Timber Harvesting Equipment – What’s That Weird Machinery Running Through the Woods?

I loved writing this post as I traveled down memory lane. I spent 28 years  cruising timber, supervising loggers, managing land and timber resources. I must say my career  was a ton of fun. My office was a pick-up truck and the great outdoors. I know I was fortunate and blessed!

I have people asked about the weird machinery they see running through the woods, so here we go.

Feller-Buncher –  This is the first piece of equipment in the woods. A type of harvester used in logging. It is a motorized vehicle with an attachment that can rapidly cut and gather several trees before felling them. The vehicle may have rubber tires or  tracks.

Wheeled Feller Buncher

Track Feller-Buncher

Log Processor –  these are not common in the southeast. Mostly used in the north and northeast. The machine is designed to cut a tree down, delimb the tree and process into predetermined lengths.

Log Processor

Skidder - is any type of heavy vehicle used in a logging operation for pulling cut trees out of a forest in a process called "skidding", in which the logs are transported from the cutting site to a landing or log deck.

Rubber Tired Skidder

Clam-Bunk Skidder - A clam-bunk skidder has top-opening hydraulic jaws to hold a load/turn of trees for extraction. The advantage over a grapple skidder is typically a larger payload that is located above the rear axle for improved traction. The disadvantage is that it must be loaded. Clam bunk skidders are typically used in swamp logging or shovel logging.

Clam Bunk Skidder

Stroke-Delimbers - A stroke boom delimber consists of a boom with a grapple (referred to here as the “front” grapple) and saw mounted on it. Another grapple (referred to here as the “rear” grapple) and saw are mounted on the base machine. The boom is mounted on the machine horizontally. The tree is normally grasped somewhere near the middle of the stem. The butt of the tree is placed in the rear grapple. The grapple arms function as delimbing knives just like the knives on a processor head. The boom ‘strokes’ the front grapple along the stem to remove limbs while the rear grapple holds the tree stem in position. The tree is topped and bucked into log lengths by the saw on the boom. These machines are costly and only seen on very high production jobs.

Stroke Delimber

Knuckle Boom Loader – a hydraulic loader generally self propelled or mounted on a trailer. The loader is used to load logs onto the trucks for delivery to the mills.

Knuckle Boom Loader

Yes it takes all this equipment and more to get the trees from the woods to the sawmills and paper mills. Forest products provide you toilet paper and lumber for housing. Thank goodness.....have you tried a corn cob lately!

If you are interested in Buying or Selling LAND,  please contact G. Kent Morris, ALC, RF at 706.457.0090