The Forestry Forum

has anyone out there ever used a dc powered eletric winch to pull logs it would only see occasional use. iwould like to have something on my track loader. ihave a skidder with a winch and load my logs with the trackloader but sometimes there are afew jobs i would take if i could only use the loader and not have move both pieces of equipment such as cutting a few high value trees such as walnut but sometimes its more trouble than its worth to move everything to cut 5 or 6 trees.i have never used an eletric winch and have no idea how much they will pull. the biggest one i have seen so far in the 12volt class is a 15,000lb warn brand

An electric winch will pull but the one draw back is the short duty cycle. Most 12 volt winches have a duty cycle of 25% or less meaning for every 10 minutes of winching it should rest for 40 minutes. I would try to find a way to mount a hydraulic winch. Same money as a good commercial electric winch with a lot longer duty cycle, better pulling power and less things to go wrong.

No actual experience here but a lot of research into it.   I have a Ford super duty and want to put a winch on it.  Decided that the only practical answer was hydraulic if I wanted to do this, because I want to winch a number of logs quickly sometimes up to a hundred feet each.  An electric winch would have to be rested too much to be practical.  It would be practical to use a dc winch for short runs to load a trailer for example.   On the other hand a hydraulic winch like a Warn 9000 or Ramsey 8000-12000 could be run all day,  subject only to the ability to dissipate heat from the oil reservoir.   So if you have suitable hydraulic pressure and enough oil capacity this is entirely workable.   I decided I wanted the winch  inside the back bumper to keep weight off the front,  and an oil tank mounted underneath my truck to keep the bed clear.  Both of these would be custom and so haven't got around to it.  I would have put a PTO and hydraulic pump on the transmission, and the Ford electronic engine rpm governor,  which are the easy parts. 

In the meantime I've been able to do a fair amount of log pulling with pulleys, rope, and a decent run for the truck. 

Keep in mind that most of these electric winches are very slow. I have no idea what the speed on your skidder's winch is, but a Farmi tractor winch runs about 200 FPM. I assume your skidder is similar. If I recall, most of the electric winches I've seen are 1/10 or at most 1/5 that speed (and I'm not sure if that speed was loaded or unloaded).

Not a big deal if you are skidding a short distance, but it gets old if you have even a few logs that are longer skids... especially if you also run into the duty cycle limitations of the electric winch and have to wait for it to cool down during a skid.

John Mc

thanks for the info everyone after looking at the price of the bigger eletric winches which are anywhere from 1500.00 to 2000.00 dollars if i put one on it it will be the hydraulic one.most of the ones that ive seen on the case machines are gearmatic i know where some of those are starting at 2500.00 idont know if they are 19's or 119's we had a 119 on a 240 timberjack once that was a great winch ive always heard the 19's were a lot more iguess the word would be finniky or harder to keep adjusted but i have never used one.