Where do you...

[HiTech]

think it will stop? Every year more small machines are being deleted from lineups. Big and more powerful brutes are produced. Very High $$$$. These machines eat wood at a tremendous rate. Of course they have to so the payments can be made. When these are paid for newer and bigger machines are bought and more wood has to be consumed to pay for these. Who wins at this? I think the machinery makers are the winners. When these BIG $$$$ machines are being recycled into belt buckles in China my old C4 will still be hauling firewood and a few logs for me.

[thenorthman]

I've said it before,

This bigger is better nonsense will come to a grinding halt when fuel prices become unbearable, the bigger machines suck huge amounts of fuel, and personally the pruduction gained doesn't seem like much of a pay off to the likes of me.

Few more years of low timber prices on the Right coast, and high fuel prices, add the pulp mills closing at an alarming rate, you have the end of the bigger is better mentality.

Granted there are times when a bigger machine is better, Say in yarding big wood, on steep ground.  Otherwise, I see no reason why smaller machines can't put enough wood out to satisfy the market.  May take a few more small machines, but thats ok too.  Just means more jobs.

Eventually this will trickle down into farming as well, why someone needs to plow 2000 acres in one day I'll never understand, hence the giant tractors.  If and when fuel (read fertilizer) prices go up to much, you'll find farmers selling off the land they can't work anymore.

[Ianab]

There will always be a place for the the smaller machines. Not everyone has 1,000 acres of trees to harvest.

But for a larger timber company harvesting bigger areas, they make a lot of sense. Kiangaroa Forest here in NZ is  2900 square kilometres of  plantation pine. It's completely clear cut and replanted on ~25 year rotation. How many guys running chainsaws and small skidders would that take? Nope, they send in the heavy machinery.

Safety is another factor. With the OSH situation, and the number of deaths in forestry, less guys in the forest, and having them in an armour plated cab automatically cuts down the risks.

But not everyone has 717,000 acres to harvest.... Folks are logging with converted farm tractors, horses, helicopters etc.

Heck friend is looking at having about a dozen big pine trees taken out from the back of her 15 acre block. Been offered ~$3,000 for them. Maybe 10 ton of logs from each one. Logger will just bring in his 20 ton excavator to handle the logs and get them on to the trucks. Low value wood, but there's a lot of it in each tree.

So there will always be those smaller harvests, selective logging and thinning that needs smaller machinery. The trees aren't going away, they are still growing. You see a few smaller sawmill operations running here on the forum. They don't have to service $10million in debt and cover 50 wages every week.

It seems that the slump in the US economy has hit all the sectors, including forestry. Mills have closed down because they have too much debt, not because there isn't a market for the wood (internationally at least) But that's another subject for a different place.

Ian

[Billbob]

Forestry is the main industry here in my Province.  Unfortunately it is controlled by one very wealthy family.  From the land to the sawmills.  Two winters ago they moved in on the leased Crown land about 3 miles up the road.  Huge swaths of timber were clear cut.  Probably about 5 square miles.  Everything dropped with tree harvesters.  For six months a log truck went by the house every 45 minutes.  A hog fuel truck went by every 20 minutes.  What didn't get used as saw logs or pulp went into the chipper.  The harvesters, forwarders and skidders worked 24/7.  They cut right to a brook that was a good fishing hole.  I drove there on my 4 wheeler last summer to do some fishing but had to turn back because the ground was so torn up and flooded I couldn't get through.
I spent this winter logging my little 40 acre woodlot.  I select cut leaving any tree under 8 inches in diameter.  Last fall I had pushed a hauling road 150 yards into a good stand of spruce.  I waited until the ground was frozen and there was snow on it before I moved in with my farm tractor and log winch.  The snow and ice is now melted off the road.  I walked in there yesterday and you can't tell I had machinery in the woods.  No ruts, nothing.

[thenorthman]

I wonder if full mechanization, makes it easier for the operators to be less careful, stuck in a cab all day never really seeing the damage they cause.

At least hand falling your on the ground for at least part of the day seeing and feeling whats going on around you.

[Billbob]

I wonder if full mechanization, makes it easier for the operators to be less careful, stuck in a cab all day never really seeing the damage they cause.
At least hand falling your on the ground for at least part of the day seeing and feeling whats going on around you.

I think that is a good point thenorthman.  I also believe that the big operations are there for one purpose only - profit.  Most of the time they log leased government land.  The guys working the big machines really couldn't care less what happens so long as they get a pay cheque.  Besides, they know that once the project is finished they will never have to look at that piece of ground again in their life time.  It's just human nature.
As for the private woodlot owners who work their own ground, they want to see whats going on at eye level.  They know that their piece of ground has to produce for a lifetime if not for generations. 

[treeslayer2003]

I wonder if full mechanization, makes it easier for the operators to be less careful, stuck in a cab all day never really seeing the damage they cause.

At least hand falling your on the ground for at least part of the day seeing and feeling whats going on around you.

that is a good point and i can confirm, when I run the bell it is hard to not cut any thing in the way.......sometimes ya have to to get the machine in close enough to cut.

[luvmexfood]

thenorthman is correct about it trickling down to farming. It has allready beginning to happen in my area. Let a farm comeup for sale and you have people bidding on it that are already millionares. The family farm is pretty much gone. You used to be able to scratch out a living when you could grow a crop of tobacco along with some cattle.

Tobacco market is pretty much gone and if you do grow some the price is set by two or three big companies. If you have a farm in the family and the parents pass away the children pretty much cannot afford to keep it.

Just my two cents.

[BargeMonkey]

I wonder if full mechanization, makes it easier for the operators to be less careful, stuck in a cab all day never really seeing the damage they cause.

At least hand falling your on the ground for at least part of the day seeing and feeling whats going on around you.

The mechanical equipment does cut a wider path, but in a dense stand I can pick and pile, where as a hand cutter makes a pile of pick up sticks. If you take your time and try not to smash I can do a nicer job with a Timbco. Fuel cost is a huge factor but so is production, im looking at 15-20 loads a week with 2 guys which isnt so bad.

[ga jones]

Here's a good example of why u don't see much mechanized here. A 150 acre hard wood patch is being cut adjacent to a 10 acre I'm doing. there using a bell and hand cutting the stuff to big for the bell. Deere 748 grapple and an 8 wheel ponse. There's ruts 4 feet deep. There dragging large amounts of mud on the asphalt road and pushing it off with the skidder. The remaining trees are rubbed on the bottom and there are large limbs broken up high from the forwarder. There forwarding across the asphalt road. There's chains on it.I guess when u have a million dollars worth of equipment u have to work in the mud. Even if it's raining every couple days.its a forester bid job.I feel bad for landowner . But I'm happy there close to a hi traffic road. They'll never work around here again.

[donny hochstetler]

ya thats what gives us all bad names 

[treeslayer2003]

here they would be fined and shut down for the mud and road damage.

[thecfarm]

I don't know about the damage in the woods,but the road damage would be a big No No.   Any town in this area would have a fit. Big time.

[gologit]

I wonder if full mechanization, makes it easier for the operators to be less careful, stuck in a cab all day never really seeing the damage they cause.

At least hand falling your on the ground for at least part of the day seeing and feeling whats going on around you.

I don't know if it makes it easier but  guys who have never had their boots on the ground all day seem to have a different attitude toward things.
A lot of the newer, younger, guys starting out now have never set a choker or run a saw.
I had a burn salvage job last summer that was fully mechanized.  The  delimber broke down so I told the kid that was running it to grab a saw and bump knots and buck while we were working on  it.  He was a good kid, a hard worker and always on time but he was an absolute disaster with a saw.  Crooked cuts, cut four feet out of my Spencer, rocked three chains in an hour, it was like watching a training film for "how many mistakes can you make on a landing?".
  One of the Cat skinners was an ex faller so I had him school the kid a little and things went a lot better after that.  I talked to the kid later and he told me that he went right to work on a stroker and had never run saw, or chased, or done anything on the landing except run machinery.
I inherited him from another outfit and never thought to ask him about his experience beyond the job I hired him for  The whole thing was partly my fault because it never occurred to me that some of the younger guys coming up were just machinery operators and had no real experience beyond that.
I know better now.

[HiTech]

I can remember when very large tracts of land needed to be cut they had more than one logger. I have seen as many as 6 or 7 crews. In those days everyone made money. Most had small equipment...440 size machines. Today in comes the lowboys in the middle of the night to avoid the DOT and huge equipment is off loaded and in a couple weeks these guys are almost done. Then off to another job site. People tell me I am crazy but these big companies devour wood at an alarming rate and when will we be out of wood. Some probably remember the Sahara Forest and then along comes Paul Bunyon...the rest we know, it is now called the Sahara Dessert. lol

[gologit]

I can remember when very large tracts of land needed to be cut they had more than one logger. I have seen as many as 6 or 7 crews. In those days everyone made money. Most had small equipment...440 size machines. Today in comes the lowboys in the middle of the night to avoid the DOT and huge equipment is off loaded and in a couple weeks these guys are almost done. Then off to another job site. People tell me I am crazy but these big companies devour wood at an alarming rate and when will we be out of wood. Some probably remember the Sahara Forest and then along comes Paul Bunyon...the rest we know, it is now called the Sahara Dessert. lol

I understand your concern but logging, profitable logging, is about production.  When we get a timber sale we throw as much equipment at it as we can.  There's a fine line there too, between too much equipment and not enough but in order to make a profit we need to get as much wood down the hill in the shortest time possible.

I don't know about back east but we're in no danger of running out of timber in my part of the country.  A couple of years ago I logged a clearcut sale that my Grandfather had clearcut back in the 1920s.  We do a lot of reforestation and it pays off.  My scale tickets showed that we got a better bf per acre than he did.  We also did it faster thanks to good machinery and good people.

And for whatever it's worth if they caught us bootlegging wide loads after dark they'd fine us so much that we wouldn't be making any profits for a long time.

Sorry about the underlining...this keyboard is about worn out.

[Gary_C]

I wonder if full mechanization, makes it easier for the operators to be less careful, stuck in a cab all day never really seeing the damage they cause.
At least hand falling your on the ground for at least part of the day seeing and feeling whats going on around you.

I think that is a good point thenorthman.  I also believe that the big operations are there for one purpose only - profit. 

Yea, I guess I am guilty of that last thing. But as far as the damage, not guilty.

So the bad mouthers on this thread are just painting an incorrect picture of how the majority of logging is done. And that does no one any good.  :(

[thenorthman]

Don't think we'll ever run out of wood, folks where real concerned about that 20-30 years ago, now most of the "clearcuts" they where whining about then are almost ready to be cut again, Hel some of them are being thinned now, and in another  10-30 years we'll buzz em back to the ground...

Seems most of the east coast logging is focused on pulp, and in pulp volume is king.

Some other areas are all about "bio mass" or really nasty firewood...

Both of these types of logging seem to demand huge amount of wood moved to be profitable.

Gologit is correct out here, the biggest machines win on the bigger sales, purely because they can move the wood.  A large amount of ground out here is simply not workable for the skidder and saw crowd, You need at least a loader and a yarder just to make a bid and have any hope of landing it, plan on having a processor and a several trucks to even plan on actually getting a sale...

[thenorthman]

Yea, I guess I am guilty of that last thing. But as far as the damage, not guilty.

So the bad mouthers on this thread are just painting an incorrect picture of how the majority of logging is done. And that does no one any good.  :(

Don't mean to be bad mouthing, just thinking out loud so to speak. 

[chester_tree _farmah]

Whether it's a small machine or a big machine. Cable skidder or harvester. It all comes down to the humans running them and their attitudes towards the land. That includes land and contracting company owners and foresters. I have seen both large and small contractors make a mess and large and small do beautiful work. I live in an area where logging is the major employer and I am glad to say it seems those raping the land are becoming fewer. Yes regulations have increased but I think industry self policing has also helped. Not that there isn't room for improvement. For example foresters getting paid by % of the timber sales kind of opens the door to unethical behavior if the land owners are not educated or are absentee. Just an example. I know most are ethical.

[shortlogger]

When I was a boy there were hundreds of loggers in my county.
They were a mixture of pulpwood trucks with cable loaders and mule teams that did between 10 to 30 tons a day up to tree length crews that pulled between 2 and 6 loads a day . But now it's nearly exclusively high production crews that do 10+ loads a day , and I have no problem with that . But one just a handful of loggers have taken the place of hundreds . Make me sad to see the logger lifestyle changing .