John Deere 740a skidder

[Stuart Caruk]

Greetings Guys,

I have the opportunity to pick up a John Deere 740a Grapple / cable skidder. I've got quit a bit of time from years ago clearing woodlots with a smaller John Deere 440 cable skidder. I have a couple tracts to log, and frankly don't like the idea much of getting on and off, and on, and off, to hook up chokers. Is it really easier with a grapple? I have a couple steeply sloped hills to get some large Doug Fir trees up (42" DBH), so the cable and winch are the really only option for that. Any idea what a John Deere 740a is reasonably worth? Any advice before i jump into yet another chunk of equipment would be appreciated.

[Firewoodjoe]

There a cable 740a in the machine paper I get for $31,000. I've seen them $15-$31,000 now. I know when I had my 440 parts were getting harder to buy so I would think 30 is top dollar if you couldn't find something newer. Just my opinion. Looks good though.

[grassfed]

Is it really easier with a grapple?

If the trees are felled/bunched properly with a feller buncher then a grapple is going to be much faster and easier. If the trees are at different angles and spread out more a cable can be faster but you have to put in the effort to drag the cable or have a good choker setter on the ground. The better the ground is to drive around and the better the skid trail is as far as not to many wet spots then the better a grapple will work.

[BargeMonkey]

 If your chasing 1 tree here, and 1 tree there with nasty ground cable is faster. Once you figure out how that dual arch works it goes quick. Don't try and bunch hitches with the trees laying right next to each other, lay the next couple over the bottom couple in an X, then turn and twist, grab and go. Fenders don't look to huge on that, you may fight a big drag coming down hill with the cable, wrap the grapple around them while they are hooked on.

[ehp]

over the years we have had 2- 740 cable skidders both about this age , I did pretty much all the fixing of those skidders so know them pretty good , biggest thing that happened is they would take out the axle bearings and that happened alot , pulling big hitches seemed to make the outer axle bearing fail , both front and back axle . I would pull the grease fitting out that is on top of the axle out by the tire and look at the bearing to see if it was still in great shape , if roller were not perfect inline I knew the bearing was going to fail shortly , next the hdy. heated easy if worked hard . Horsepower was not alot so such a big machine , I think they were only like 170 hp which is not lots for the size of the machine . They would pull one hell of a hitch thou and were a good machine on doing long pulls , sometimes up north you can pull up to a mile . They also carried alot of weight on the front axle so if the ground was not firm you were stuck, very stable on rocky rough ground

[ehp]

When the motor got tired I would make it 283 hp using the old block , huge difference and made skidder so much better at getting around in bush and the biggest thing was in deep snow I could start out a gear or so higher so tires would not spin so easy as they are a 8 speed trans , yes it burned more fuel but I would sooner have the power as you skidded more trees per day . You had to be a skidder driver not a cowboy at that power but I never broke anything , they put a cowboy on it and he would break the U-joints