Has Anybody Used a Lane Shark or Similar?

[Walnut Beast]

The local bobcat dealer rents machines and attachments over the weekend.  Think before I bought an expensive machine like that, would want to rent it and get familiar with it.  A buddy rented a mini excavator and dug his sewer line out and repaired it over the weekend.  Another neighbor rented a trencher attachment and laid a bunch of tile in a couple fields same way.  Looked the other day and water was still running out the tile, after several days.

If your only going to use something not very often then renting is ok. But when you start renting often it adds up in a hurry. Most outfits don't rent mulchers out and the ones that do are charging big  💰💰 with sub par stuff

[Walnut Beast]

This is the Brush Wolf four blade

 

 

[Walnut Beast]

The Brush Wolf Alpha is the four blade trees to 10" and can do bigger. The best brush cutter. If you go to a disc then either Diamond,Vail or AFE. Drum with knives is Prinoth , Dennis Cimaf, Shearex or FAE. For your information the CAT branded brush cutter is a Brush Wolf Alpha with a few changes. CAT branded FAE mulchers with some differences 

[Walnut Beast]

If you want to see a good example of how efficient knives are on a good head here it is https://youtu.be/hKQC43lxt1Y

[YellowHammer]

I noticed the brush wolf doesn't have the rows of carbide teeth on the disk, to aid in mulching, where some of the ones my dealer showed me had rows of carbides mounted to the disk.  Supposedly a hybrid between a disk mulcher and a blades cutter.  

What are your thoughts on the value of the carbides on the disk of a bladed brush cutter?  

The drum mulcher is sweet, but wow they are expensive.  

[Walnut Beast]

Yes there is a difference between the brush cutter and the disc mulchers. The brush wolf is technically a brush cutter but unique with the four blades. Diamond has brush cutters and the disc mulchers. The disc mulchers have various teeth cutters and carbides. You can run both  You can put some real big trees on the ground quick with a disc mulcher also. Definitely need a polycarbonate door when using one 

[YellowHammer]

 

 This was a Kubota cutter that had 4 double sided blades and a bunch of carbides on the disk. Kind of a hybrid.  Bradco makes one similar but I didn't get a picture. It has much bigger carbides on the disk and the swinging blades were bigger.  

Here is my wife sitting in a rigged Forestry Kubota with the drum Mulcher.  It had quite a bit of leg room.  But it wasn't cheap. I have an excellent Kubota dealer, I've known him for decades.

 

 

I also sat in a Deere and it may have been an older model but it had zero footroom and had a side opening door that could only be opened if the loader arms were down.  Looking at the pictures of fire burning these up, I may stay away from that kind of side opening door so I can't get trapped and cooked.  

My "justification" for this is to take over duties from my 100 hp tractor for duty around the mill as well as periodic cleanup and maintenance around the farm.  All my tractor implements are universal skid steer mounts so I already have a good bit of implements.  

[farmfromkansas]

A neighbor had a nearly new New Holland that burned, think if I were getting a new skidsteer would want to keep the fire insurance paid up.  

[Gere Flewelling]

With these pictures of burning skid steers, the only one I would want is a Volvo or JCB so I can just open the side door and jump out before my britch's caught fire.  Forget that crawlin out over the loader arms if you can get the door open.

[Walnut Beast]

I bet Brush Wolf makes that brush cutter for Kubota. It's got the same push bar on top and disc with the blades sandwiched between them. Here is what they can do 😂

[Walnut Beast]

With these pictures of burning skid steers, the only one I would want is a Volvo or JCB so I can just open the side door and jump out before my britch's caught fire.  Forget that crawlin out over the loader arms if you can get the door open.

Most have safety latches on the front door to kick out if problems and a rear quick ones on rear of cab.  Ask anybody that's had a JCB one and mulched with it. It's neat but absolutely horrible mulching ( no power), door blew off hauling down the highway and problems with the boom lifting from the one side twisting 

[stavebuyer]

This has sure shifted from a Lane Shark!

When you move into sawmill/lumber yard chores you ought to test drive some compact wheel loaders with high flow. 
You will miss the visibility and reach of your tractor loader with anything skid steer based. You might clean your fencerows 1 week a year; the rest of the year you are in and out of your loader 20 times a day at the sawmill.

The power line people use telescopic saws for encroaching branches followed with a mulcher for the ground work. I don't see a CTL mulcher as an ideal match for limbs encroaching over a fence.

Forget about the brush cutter and rent a CTL with forks to use around the mill for a weekend. If you are happy with it there then think about the fence line. The sawmill is most likely paying for the upkeep of the fence.

[customsawyer]

I'm looking at getting one of these brush cutters also and was wondering if anyone with experience would recommend open front of closed?

[YellowHammer]

Yeah, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels here, going in circles, pun intended.  

My New Holland tractor loader is a beast, easy to get in to, easy to operate, strong as an ox.  However, it has a limited front hydraulic flow rate are 12.5 GPM, and the last thing I want to do is put undo stress on it, its a fine machine and I treat it like gold.

My farm has 3.5 miles of fenceline, and many more miles of "used to be open" cross and hunting trails that I can't even drive a 4 wheeler down anymore, springs and creeks are getting overgrown, etc.  All hardwood, oak and hickory.  I spent nearly 2 full days over the Labor Day weekend trying to make a dent with my big 8 foot rotary cutter and didn't realize how bad things had gotten.  My cutter is a heavy duty model that will cut down and grind saplings 4 inches into powder, and it was out of its league.  So then I used my big dog tractor with a bucket and started bulldozing trees over by the dozen, but actually made things worse, because now I'm starting to have big piles of trees and brush that look like an eyesore, piles of nasty root balls, so I stated thinking big burn piles, and been there done that, and sometimes that's a bigger mess.  The burn piles stay for months of not years to dry out and burn completely, and some of the ones I did 20 years ago were so big, they could see them form the Space Shuttle.  So thats where I started thinking mulcher, where I could just grind stuff up as it fell.  Do a limited area, even push back the trees and brush another 20 feet, call it done, and move on.

Meanwhile, after calling many of the implement maker's dealers, including Lane Shark dealers, about what I was originally trying to do, a common theme kept coming up.  This is out of their league, and I kept getting responses such as "Uh, they can't take that" or "You'll tear it up by the end of the day." or "These were really built for smaller 40hp tractors, a hundred horse tractor will burn it up."  Oh boy, wrong turn.  

I then went to my nearest dream dealership of all machines cool stuff and started walking around, and ended up looking at mini excavators, and saw one with a nice mulching head, but then after discussions with the dealership guy, we decided its use would be pretty limited other than digging holes and mulching fence lines, which it would do an excellent job.  Unless I stepped up to a full size 200 or so that I could use for other stuff.  I'm not going to do that.  Scratch that.  Back to square one.

Also, when visiting another shop (I have been doing a lot of driving around, as I said, spinning my wheels) I talked to a guy who had access to all his dealership toys and he told me his favorite way to clean his property is with a 100 hp CTL and a disk and blade brush cutter rig like the Bradco/Brush Wolf style with multiple blades and grinding carbides.  He said since the cutter is about 8 feet long, and the reach of the CTL is about 9 feet high, he could drive front end into a treeline, set the head at about 45 degrees, putting the top edge of the cutter at about 10 to 12 feet high, and simply swipe down to the ground, cutting limbs, small trees, everything.  It all gets vaporized, 8 feet at a cut.  Or drive down the tree line at a slight angle, disk up at 45 degrees, side swiping and destroying everything in the way and hanging over the trail.  

Pretty much like this video where even at 2 minutes in, bigger trees are being taken down and everything is mulched to the ground.  

https://youtu.be/Yx2AwVjTt_0


About this time, always in the back of my head, I'm thinking rental (my rental experiences generally turn out bad due to garbage equipment, snotty rental people, and breakdowns where I generally end up just getting mad and vowing I'll never do it again) and as luck would have it, the owner of a wooded lot about a quarter of a mile away hired a mulcher guy to clean up the edges of his place, open the interior a little, cut back the treeline, just get it neat and ready to sell.  So I'm thinking now I get to see how it's really done, and maybe even hire the guy.  Well, after a full day of grinding and cleaning up, the place looked great, but at $1,000 per day, I was hit with a reality that there is no way I could afford that for my place with the amount I needed done. Another, "Endless money pit solution."

In the back of my mind, I keep thinking that when the power line company came out to cut back the trees off our driveway, they spent two full days, with 4 guys, a bucket truck, a mini track loader and only got our quarter mile driveway done, both sides. Two days.  I'm glad I wasn't paying them, especially since that was 2 years ago, and its already growing back in, needing another trim back, already.

So if I'm going to take on this task, clean up my place, not have burn piles everywhere, I need to be get a piece of equipment that I can use off and on, days at a time, because I have years of work ahead of me if I want to do this right.  I can't dedicate myself to it full time because I have a business to run.  I don't want to rent a piece of equipment because of the bad experience I've had, and the endless expense, but if I did rent something, I would go big and get a D6 or better and just push everything over.

I am looking at smaller wheel loaders, also, but they make CTL's look inexpensive, horsepower to horsepower (need a minimum of 70hp to run a mulch head, 100hp is better) and their lift capacities and heights are about the same as a 100hp CTL.

Plus the fact that nobody except the Kubota dealer even has a machine in stock that I can sit in, to check out for foot room, entrance/egress etc.  Both Cat and Deere lots are empty, even the Kubota dealer only had the one I sat it, and its long gone.

Or give up, and let it all grow up.  As I said, I'm just spinning my wheels.  Where did I put that pole saw??  It's around here somewhere.....        

[Hilltop366]

Don't suppose there is a market for the wood if it was gathered up and chipped or ground up? 

[stavebuyer]

I didn't have near the CTL and cutter you are considering. Mine was Cat 289D with a standard Cat brush cutter. Old field growth it worked great. Trying to keep the limbs out of my overgrown road way sucked. Yeah you can put the cutter 16' in the air and when you do its directly over your head raining down whatever you are cutting on a machine that is only rainproof and not guarded. All the leaves, bark, and chips pile up on top of the engine cover and between the cab. The cutter blocks your view and with the cutter up the sky the machine is not very stable if you hang a big branch or crooked tree. Unless your driving into the limb they tend to just bend without being cut if you are working parallel to the fence.

I also think its easy to underestimate how much it actually costs to run a mulcher. Wheel loader you might figure 10K hours without a major component failure(used as a loader). I don't know the expected life of CTL mulcher but I would think its relatively short. Take a $140K outfit and wear it out in few thousand hours and the $1000 a day to hire might not look quite so high.

[Walnut Beast]

Many many guys running skid mulchers along side their dedicated mulchers. Some guys I know are running 4 to 8 + skid mulchers day in and day out. Many different ways to look at things. I know what dedicated mulchers cost. The two I'm looking at. If your looking to step up from a skid to a tracked 175hp CMI or Prime Tech it's 300k. Supertrak SK 190 RTL wheel loader is 290k.  Then you better have a semi low boy or heavy duty Gooseneck. Everybody thinks steel tracks are so great. Go talk to the guys that have to replace stuff at 1000 hrs 💰. It's very true if your mulching day in and day out with a skid that around 2500 hrs you probably better trade. The dedicated stuff depends on what it is or how many hrs. Should be able to get many more hrs. But they have plenty of different problems 💰

[Walnut Beast]

Here is a good example of what you do or don't know. Ask a knowledge CAT guy or go to various mulching sites of what unit mulches better. It's the 299 skid hands down. The steel track unit looks cool but this unit is a flop for mulching. Way under powered. It's just best for dirt work

 

 

[Walnut Beast]

I'm looking at getting one of these brush cutters also and was wondering if anyone with experience would recommend open front of closed?

Do you mean disc or drum?

[stavebuyer]

With the tractor that you have I would revisit the heavy duty side booms and run a self contained hydro pump from your PTO like the highway crews use.

[Walnut Beast]

It's all about hydraulic flow, cooling and power. Same with carbides vs knives on the head. Ask a guy running a 700hp mulcher the difference between knives and carbides. You can have a 175 hp mulcher running carbides and then run knives and it's like running a 300hp machine. The downside to knives are if you are running in rocky terrain and you have to sharpen . 

[YellowHammer]

I'm looking at getting one of these brush cutters also and was wondering if anyone with experience would recommend open front of closed?

Do you mean disc or drum?

He's talking about a disk mower.  Some have a protective cover over the blade, some are completely open with the cutters exposed.
 
As I'm evaluating my choices for this, I'm not wanting to go into mulching full time with one machine, I'm looking at the general versatility of all styles of machine to help keep our farm up and "beautified."  We sold all our cows so certainly things are growing up fast.  I've expanded my desires from a basic Lane Shark style to needing to open up ditches that are overgrowing and filling in (cutter and bucket), new ditches to make (bucket or blade), reshaping my general trail network (6 way blade work), cutting back growth I can't get with my bush hog on my tractor, grinding down stumps 12" to 24" diameter as I need to harvest and open up some on my hardwoods and grind the stumps to the ground also I can drive over them.  I'm thinking a versatile machine to do that or has attachments for that, and since I've already got a lot of attachments, thats a plus.  I also need something to mow my 30 foot tall pond dam a few times a year.  Last I want something with a hydrostatic, non clutch system.

I would like the machine to help around the sawmill, also, but that wouldn't be its niche.

I can see a wheel loader solving many of these problems, but I'm worried about the stability of it on hilly ground and the general very high cost per horsepower.  Seems the disk or drum mulchers need about a hundred horsepower.  A hundred horsepower 344 wheel loader is $165K, where as similar CTL is about half that. A small wheel loader would be very easy to get in and out of, and be very comfortable.  I don't know if they have the capability for high flow rate setups to run mulchers.  

[hedgerow]

I bought my first farm forty plus years ago and have never bought one that didn't need a ton of clean up. I started out using a old model G JD tractor with a Stanhoist loader and a seven foot bush hog mower and a chain saw. Did a bunch of clean up with a D7 and a 941B track loader and burned more brush piles than I care to remember. About ten years ago I bought a S-850 Bobcat high flow skid loader and a Harleman Ground Force tree saw with a forty two inch blade. I have put a thousand hours on that saw and its held up well. The skid loader not so much. It doesn't have enough cooling cap on the hyd system for running the high flow all the time. You need a fan that will reverse to blow the saw dust and wood chips out. If I didn't completely blow my machine out twice a day when running the saw I would have burned the skid loader up a long time ago. You need a skid loader set up for forest work not one that is sort of. Once you get the cleaning done you will need to keep as much as you can mowed and spray every thing at least once a year or in a couple of years you will be back to were you started. Cleaning up farms is not cheap or fun. 

[Walnut Beast]

Never heard of a disc or drum referred to that way 😂. Another thing guys really like about a disc is when your doing pastures it disperses the chunks everywhere and doesn't effect grass growth where if you mulched the same tree in the pasture the pile of chips need to be back dragged. I'll say it again. You better have a Forestry package on your unit and be in wide open areas. As for wheel loaders unless it's purpose built it's a big NO! The advantages you have with a tracked unit over a wheeled unit is flotation from getting stuck and stability ( steep terrain). On the flip side the advantages are night and day difference on maintenance compared to steel track unit and the speed of production 💰. A friend in Alabama started mulching with a Deere that burned to the ground then went to a wheeled unit ( got tired of getting stuck in Alabama 😂) to two 175hp tracked and one 300hp units. Just a little serious about mulching. Just a note. None of the dedicated mulchers run a disc 

[stavebuyer]

Hedge summed it up. It costs a fortune keep unused land trimmed up. Let it grow up and lease it to hunters or lease to a farmer and let him keep mowed and grazed while you use the lease money to buy boat gas.  ;D