Skidding distance

[jim king]

Is there any rule of thumb up there that is used to determine the maximum distance feasable/profitable to pull out logs with a skidder ?

The reason I am asking is that the average forestry concession here in the Peruvian Amazon is about 4 to an 8 mile haul with a skidder to a river bank as building roads is cost prohibative plus they are useless as soon as the job is done as there is no where to go except to a dead end and the start of the road is on a far away river bank.

[John Woodworth]

In my case the lay of the land, proximinty of a workable landing and the volume of wood to go to that landing plus the fact you can't just build permante roads just for the sake of logging the property and at times leads to some long yards but nothing like you are doing, must make for a long day. You just about have to do whatever it takes to get the wood out and sounds like there is no shorter route. I assume you are yarding some pretty dense wood and my opinion would be the bigger the skidder and bonus tree length turns to get the max. out with each turn.

What are you running for a skidder and are you bucking the logs before yarding? I imagine due to the size you have to but can you buck for multiple cuts and re-buck at the river and build bigger turns and still move them?

Would love to see your operation.

[jim king]

John:

We use a Cat 528 skidder and others have similar size Timberjacks as well as Cats.  The problem we have is that the bigger the machine the farther you sink .  There used to be a small John Deere skidder in town and that sank less as it weighed a lot less but the hauling capacity was reduced.

Yes, everyone hauls out whole trees when possible and on the patio at a river beach they are cut to length for the saw timber logs.  The typical turnaround time is about four hours from stump to beach and then onto a barge.  It simply is not economically feasable.  This is due to the fact that the concessions for timber harvest are far inland.

The large trees of 4 to 6 foot dia, for plywood are cut to 8 foot lengths for skidding and then some times it takes two skidders to get them out.

It appears that still the best way and the only profitable way is cutting into cants and carrying the hard dense flooring woods out on the backs of people and rolling the large logs out by hand also.

I would appreciate any ideas , the industry here is in a real mess trying to conform to the ever mounting pile of new laws made by the Ecology nuts.

[Tom]

A 4 to 8 mile skid sounds to me like a job for a Helicopter.

[tyb525]

Jim,

Have you considered a temporary railroad in place of skidders and skid roads?

[Sprucegum]

In the old days they built wooden rails called"skids" and greased them so the oxen could pull big logs with no problem. I don't have the details of the construction of the rails on hand but I will look.

[oldseabee]

How much brush and small trees are on the route to the river? Could use a brush chopper to lay down a mat of brush instead of a road, then use forwarders converted to swamp tracks to run on the brush mat, faster then skidders, easier to carry then drag a load. The other option is to scour the world for the old Clark 880 skidders that were designed for the forests in Borneo, 13.5 ft. tilt dozer blade on front and anchor blade in back to hold the machine when using the Carco G80 winch.

[jim king]

The base of the problem is that the companies here do not have the financial resources to rent Helicopters if they were available, to build a train track or even buy equipment that could permit the long distance extraction required by law.  Also the soil is generally greasy clay and a lot of swamps and creeks.

Tropical forestry simply does not generate the kind of profit required for large investments.  As the vast majority of the market here is now for 1 foot long to 4 foot long flooring blanks ready to pass thru the molder in China I think the best solution is labor intensive extraction of chainsaw cants carried to the nearest creek and brought out in dugout canoes to a central gathering point.  That being my thoughts I certainly would appreciate more ideas.

Water buffaloes are a possible alternative and we have them here.

Maybe some elephants with hip boots  ?¿

[SwampDonkey]

If the money for the wood can't pay for transportation network than who ever wants it doesn't need it bad enough. Certain other countries in the world do their best to keep others as poor as they can for as long as they can get someone to work for nothing.

Just my thoughts. ;)

[Rob-IL]

I like to keep my skids whithin a 1/4 mile, I frown at any much further than that!!!

[pasbuild]

If the areas you are working will be selectively cut for many years to come than the roads may not be as costly as you think if it can be spread out over time, are there grant $s available, government programs?

[Ianab]

Looking back maybe 80-100 years ago to when our family farm was originally milled from rain forest the logs where hauled out of the bush using a mostly wooden tramway, maybe 3 or 4 miles eventually. Had several trestle bridges, couple of hand dug tunnels and logs where skidded to the track with a steam powered winch.

You can still see where the landings and skid trails were but only some cuttings and the tunnels remain of where the wooden tracks ran.

Because the main haul route was on the rails there wasn't a mud issue.

I'm guessing the tracks would have a pretty limited life in the tropical jungle of course...

Ian

[tyb525]

Using some of that hard, durable tropical wood, I bet it might be cheaper than running a skidder back and forth. Just roll the logs up onto the flatbed railcar (which could also be made from wood) and use a simple locomotive to power it. Even with wooden wheels, rolling resistance would be much less than skidding the logs. It should be able to haul quite a few logs, and even if not, I would think it would be more efficient than a skidder. A stationary winch could be used to pull the logs the the rail, or a skidder if it is too far.

Just a thought (this is something I have been wanting to do myself)

[treefarmer87]

i try to get as close as possible. i have never had to skid over 600 yrds. the closer you are the better. ;)

[jim king]

Thanks everyone for the responses.  Enjoyable reading.  Some of these ideas from the old times may be workable.

I also cannot see how more than half an hour could be woth while and here in this terrain half an hour with luck is half a mile and is a turnaround time of one hour.

4 to 8 miles is a nightmare.

As for financing there is nothing available to to loggers and even if it was available the interest rates here with all the add ons come to a minimum of 30% a year.

[barbender]

I'd keep looking into the old time methods from the circumstances you describe. I can't see how a four mile skid could possibly be profitable. I think like others have mentioned, some sort of railway to deal with the mud and swamp conditions. If I remember from some of thepictures you posted, I looks like folks down there are pretty ingenuetive with what they have. Perhaps you could build a small locomotive to run on wooden rails powered by a small gas engine (like the little trains they have at Flintstone land in the Black Hills of SD ) Maybe even pull it with trained water buffalo. There has to be something better than carrying it out on your back. The resilience people have in the third world countries makes me feel like an ungrateful slob. Pretty humbling. Good Luck

[John Woodworth]

Jim you talk of cutting cants, would it be feesable to use a portable sawmill to cut the cants and build a tandem axle trailer with swamp tracks on it to pull behind the skidder to haul the cants, that should help with the tire foot print as there won't be as much weight on the skidder.

[jim king]

We have found that the chainsaw method of cutting cants is far superior and faster than trying to trying to get a portable sawmill set up back in the jungle.  Two men can cut 1000 bf in cants a day with a chainsaw.

Instead of a trailer we have used large forks from the top of a tree and cut planks to put a floor on the Y of the fork and stack cants on that and it works well but the distances we have to work with and the terrain makes it difficult in most locations.

We cable the log end of the Y and pull it out the jungle as a natural ready made sled loaded and the cants tied down.

[Ianab]

Some museum pics of the "good ole days"

This is the sort of tram car they moved the logs on.


And a 2 horse power winch. It was still being used in 1936, and could haul in a 20ton log from up to a mile away!!!


The winch itself is still in the museum.


The winch was built in 1912 and was still being used in 1936, so it must have worked OK for them to keep using it. Either that or it took 24 years to get that log hauled in  :D

I think you have posted pictures of a similar man powered setup? Water buffalo might be a step up?

Ian

[Okrafarmer]

If the wood is worth getting out at all, there must be is a way to do it economically. What you must do is come up with a way of pulling out more wood per  driver/hr. and more wood per gallon of fuel per hour. You talked about sinking in-- well don't sink in. Go find a used Caterpillar D-8 or D-7 dozer, take off the blade, and then make some kind of log sleds, out of wood and/or welded steel, and you should be able to pull a whole lot more wood over soft ground than with a wheel skidder. You might want to build up the grouser bars to bite better, and maybe see about extending the track shoes sideways a little to float more, too. You can do this by welding extensions on. You should be able to do at least 5 miles per hour and pull a whole lot more (several times more) wood than if you only use a skidder, and not sink in too bad. Consider turning up the fuel pump on the engine to get more power out of the engine, as the D-7 and D-8 have plenty of drive train strength to spare while doing a dead pull (it's a lot easier on them than dozing, which they are designed for). Load them up to the max-- they're good for it. Since you are skidding to a river, you are averaging downhill terrain, therefore you will be able to pull even more and faster than if it were averaging uphill. Keep your skidder up in the woods cabling logs out to your central skid road while the Caterpillar crawler makes the long haul. 8 miles two ways = 16 miles / 5 mph should be a little over 3 hours round trip-- you should be able to make two trips a day hauling much more than with your skidder. If you need ideas for how to skid the logs, I suggest the book "Engless Tracks in the Woods" which shows how the old-timers did it. A skid-pan is one of the simplest and cheapest methods of increasing your drag-ability of oversize logs-- a steel sled is built that is basically a reinforced heavy sheet of steel turned up at the front to ride over obstacles. You place the front end of the huge log or logs on the top of the sled and chain them to it. The crawler tractor pulls the skidpan with the logs and friction is reduced compared to just dragging the log in the mud. Or if you have a winch on the crawler, you can lift the end of the log off the ground. A D-8 or D-7 ought to be able to pull more than one gigantic log as long as there is no mountainous terrain involved. If you are moving logs more than about 4 feet in diameter, you should be able to pull more than one in series if your road is straight enough. Attach the second log to the first log, the third log to the second log, etc, as many as the crawler will pull.The first one can be lifted up by a winch on the crawler if you have one, then attach the others with skidpans. You will have to experiment to see how many logs of whatever size you can pull-- obviously a D-8 is much bigger and more powerful than a D-7, and if you can score a D-9, so much the better. Depending on the size of the logs, if they are small enough, you can of course pull more than one directly behind the tractor, either on multiple choker cables from the winch, as you would with your skidder, or else multiple logs on the skidpan. In that case, if you had power left over and still wanted to pull more logs behind the first twitch, you would choose the largest, longest, strongest log in the first twitch and attach your next skidpan behind it. The point is, load down your tractor until it is at full optimum capacity-- using most of its power to go down the road with the logs but with enough reserve to power through any tough spots. BTW, if you do turn up the fuel pump on the diesel engine, make certain your cooling system is able to keep up in your climate ;) as the ability to keep the engine cool will probably be the limiting factor of how much power you can effectively rev out of those tough Cat engines.

I am assuming that your central skid path is relatively flat and straight, and slightly downhill, which may be an unwarranted assumption.

The bottom line is, either you can find a way to move enough timber at a time to make it profitable, or you can not. The way you are doing it may not be profitable. You just have to look at how much money you are receiving versus how much money you are expending. More valuable wood is worth spending more time on, as long as you are seeing an acceptable profit. If not-- leave the trees in the woods! But don't be afraid to think outside the box. Just think-- more than 50 years ago somebody invented the first workable wheeled log skidder-- capable of traveling faster and more efficiently over hard ground with logs than the clunky crawlers. But the crawlers still can't be beat by wheeled machines in soft ground.

Just my long-winded 2cents / bf

[jimparamedic]

The old ways how about a log flume which are wood troughs and small canals used to float logs from long distance and rough terrain could float cants out on a small scale flume

[tyb525]

I still think the railroad method is the most efficient long, repetitive trips. Look at the old logging railroads of the past. Essentially no ground disturbance once the tracks are taken up at the end of the job. No rutting, very little sinking in on wet ground.

[Okrafarmer]

The railway is effective, but requires a lot of grunt work to get it in place. You could only make it work cost effectively if you knew you were going to be working that trail for a long, long time. Of course, labor may be cheap enough in that area to make it worthwhile. Certainly more likely than here in the states.

[tyb525]

The railroad I have in mind is wooden-wooden cross ties, wooden rails. The rail would be 2x4 or so, using some of that very durable hardwood. The width between the rails can be anything, but the wider it is the more stable it will be. The reason I am pushing this idea is because there is so much less resistance and less damage to the ground.

Like you said Okra, it would only be cost-effective for a long-term job. (a few months or more?) Jim didn't specify the usual duration.

[Okrafarmer]

Yes, I suppose so. But if you don't have the track level (or downhill) for the whole 8 miles, you still have to have a lot of power to move your wagons up any inclines. ideally, you would build it on top of the watershed ridge in your area and be able to winch logs up to the railroad from either side of it. Then use some type of loader to load the logs on the cars. The loader could ride on the track as well, as the old steam jammers did.

But setting all those cross ties in the first place, and leveling out the trail enough to make the track work, is still a huge undertaking. If you use mobile vehicular skidding, you don't have much to pack up and take to the next location. And your two rails have to be set precisely apart so your wagons don't fall off. (That actually wouldn't be too hard to arrange I suppose). You would have to take into consideration the dynamics of any turns in the track-- would your wagons stay on the rails? Making it straight enough and level enough would be rough.

Maybe a monorail system would work better?

Another idea would be staged donkey engines, if labor is cheap enough. Set up donkey engines with winches at intervals (whether every quarter mile, half mile, mile, or whatever). A small vehicle, tractor or even draft animal, could tow the cable out to the end and the operator hook onto the log. Then the donkey engine would wind the winch up. Say you had one every half mile-- 2 per mile X 8 miles means you could have 16 logs working their way toward the river-- in the "pipeline" so to speak-- at any given time. This would be another good time to use skidpans to keep the front of the log off the ground. You would need approximately 32 operators to run this system at any given time-- but if labor is cheap, you could definitely do it. ALSO-- the more I think about it, this system is quite flexible as the donkey engines could also be used to winch logs up out of the woods on the sides of the center skidway. It wouldn't matter much if logs began to pile up at one station or another along the way-- there would be room for a lot of them to pile up while one winch engine or another was used to lead a freshly cut log up perpendicularly from its place of growth. Mules, water buffaloes or some other draft animal compatible with the terrain would probably be best for leading the cables out.

It would also be advantageous for each donkey engine to be set up with two winches on hand-- one winch could be pulling a log in while the second winch was being fed out to get the next log. You would have a very steady stream of logs heading down to the river!