on how this company came to be.

Back in 1997, my dad retired. He decided that it was time for mom and him to do a little traveling. Dad owned a nice piece of property between Portland, Oregon and Astoria. My dad has been a pilot most of his life and so the pilot bug was born into me. I was flying before I as able to see out of the cockpit. The first plane I remember flying was a 1958 Cessna 182A Skylane. Great plane. But the plane I will remember most, is his 1970 182N Skylane.

With so much flying going on, my dad cut out an airstrip on the property and called it the Pacific Airport. Not to many people ever landed there besides my dad, a few friends and myself. But then not many people knew about it either. Well, he hasn't flown in years and the place kind of grew over with brush and trees. Dad didn't want to have to keep the place up any more, so he gave it to me to do with as I saw fit.

Well last summer, my wife and I had my flying buddies over to the place for a Bar-B-Que and we started talking about hunting, fishing, you know the old fireside chit chat. When Jay asked what the cut in the trees was for. I told him about the airstrip and basically what I am telling you now. Well, it was like a bolt of lightning hit us all at the same time. The four of us looked at one another and smiled. It was so simple we thought. We would start our own company. Well that's all well and good, but to fly cargo, you need some planes. All we had was dads Cessna 182. Beautiful plane, but not a cargo plane that was for sure. Sam, he is considered by most of us to be intellectual one, said he would stop by some banks and see if he could get us going. Sam said he would fill out the papers the next day for us. He filled out loan papers and applications. You name it and he filled it out. And the response?  Nothing.  Not one favorable response. Then Leighton, he is the helicopter pilot in the group, thought we should ask for a small business loan. And why not? We weren?t going to fix the airport and get those planes with our good looks, that's for sure. That evening on the news I saw something about how the major airlines were stomping on the little guys and how the feds wanted to help. Now there was an idea. Government Grant. Hey! What could it hurt to ask? So I applied for a grant from the government to purchase a small cargo plane to start our business. Not a lot, mind you. But enough to get us going. Well in July of 1998, our small business loan was approved for about half of what we had asked for. But at least it was enough to get the airport back into shape. We still only had the 182. My wife and I talked about selling it, but there was no way I was going to do that. Next day in the mail, we got the shock of our life. We got the grant from the government. I had pretty much written that off.  What they gave us wasn't a grant. It was a miracle. They granted us enough money for three planes, and gave us an old Boeing CH-47D helicopter.  It was more than we had ever evened hoped for. But, now stay with me here, there were a few strings attached. Due to our location, and a few other considerations. The government informed us that we would, on occasion, be asked to do some work for them. Humm.  It wasn't a string.  It was a rope. But after talking it over with the guys, we agreed. Did we have a choice? Well Jay had a few connections down south of Portland and was able to find 3 rundown piles of Piper. PA-31 Navajos. Well with the loan money, the grant money for the Navajos, we were in business. That's about it.

Now we have been flying night and day. We were starting to get burned out. Business has been real good, but four of us can't keep up with the demand. That is why we decided it was time to hire some more pilots. That brings us to you. We figured that if someone were willing to help us build this company, that they should share in it. So we decided to make the pilots that stayed with us part owners, or at least stockholders in the Company. Give them a piece of the action. So if you are interested, check us out.

Thanks again.

Jim and the guys.