Stan Zuray of Yukon Men Moving a Pickup Truck on a Log Raft

This is a longer video, but you can always skip ahead if you want. It’s kinda cool because Stan Zuray is using his log raft, which he normally uses to transport a bunch of fish to feed his dogs, to move his new-to-him pickup truck from “the end of the road” to his home town of Tanana, Alaska.

The road ends on the opposite side of the river from Tanana and it’s about 6 miles from town, so getting his truck to town isn’t simple. He could hire a barge type boat to do the job, but that’s not Stan. He’s the ultimate DIY guy.

He starts out by telling us about the endeavor, how and why he’s doing what he’s doing. With no fish available for dog food, the raft was available for truck transport.

The raft he’s using is 40 miles from Tanana on the Yukon River, so he’s got to go pick up his buddy Mike McCann and then head to the end of the road.

He does a pan with the camera before he departs fish camp, and boy is that scenery wonderful! Certainly not your typical environment for a day’s work. Stan lives a great life, though his life is certainly filled with plenty of hard work.

After he gets under way, we learn some more about his fish camp and then he says it’s going to take him about 4.5 hours to get to the landing at the end of the road.

He gives us a view and some info about each fish camp as he passes by, which is cool.

He shows us the cab on his boat that allows him to stay mostly dry as he travels in the drizzly rain, and shows the gear and memorabilia that lives in there. This includes bear spray and a handgun, naturally.

When he gets to Mike’s place, Mike gases up his boat so he can join him on the journey.

We get a tour of the raft at about 21:40.

About 31:20 he’s getting to the landing, where he plans to leave the raft and head to Tanana to get some thick boards to put on the raft so he can drive his 2-wheel-drive truck onto his raft without losing it in the drink! We don’t see the trip, as they skip ahead to the ramp setup at 40:18. 12 minutes later, the truck is loaded up.

57 minutes in, Stan catches up as the raft starts to float away, truck and all!

On the way to Tanana the guys recount a past raft adventure, which went much less well than this one.

Apparently there were some camera malfunctions, because we don’t get to see the actual unloading of the raft. Bummer! But it was still pretty cool.

Enjoy the video.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.