db not dumping properly, or at least not restoring

I am trying to move databases to another macine (and update from 8.2
to 8.4 along the way). I first tried pg_dumpall, but I found that one
of the data bases did not restore and data, just an empty db with no
tables. Since then I have tried pg_dump with the following:

bash-3.2$ /usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_dump -o mn_timber > /Volumes/disk3/
backup_db/mn_timber20091016.out

then restore on the new machine with:

kwythers$ pg_restore -C -d postgres mn_timber20091016.out

But I am getting the error:

pg_restore: [archiver] input file does not appear to be a valid archive
onceler:~ kwythers$

Looking at the db on the original machine, all looks good.

mn_timber=# \d
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner
--------+------------------------+----------+----------
public | all_timber_data | view | kwythers
public | county | table | kwythers
public | forties | table | kwythers
public | geometry_columns | table | kwythers
public | grid_cell | view | kwythers
public | mn_pls_grid | table | kwythers
public | mn_pls_grid_gid_seq | sequence | kwythers
public | rdir | table | kwythers
public | session | table | kwythers
public | session_session_id_seq | sequence | kwythers
public | spatial_ref_sys | table | kwythers
public | timber_type | table | kwythers
public | timber_volume | table | kwythers
public | timber_volume_seq | sequence | kwythers
(14 rows)

mn_timber=# SELECT * FROM timber_volume;
grid_id | tt_id | year | cords | mbm | poles | posts | tv_id
---------+-------+------+-------+-----+-------+-------+-------
263515 | 17 | 1920 | 11 | 2 | | | 10176
266999 | 6 | 1920 | 7 | 19 | | | 10869
1141653 | 5 | 1920 | 10 | 1 | | | 10238
1143744 | 5 | 1920 | 2 | 1 | | | 10293
263560 | 9 | 1920 | | 5 | | | 10346
264027 | 3 | 1920 | 49 | 1 | | | 10391
264180 | 9 | 1920 | 70 | 5 | | | 10430
263728 | 4 | 1920 | | | 919 | 1495 | 10468
263667 | 17 | 1920 | 1 | | | | 10501
263658 | 17 | 1920 | 15 | | | | 10528
263984 | 3 | 1920 | 98 | | | | 10554
264289 | 17 | 1920 | 1 | | | | 10579
263973 | 4 | 1920 | | | 40 | 40 | 10601
.
.
.
(38437 rows)

Any ideas what the problem could be here?

Thanks in advance.