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Started by nativewolf, April 29, 2019, 08:58:55 AM

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barbender

I don't know what it is down there...they just destroy stuff. I think the only way you get around it is hiring people from outside the field and training them the way you want. Ponsse told me they took a machine once out of Alabama, I don't remember if it was a repo or a trade, a couple years old and 6-8000 hours and they were PARTING IT OUT! Because it was trashed so bad! Can you imagine buying a $600K machine and destroying it in 6000 hours?
Too many irons in the fire

nativewolf

Right, I mean Ponsse new warranty program gives full coverage to 6000 hours, with an active care package you basically change oil and hoses and they do the rest.  But to kill a machine at 1/3 of normal use is crazy.  Well maintained Ponsses are going to 20k+ hours nowadays. 

I am actually hiring outside the industry.
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barbender

We have a forwarder that is at 30k hours. One of our contract harvesters is over 30k. That machine started out down south, and got it's hardest use down there (by Captain Kirk, who you met in Alabama, Nativewolf😊). That machine used to get serviced by kiko. It's a small world, isn't it?
Too many irons in the fire

nativewolf

Quote from: barbender on May 01, 2019, 08:27:45 AM
We have a forwarder that is at 30k hours. One of our contract harvesters is over 30k. That machine started out down south, and got it's hardest use down there (by Captain Kirk, who you met in Alabama, Nativewolf😊). That machine used to get serviced by kiko. It's a small world, isn't it?
The man can get some trees down but he's not gentle.  Glad to hear it is still doing well.
Liking Walnut

barbender

I just found out today that one of the CTL outfits (2 teams) from up here is down around Savannah, GA. My buddy talked to his old boss down there, he was trying to talk him into coming back down and cutting down there again. He said he's getting paid a premium for the bucked wood, when they were running CTL before they could barely get the mills to take their wood because they wanted it tree length.
Too many irons in the fire

nativewolf

Huh, that's interesting but I guess not surprising.  

The next upgrade for CTL is greater processor to mill connectivity.  Really no reason why they should not be JIT (just in time).  
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Riwaka

Does on processor accoustic testing happen in Lob pine? for saw log/ chip nsaw?
Might better segregate ctl logs off the feller/ processor  which is saw vs pulp.
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Skeans1

Quote from: nativewolf on May 03, 2019, 07:45:22 AM
Huh, that's interesting but I guess not surprising.  

The next upgrade for CTL is greater processor to mill connectivity.  Really no reason why they should not be JIT (just in time).  
Just in time systems wouldn't work unless the mill systems changed at least out here with our scaling there's no way they'd trust a machine to scale every stick.

mike_belben

I drive 300-500 miles a day in TN, carolina and a touch of Nga.  See about 20 loads of tree length pine to 1 load of bucked HW on average. Have passed plenty of equipment dealers, tons of mills and tons of clearcuts.  I have never seen a CTL machine in the southeast.  Not on a job, not on a trailer or on a dealer lot.  Theres probably 5 new knucklebooms over at delks right now.  

The south .. Atleast where the trees are, is predominantly rural.  Rural people see land as a thing that produces either a crop or a subdivision, and we hate subdivisions, its where the invaders live.  So whether its a crop of beans, wheat, corn, hay, beef or lumber..  We dont really care.. They all have a look of their own that is just part of the natural world, stumps and slash included.  We are not preconditioned to think of a clearcut as ugly or to think of undeveloped land as requiring a tidy parking lot with sidewalks and mulched retaining wall hardscapes like urban regions are all going to.

Roll down the west side of durham NC on apex hwy [55] and there is not a native planting in sight.  Every spec of material there, from the fill dirt to the luxury apartments that are being built one ontop the other, came on a truck.  Those people demand beauty at any cost, but they dont have land to sell a crop off of. 

Head southwest on 73 toward pinehurst or wadesboro or mt gilead and youll see miles of land around the singlewides.  The pine harvest slash will end 5 feet from a bedroom window.  These people have land.  They care about dollars per acre on that crop and thats that.  Is ctl gonna bump up the profit?  No?  Sorry, my cousins hotsaw crew will be here tuesday.  

If one wants to be a CTL in the south its gonna be swimming upstream.  Youll need to leave the region to find it, fix it yourself, run it yourself and make less than the other crews pouring a pail of 303 per day into a 1992 prentice hooked to a 5ton that havent had a payment on them in decades.  The crew makes $13/hr on a 1099, fixes the stuff themselves and slams out truck after truck after truck 6 days a week.   Can you compete against them?   Not without someone elses money i reckon.  Yes theyre hillbilly rednecks doing it all wrong, but you wont believe how much footage they put up with fence wire and hoseclamps.

Can they work all year?  Not unless deer season gets cancelled.
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RT roosting

Quote from: kiko on April 29, 2019, 09:50:04 PM
I feel CTL will not ever be sustainable in any marketable way in the Southeast for two main reasons.

I will admit I have no experience in CTL, but I have wondered if a CTL combi/dual machine would work well in the South on small woodlots 5-15 acres, stream corridor thinnings, possibly steeper sloped areas, etc...    

These are higher cost harvest types, but the combi machine would actually benefit you in these instances as moving costs would be less with just one machine and on corridor harvests the skid distances wouldn't be as much of a factor.  I would think it also would work well for cleanup after larger high production crews when they get rained out with small acreage left.

I could be wrong, but it would seem like if you could get 4 loads per day with one machine in these type stands (cutting 12-20" pine most of the time) it would work, but I don't know if that is reasonable.  I have had this thought in the back of my head for a few years after seeing a few try second thinning down here and fight a slow death.  Just felt like it wasn't the right application, too much low value pulpwood with lots of processing to justify the precision equipment.   

barbender

RT, the combi machines are typically only suited to smaller wood. You're hanging a harvester head off of a forwarder crane, so the capacity is pretty limited. They are out there though. 
    I just heard of a crew from up here, that went down with 2 Ponsse CTL crews to Georgia cutting predominantly pine. A little birdie told me a lot of the things that were fighting previous CTL efforts, are coming around to where it's not an uphill fight. There's a logger down there that's been in the game for a long time, that's thinking it's time for a CTL crew. He'll likely import an operation from somewhere else though.
Too many irons in the fire

WDH

Interfor, which is the largest lumber producer in Georgia at close to a billion bf/year at seven mills has converted all the mills to cut to length.  Most loggers still use the traditional tree-length equipment but use ground saws to cut the logs to the multiple lengths.  Everything is skidded tree length to the landing and then the logs are de-limbed, topped, and cut to multiple lengths with the groundsaw.
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RT roosting

Quote from: barbender on May 13, 2019, 11:45:27 PM
RT, the combi machines are typically only suited to smaller wood. You're hanging a harvester head off of a forwarder crane, so the capacity is pretty limited. They are out there though.
   I just heard of a crew from up here, that went down with 2 Ponsse CTL crews to Georgia cutting predominantly pine. A little birdie told me a lot of the things that were fighting previous CTL efforts, are coming around to where it's not an uphill fight. There's a logger down there that's been in the game for a long time, that's thinking it's time for a CTL crew. He'll likely import an operation from somewhere else though.
Thanks barbender, I hadn't thought about the difference in size of combi machines.  It's a shame as I felt there might be a good fit to use one for specialized logging down here.  
I think more mills will shift to cut to length going forward.  Historically the mills owned the land and mills throughout the South, and as such they designed mills to maximize production from the land base all the way through to market.  Since most of the mills are now independent of the land, Weyerhaeuser being the exception, I think the trend will increase especially considering there is an oversupply of logs so they don't have to push for everything.   

chevytaHOE5674

You can get a timber pro combo machine and run a respectable size head (logmax 7000 size or equilivant) on it and cut just about anything you could want with a machine.

If I was ever crazy enough to get back into the woods biz that is the route I would go.

barbender

Chevy, I always forget about the Timberpro machines- their cranes are completely capable as either a forwarder or harvester. But they are big, and who knows where things will end up with Komatsu buying them out.
  RT, another thing- cleaning up around the margins and such is a good way to go broke. One problem my buddy had when he was cutting with his Ponsse down there in GA, was that many of the foresters only wanted to use him for exactly the situations you describe. The conventional crews would cut all the high production/easy access wood, and he'd get to cut the difficult terrain, near houses, etc. Production was poor, and he finally came back north. If you could get a good enough harvesting rate, you could make it work but it's tough.
Too many irons in the fire

Plankton

Are the mills down south upping price per mbdft when switching to ctl? to account for the more time it takes for the logger and what would seem to be a time saver for the mill versus whole tree.

Up here in the northeast we make out fine production wise with slashers on the landing or ctl equiptment in the woods since hardly any mills I know of take tree length but it's a whole different scenario up here.

Skeans1

If you're using a processor on the landing do you really need a bump? Time and speed should be the same or slightly faster since you sort/pile well processing plus you'll have less waste to take back out in the brush for slash.

kiko

Y'all come on back! I am tired of working on skidders and rubber tired bunchers anyway.

RT roosting

Barbender - I hear what you are saying - a steady diet of junk is bad no matter what you are dealing with, and higher rates a lot of times aren't able to compensate for lack of production.

I just saw the one machine where you aren't paying labor, workers comp, you use less fuel, probably less maintenance cost, and the ability to cut a much wider variety of tracts and ground types and best of all no employees!    However I'm guessing price of one is in the $650k range and for just one piece of equipment that's tough to overcome.

I'm assuming your buddy cutting in GA was using traditional 2 machine setup?  Any ideas what kind of production he was getting? 
      

barbender

I get where you're coming from, RT. My buddy actually demoed a Ponsse Buffalo Dusl when he was in Georgia. He wasn't impressed with it as a harvester at all. As I said before, it still had the forwarder crane (way less lifting power, waaay less swing power), and then you have the long forwarder frame to contend with. He said you end up processing over the wheels all the time👎 I think they would work ok in small diameter wood, but they really are limited as a harvester. The Timberpro is it's own beast, they look completely capable as harvester. 
  I don't remember what kind of production they were getting down there. They speak tons and we speak cords, not to mention that the wood is way heavier down there😊
Too many irons in the fire

Skeans1

Quote from: RT roosting on May 15, 2019, 10:19:07 AM
Barbender - I hear what you are saying - a steady diet of junk is bad no matter what you are dealing with, and higher rates a lot of times aren't able to compensate for lack of production.

I just saw the one machine where you aren't paying labor, workers comp, you use less fuel, probably less maintenance cost, and the ability to cut a much wider variety of tracts and ground types and best of all no employees!    However I'm guessing price of one is in the $650k range and for just one piece of equipment that's tough to overcome.

I'm assuming your buddy cutting in GA was using traditional 2 machine setup?  Any ideas what kind of production he was getting?
     
Most of the Timberpro machines will use more fuel or the same as the two machine setups. One thing to look at is you'll be down production since you're cutting for a while then yarding, in thinning we do about 3 loads a day so around 75 to 100 tons a day of logs and pulp now cut that in half plus loading time.

RT roosting

Thanks Skeans and Barbender, the dream is officially dead.  I would need the production to be in the 3-4 loads/day range to make work.  Our wood may be heavier so processing might be quicker to get to the tonnage, but I think it is still a stretch.  As you mentioned still have loading time to factor in, and unless you can somehow schedule trucks or have set out trailers there is going to be a lot of switching going on.  


chevytaHOE5674

Good buddy of mine has an 8wheel timberpro harvester with a logmax 7000 head on it. He has no trouble putting 70+ cord of wood on the ground every day using not much more fuel than the Ponsse and JD machines I ran did. His forwarder burns more fuel per hour than the "euro" machines but his can swing a lot more wood a lot faster as well. The crane will lift a house if needed.

My reason for wanting a good combo machine is I dont want an employee, no workers comp, no expensive insurance on the hired man and machine, one machine to move, etc. But everytime I get serious about it my wife smacks me back to my senses. Haha

Skeans1

@chevytaHOE5674 
Our newer 1270G is running around 3.5 an hour in fuel our old school TJ1210B has a Perkins 6 is about 2.5 an hour. I can't say how much wood we could do in a clear cut being we don't hardly do them, but doing the lengths we have to do out here 32's 36's it takes more time to produce then short logs. I get the big bonus on insurance and moving costs everything has to pay out to make worth while.
Is my math right he's cutting roughly 150mbf a day?

Skeans1

Quote from: RT roosting on May 15, 2019, 09:55:39 PM
Thanks Skeans and Barbender, the dream is officially dead.  I would need the production to be in the 3-4 loads/day range to make work.  Our wood may be heavier so processing might be quicker to get to the tonnage, but I think it is still a stretch.  As you mentioned still have loading time to factor in, and unless you can somehow schedule trucks or have set out trailers there is going to be a lot of switching going on.  
What we use for loading instead of a forwarder is a shovel/log loader to load the trucks the landings are smaller and the roads stay cleaner. What lengths are you guys running down there?

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