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General Forestry => Forestry and Logging => Topic started by: riverlogger on February 16, 2014, 10:38:04 AM

Title: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: riverlogger on February 16, 2014, 10:38:04 AM
I enjoy reading all of the post on the forum and it keeps jumping out at me how depending on your regional location the logging slang changes. As for us here in the south we use the term "drag" while it seems that up toward the north the term becomes hitch. I have also seen the term "twitch road" used while here we call them " skid trails" Just another beauty of our freedom in this great country of ours. IMO
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: thecfarm on February 16, 2014, 10:39:37 AM
My Father always called them woods road. My wife son says tote road.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: petefrom bearswamp on February 16, 2014, 10:54:57 AM
Drag, hitch, skid trail twitch rd whatever you call them all them terms mean hard work somewhere along the line.
Here they are skid trails and hitches and the place where you take the logs  to is either a landing or header.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: SliverPicker on February 16, 2014, 11:05:10 AM
Here in Colorado it's a "skid trail" and a "turn".  Most guys wear tin, full brim hats, but no suspenders.  No bobbed off pants either.

I like that term, "tote road".  I might have to use that from time to time.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Corley5 on February 16, 2014, 11:22:19 AM
We call them skid trails and skids.  Forwarder loads are called skids too  :)
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: treechopper40 on February 16, 2014, 11:41:30 AM
its hitch here and skid trail or skid road and header landing or yard
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Rick Alger on February 16, 2014, 12:50:19 PM
Here in NH I believe a tote road was a road good enough for a wagon to bring tote ( food, hay, tools, etc ) into the camps. The sled roads to bring wood to the river in late winter were called two-sled roads or haul roads. Twitch trails were not roads, it was all done with a single horse. The skidder paths nowadays are called either skid trails or twitch trails. I talked with a guy yesterday who was saying he didn't have to brush in his twitch trails because of the cold. He has a big machine but the old term still works.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: barbender on February 16, 2014, 12:57:30 PM
I must be close enough to Corley, we have the same terms ;D I never have gotten used to call moving wood with a forwarder "skidding", even though that is the common terminology here. Also the branches and tops left over are called "slash" up here, I remember a friend that was logging down south said he referred to it as "slash" once, he wasn't understood because down there it was referred to as "tops". Having this forum helps keep you well versed with our regional differences ;)
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: cutter88 on February 16, 2014, 03:28:24 PM
Ontario we say "main trail" , "side trail" , "bush road" and " hitch" :D
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Maine logger88 on February 16, 2014, 03:31:54 PM
Up here its twitching wood, twitch road or skid road whichever you choose, and brush is slash. My cousin gets in heated debates on Facebook about this all the time which I find funny cause he's never worked a full day in the woods yet seems to know more about it than me haha. It doesn't matter to me what its called as long as we all understand each other but it is kinda funny different name for different regions
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: 1270d on February 16, 2014, 04:07:36 PM
there was a thread somewhere a while back in which you could post your region and terminology. 
Here we call em a skid trail and the skidder is pulling a drag.  forwarders haul a buggyload.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Southside on February 16, 2014, 05:27:27 PM
Not exactly the same thing,  but sort of like using the  term "Dooryard", to me I know exactly what someone means, first time I said that to my wife she had no idea what I was talking about.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: rick f on February 16, 2014, 05:44:34 PM
Southside are you from Maine, it sounds like you might be :D
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: tlandrum on February 16, 2014, 06:01:29 PM
round here I used to "drop and top" then I'd take the "skidder" into the "log woods" on the "skid trail" to get a "turn" of trees, then I skid them into the "landing" to be "bucked" up and loaded on the truck to be trucked out of the log woods on the "haul road" to be taken to the "mill" so that I can be "robbed" at "doyle scale" point just to brake barely even to keep doing it another day.   
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: JDeere on February 16, 2014, 07:16:23 PM
Quote from: Southside logger on February 16, 2014, 05:27:27 PM
Not exactly the same thing,  but sort of like using the  term "Dooryard", to me I know exactly what someone means, first time I said that to my wife she had no idea what I was talking about.

That's funny. I remember about 30 years ago using the term "dooryard" in college in Oklahoma and my best friend, a native Okie, said, what the heck is a doy-yard?
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: landscraper on February 16, 2014, 07:29:45 PM
Virginia terminology is not too different - you take your grapple back in the woods to get a drag of logs and haul them up the skidder trail to the landing.  The loader man gets a trailer loaded and then the spot truck hauls it up to the state road.  You leave your laps in the woods.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Maine logger88 on February 16, 2014, 07:34:42 PM
We also call a snowmobile a snowsled a skidder is sometimes pronounced skiddah and I was told one of the few places that measure distance in hours don't know if that ones true or not tho
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: MEloggah on February 16, 2014, 07:45:15 PM
Lol we have lotsa slang and strong accent in maine. Some times we come across a tree that's a 'cockah'
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Southside on February 16, 2014, 08:09:51 PM
Quote from: rick f on February 16, 2014, 05:44:34 PM
Southside are you from Maine, it sounds like you might be :D

Rick - left Aroostook a number of years ago, been to the west coast, and now down south, do very much enjoy what this area offers but at the same time do miss The County.  One thing I learned - the hard way - is out west every dozer is called a "Cat", no matter who made it, down this way all excavators are "Track Hoe's".  Guess it was the same when we called every snow mobile a "Ski-Doo" no matter the color. 

One time I was telling a guy in the mid-west about the time a "wicked big moose stove a guy's car all to dog $..t right in his door yard" in Ft. Kent, my wife turned to me and promptly told me nobody had any idea what I had just said!!!   :D
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: rick f on February 16, 2014, 08:20:31 PM
Quote from: Southside logger on February 16, 2014, 08:09:51 PM
Quote from: rick f on February 16, 2014, 05:44:34 PM
Southside are you from Maine, it sounds like you might be :D

Rick - left Aroostook a number of years ago, been to the west coast, and now down south, do very much enjoy what this area offers but at the same time do miss The County.  One thing I learned - the hard way - is out west every dozer is called a "Cat", no matter who made it, down this way all excavators are "Track Hoe's".  Guess it was the same when we called every snow mobile a "Ski-Doo" no matter the color. 

One time I was telling a guy in the mid-west about the time a "wicked big moose stove a guy's car all to dog $..t right in his door yard" in Ft. Kent, my wife turned to me and promptly told me nobody had any idea what I had just said!!!   :D
[/quote

Southside, I just told the wife what your wife said, she laughed cause it was probably true. Nice that we can laugh at ourselves. Where in the county, we go up to Mapleton to see friends real often. A lot of good people up there.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Southside on February 16, 2014, 08:26:47 PM
Talk about a small world, home was West Chapman, need to go through Mapleton to get there, but I was in the Valley and up in St Pamphilie for a while. 
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: beenthere on February 16, 2014, 09:06:02 PM
QuoteYou leave your laps in the woods.

Where does the "laps" word come from?

I had a colleague once from the hills of TN talking about "tree laps". Couldn't figure out what he was referring to, until we sorted out he meant the tops of trees... slash, tops, etc.

Between us we thought maybe started out "tops" and southern pronunciation sounded like "taps" and that morphed into "laps".  Is this even close to how it might have come about, or is there a known transition and meaning?

Or does it come from lopping tops, and that gets southernized to "laps them off" and becomes "laps" ??
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: redprospector on February 16, 2014, 10:16:34 PM
I have no idea what y'all are talkin' about.  :D
Round here we go up on the hill and fall timber and work it up where it lays. We skid turns with either a Cat, or a rubber tire to the landing, where the "deck hand" or "landing man" bumps knots and unhooks chokers before the sticks are loaded on a truck.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: riverlogger on February 16, 2014, 10:23:12 PM
Down here in the south we refer to what you call a landing as the pit. I have no idea how or where that term comes from unless it refers to the fact that years ago the woods here where full of dug out pits where the loggers of the old days would back their trucks in to a hole they dug to make it easier to load. I have just always assumed this could be the reason we call them pits.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: lynde37avery on February 16, 2014, 10:23:57 PM
we pull a hitch.. down the skid trail, or the spur road.. to the landing or log pile
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: thenorthman on February 16, 2014, 11:45:35 PM
Skid road or skidder trail, sometimes called a cat trail.

Cat anything with tracks a blade and maybe a winch sometimes a grapple.

Log road or logging road, dirt roads leading to a logging site.

Unit, logging site (short for unit of a section of a township or some such)

Landing well you get that...

These are just the common things to all logging, you start involving yarders and you get fun names like side rod, Hook tender, rigging slinger, donkey puncher, high line, sky line, haul back, guys, shotgun carriage, north bend, bull bucker, sky car, switch backs... it goes on and on, almost an entirely new language speckled generously with new swear words daily.
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: timberlinetree on February 22, 2014, 05:29:26 AM
Lady on the conservation committee though that the LANDING was going to be used by helicopters :-.new a girl that would call a skidder a moose!
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: 240b on February 22, 2014, 08:26:54 AM
Know an old guy who cuts his wood "sled length" to skid it.  The trucker said he was going to have to "put the coal to er to get up the hill, and the road was rougher an a cob"
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: riverlogger on February 22, 2014, 11:32:05 AM
 Hey 240B. The trucker said he was going to have to "put the coal to er to get up the hill, and the road was rougher an a cob"........Now them er are some "Southern Words". A man might just as well have been in our fat chewing conversation around the shop yesterday after work and heard that exact sentence spoken.lol
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Bobus2003 on February 22, 2014, 09:52:11 PM
Quote from: thenorthman on February 16, 2014, 11:45:35 PM
Skid road or skidder trail, sometimes called a cat trail.

Cat anything with tracks a blade and maybe a winch sometimes a grapple.

Log road or logging road, dirt roads leading to a logging site.

Unit, logging site

Landing well you get that...

Pretty much the same here, Cats are also refered to as Dozers. its also called a Drag or turn
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Ken on February 23, 2014, 06:29:56 AM
Twitching or skid trail here.  Landing or bed for the piling area.  Porter loads are just that. 
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: coxy on February 23, 2014, 07:33:20 AM
Quote from: riverlogger on February 16, 2014, 10:23:12 PM
Down here in the south we refer to what you call a landing as the pit. I have no idea how or where that term comes from unless it refers to the fact that years ago the woods here where full of dug out pits where the loggers of the old days would back their trucks in to a hole they dug to make it easier to load. I have just always assumed this could be the reason we call them pits.
some of the old timers here called them rollways    maybe cause every thing was done by hand
Title: Re: Hitch vs Drag- Skid trail vs Twitch rd....Location Location Location
Post by: Rick Alger on February 23, 2014, 11:47:13 AM
Hey 240b, The old guy cuts sled length so he probably doesn't pull rooster tails.