rain

[Skeans1]

Are you guys pit running for a base then putting crushed on top? That's typically what you'll find out here for a road system, on some of the bigger systems that stretch 50+ miles you'll see pit every few miles off them for repair.

[Wudman]

We are pulling from commercial pits scattered across the country side.  A 20 mile haul is not unusual for me.  On logging roads, I'll use 3" material (or bigger in problem areas).  It stands up well in wet weather, but its fairly rough for passenger vehicle travel.  This road served as the driveway for two residences.  We top-dressed the larger stone with #57 crushed stone (1/2 inch sized material) to keep the residents happy. 

Wudman 

[mike_belben]

Well i wish you did the haul road i drove in on yesterday!

[Ron Scott]

If there is ever going to be a complaint about a timber harvest it is usually about the care not given to the road system serving it.

[Skeans1]

We are pulling from commercial pits scattered across the country side.  A 20 mile haul is not unusual for me.  On logging roads, I'll use 3" material (or bigger in problem areas).  It stands up well in wet weather, but its fairly rough for passenger vehicle travel.  This road served as the driveway for two residences.  We top-dressed the larger stone with #57 crushed stone (1/2 inch sized material) to keep the residents happy.

Wudman

3" minus is normally a topping or crushed rock put on out here with a light coat of 3/4 maybe. One thing I've noticed is hauling off of our these road where there's the old base with the 3" as the top rock they aren't as soft or as pushy vs the new 3/4" roads. One of our biggest issues with winter time work is hauling out near creeks with all the state regs we can't have muddy water entering the creeks, so it's always do road work here.

[mike_belben]

That can be a tall order sometimes, keeping the runoff clear.  On my own creek crossing all i could think of was to push the low spot back away from the creek by making a different low about 10 feet back.  I probably scraped down 3ft and piled that dirt ontop the culvert which made a settling pool just before it in the middle of the road. Then ditched that to a stump hole.  It seems to percolate through the root system back into the creek.  Water flows out under the bank downstream a little foggy at times but not too bad. I need a few feet of shotrock in the settling pool before it becomes a car road. Its only an issue during downpours for half a day.  Not in daily use until i build the house back there. 

[nativewolf]

@Wudman @Skeans1 Do either of you ever put matting down for temporary roads.  Someone is offering quite a bunch in southern ohio, about a 200 mile drive but for 10 semi loads I'd have quite the stash of matting.  This is not crane matting but pipeline matting, basically laminated 2" materials into a mat 8' x 14' or 20'.  I could move them around with a forwarder and get them into place.  

My problem is I have a temporary project road to build across a field with some slope and then to back of project, a mile total.  Field & forest is used for fox hunts and I need to restore after use.  The timber net is about 1.2-2 million bdft of White & Red Oak, Walnut, Yellow Poplar and a smattering of other species (true selective harvest with 50% removal).  Probably going to average $1+/bdft with 50% going to landowner(s). The trick is leaving the field/woodlots in good condition.  I can't build a permanent road with 3" gravel, well I could build a road and then have to remove the stone and regrade and plant.  I think road costs with stone would take 6 figures to put it in, take out, and restore.  So, I've been looking at timber mats/pipeline mats, crane mats, laminated mats.  Thought about making my own mats, etc.  

To top this off we just got our first decent snow of the year, 4-6" and it will thaw in 2 days and the mud will be epic.  Good time to have wet weather options.

[Skeans1]

Part of logging out here is having the roads in for truck it's an expense but it's something that's permanently there for future harvest and emergency services fire ect. Some jobs like that we'll wait till summer just that simple especially if the land owner won't rock with a good possibility of the private wood getting shut off to the mills during that time.

[nativewolf]

Part of logging out here is having the roads in for truck it's an expense but it's something that's permanently there for future harvest and emergency services fire ect. Some jobs like that we'll wait till summer just that simple especially if the land owner won't rock with a good possibility of the private wood getting shut off to the mills during that time.

Wish we could wait til dry weather.  The white oak just can't be cut in summer, has to be cut and shipped by may.  
So the question is...do people go up/down slopes on timber mats?  

[Skeans1]

We run on brush all the time even on steep slopes, the haul roads or truck roads are all rock they have to be to handle the weight of the trucks and the abuse of them. After we're done in about 10 years they come back to finish up the hair cut where it can be 10 trucks or more a day running multiple loads a day. 

[Southside]

What about using geotech as a bottom layer?  I have never seen it pulled back up but have seen roads built through cedar bogs that will never freeze, put about 8" of shale on top of it and drive loaded semi's over it all day long.  It is an odd feeling when you watch the whole road surface wave like the ocean, but I never saw it fail and never saw a truck get stuck. 

[mike_belben]

Get those mats as quick as you can wyatt.  Youll never get rock back up out of clay after running semis on it without fabric. youll have $500 per every 300feet in fabric thatll be destroyed when you pull chocks.  The rock will be like $400 every 80 feet then trucking it again on the way out, not to mention how bad the loader will chew things up getting at the side of the truck doing removal hauls. And then youll be looking at big money for topsoil seed and straw.  Its a bad idea.


Get the mats, if the trucks are sideslipping in the bad spots or frozen rain, just nail down an edge made from slabwood then have your mexicans use a wheelbarrow to dump some crushed stone along the tread path.  Itll bite into the tire and wood.  Just rake it around as needed and scoop it up when you leave.  You can always find a construction company happy to provide storage for your mats in exchange for usage.  And you can recoupe all your $ on selling the mats when you retire.  Im sure you can sub out the job of laying mat to a midi-excavator with thumb if necessary.

[Wudman]

The job that I referenced in the picture had about 25 two-ply mats laid across a (I would say wet area, but that is repetitious) booger hole.  The trick with mats is to put them down before you need them.  On crap ground they move around and then you start getting tie rods, fuel tanks, fuel lines, brake lines, etc.  On permanent roads, I use geotextile fabric on poor ground.  It is money well spent.

The two ply mats don't last very well.  In poor ground, they'll start breaking up after a handful of uses.  The 3 ply mats are much more durable, but become cost prohibitive in a hurry.  Chase behind Dominion Power for a bit.  They have a ridiculous number of mats sitting around following their projects.  You can get them at a fairly reasonable rate.  On slope, mats can be tricky to navigate.  The red mud works up through them and they become slick as snot.  I have put sand over top of them at times to keep some traction.  Then they become more difficult to recover.

Wudman

[nativewolf]

Get those mats as quick as you can wyatt.  Youll never get rock back up out of clay after running semis on it without fabric. youll have $500 per every 300feet in fabric thatll be destroyed when you pull chocks.  The rock will be like $400 every 80 feet then trucking it again on the way out, not to mention how bad the loader will chew things up getting at the side of the truck doing removal hauls. And then youll be looking at big money for topsoil seed and straw.  Its a bad idea.


Get the mats, if the trucks are sideslipping in the bad spots or frozen rain, just nail down an edge made from slabwood then have your mexicans use a wheelbarrow to dump some crushed stone along the tread path.  Itll bite into the tire and wood.  Just rake it around as needed and scoop it up when you leave.  You can always find a construction company happy to provide storage for your mats in exchange for usage.  And you can recoupe all your $ on selling the mats when you retire.  Im sure you can sub out the job of laying mat to a midi-excavator with thumb if necessary.

So get the mats but make sure they are 3 ply mats.  I could see making stakes to keep them from sliding.  I can also see putting a layer of small stone on top to give traction.  In many places I'll be running a forwarder with tracks over them but sometimes it would be trucks getting to landing.  Fortunately I have a small farm and can store them and the forwarder crane should be able to help get them positioned and moved.  I hope.  
Ok, guess I better go take a look at them.

[nativewolf]

The job that I referenced in the picture had about 25 two-ply mats laid across a (I would say wet area, but that is repetitious) booger hole.  The trick with mats is to put them down before you need them.  On crap ground they move around and then you start getting tie rods, fuel tanks, fuel lines, brake lines, etc.  On permanent roads, I use geotextile fabric on poor ground.  It is money well spent.

The two ply mats don't last very well.  In poor ground, they'll start breaking up after a handful of uses.  The 3 ply mats are much more durable, but become cost prohibitive in a hurry.  Chase behind Dominion Power for a bit.  They have a ridiculous number of mats sitting around following their projects.  You can get them at a fairly reasonable rate.  On slope, mats can be tricky to navigate.  The red mud works up through them and they become slick as snot.  I have put sand over top of them at times to keep some traction.  Then they become more difficult to recover.

Wudman

Thanks for the tip on 2vs3 ply mats.

[Wudman]

Not many logging crews are running 3 ply mats.  They get to be pretty costly.  I do see a lot of them on the right of way jobs. 

Wudman

[Skeans1]

The biggest thing is to keep the forwarder and harvester off the roads in the wet season is a huge help. Myself I try to cut some sort of frontage system that connects the trails with small landings in the ditch when possible to help minimize mudding out.

[Wudman]

Well.....it's raining again.  In the typical winter, we are looking for wood near the highway that can be accessed with minimal road work.  This winter, we are looking for any ground that has a prayer of standing up and sinking money into roads to try and keep working.  We opened two new sales this week.  I'll show you a bit of what we are doing.

This tract is in Amelia County, VA.  We are about 1.6 miles off the paved road.  To this point we have hauled about 400 tons of #1 stone (5-6" material) and 40 tons of #57 crushed gravel.  I have about a half a dozen homes along the access that I need to protect.  That's where the crushed gravel comes into play.  I have rocked this road a couple of times in the last 20 years.  The property I manage lays behind the last home.  We switched to the big stuff at the property line.  Trucks are coming and going without assistance.  I'm standing on a creek crossing looking upslope.  At this point, I have just north of $10,000 in rock accessing a $480,000 sale.  There is an additional $1 million plus in timber that will come out this same road.  For me, it is an investment in the future harvests.





My hardhat is on the ground for reference.  This is fairly big material, but will support a loaded truck.





The insurance policy is sitting at the gate. 





Below is the stand we are cutting.  It is a 35 year old Loblolly pine plantation.  The sort in the foreground is marine grade pilings.  They range in length from 21 - 37 feet long.





The truck is being loaded with 12 and 16 foot cut to length pine logs.  They are merchandised to 8" on the small end.  These are headed to a mill with a primary product of 5/4 radial edge decking.  That is my bread and butter market. 





Behind the loader are pulp tops and treelength pine pulpwood.  That material is farmed to WestRock, Georgia-Pacific, and International Paper for the most part.  See that road....no ruts....that is why we are 1.6 miles off the highway.  It's the best ground I could find.





The sale below is in Cumberland County, VA.  It actually has road frontage on a state maintained gravel road.  Unfortunately, the ground conditions at the roadside are not conducive to working.  The best ground on the sale is .5 miles off the highway.  We have also rocked this road heavily.  This is a creek crossing that had poor ground.  We rocked across it and then placed 10x12 solid laminated mats across this bottom.  There are 15 of them spanning about 150 feet.  These mats were about $7500 new and you can see that they are approaching the end of their life.  On the far end, some are starting to break up.





A couple of valuable pieces of equipment are shown below.









Dozer tracks will chew a road up running up and down it.  The grader doesn't cause the same damage.  With a few days of sunshine, you can lightly grade the road and roll it with the vibratory roller.  The roller is one of the most valuable pieces of equipment we utilize.  It helps to stretch the rock budget.  





One this sale we are merchandising tree length pine logs, fence posts, and pine pulpwood.  Note that we are sitting on mats at the landing.  That old R Model Mack is spotting trailers.  Those things are bullet proof.  They are running heavy lugged tires on the drive axles.  They help with locomotion in this red clay.  At one time, we ran chains on these trucks, but axles and rear ends took a beating.  Those lugs have enough give to protect the drivetrain, but still get the job done.  I'm looking forward to some sunshine.

Wudman

  

[Southside]

You are doing an amazing job there. I do think the ground conditions are worse this week after the last storm than they have been to date. The couple little freeze / thaw cycles sure didn't help either. 

About the time you were typing this I had a customer pull in with some White Oak logs to be custom sawn. His 4WD was broken, he made it down the hill on his own....

More rain this weekend.  >:(

[Skeans1]

That's different I don't think I've ever seen a roller used out here, most of the time the guys use a 6 or bigger cat and a 200 sized shovel to walk in the roads with most of the shovels at 60k or more. you want to see a road get tore up fast you should look up the grouser extensions they've put on just about every leveling machine out here, 10" single bars do a great job roto tilling the rock up or a forwarder can do a number on a road really quick. If I remember I'll get some pictures of what we run on all the time.

Are you guys crowning the roads with ditches on each side for drainage?

[Southside]

It's different here, you never see crowned roads, the road is almost always the low spot, not by design but more how the clay just keeps on compacting everytime it gets wet.  I have two old County roads that are on two sides of our farm, the banks on one are 20' high on the sides, almost straight up.  These have not been used since the 1940's and have 30" DBH Poplar growing in them but they are the old road.  Growing up in far northern Maine we had shale for road building - absolutely the best road you would ever have.  Could get two inches of rain in an hour and a minute after it stopped raining the road was dry and getting dusty.  Yes, they got torn up by grousers and chains on equipment like you said, but grade them and they were flat as can be, run 55 MPH no problem, well sort of.  The only problem would be if they were just graded and then anything over 30 MPH and you would cut the sidewalls of your tires as that fresh shale was sharp, but I would trade that for the mess we have here.    

[Skeans1]

It's interesting how different areas require different things, even if our roads are the low spots we still have to crown the center with ditches normally start at 5' deep makes for going into a new job interesting. They just redid the lower road below my job I'll get some pictures of it and of the ditch sizes they get nuts same with the amount of cross drains required anymore.

[mike_belben]

The roads ive been on were just basic dozer work and angle blade ditching.  The ground is so rolly ontop the plateau that drainage is pretty good.  Where the road is the low spot is obviously a lake but we just drive through. 

[Wudman]

I crown and wing ditch my roads upon tract close-out, but these are not the roads of the West Coast.  Most of these are single track so a crown is 6" higher in the middle than the ditch line.  We will have water bars or turn outs as appropriate.  I don't want water moving more than 100 feet or so down the ditch line.  For the most part, our legacy roads run the ridge line when possible.  We do have the "entrenched roads" that have been used for the last 400 years.  On those, either rock heavily, or move over and start over.  Many of the contractors here are running dropped deck thinning trailers.  Their landing gear is so low to the ground that water bars and crowned roads have to be graded down to traverse.  It is a "necessary evil".  One thing I hate is to start cutting roads.  You can skim the top and find hard clay beneath, but you will destroy a roadbed.  I have to work with new contractors to acclimate them to my desires.  When I tell them that I have money appropriated for rock, I get a surprised look on the front end.  After a few tracks, they understand.  I sold one lump sum about 5 years ago that was 3.5 miles down a company road.  I had it prepared the summer before the sale.  The logger told me it was just like working on the roadside.  He had no problems.

On my first day of Road Location class back in college, my Professor, a retired industry guy, said there were three criteria to a good road.

1. Drainage
2. Drainage
3. Drainage

After 30 years in the business, I have added a 4th to the list.

4.  Sunshine

I daylight roads.  Sunshine is cheaper than rock.  Unfortunately, it has been in short supply for the last 18 months.

Wudman

[ehp]

last week we were frozen with -30 to -40 temps, today it set a record for the hottest temp ever on this date , about 45 above . What a mess and its to rain most of the night tonight , about half of the fields are under water and so are the bush lots . Wed its to be freezing rain whole day then rain Thursday . Friday its to be back to freezing again