Thread: Tractor 3PL log handler???

I'll grab a pic of a bobtail today and post it if I remember. Carl's right... they easily double how much you can snig with a machine... it being the difference between a drawbar pull and a lifting pull. If you chain the nose of your log to the rippers or have a proper logging winch... when you lift the log you're shifting your balance back on the towing machine. On dozers this causes accelerated final drive wear as well as handling issues when you start going up hills. Dozers just get hard to handle in that scenario... wheel tractors flip over backwards.

Couple of thoughts to ponder:
The american style thing would be good provided you had reasonably level ground and plenty of turning room. You mention having a dozer and wheel tractor... clean up your main haul routes with the dozer and use the dozer to get logs from the stump to the main hauls. Then put them on the tractor arch to get them home down a reasonable kind of road. Provided you can make money snigging single logs this would be a viable way to go... keeps the logs clean, and snigging logs with the dozer is a slow and expensive business so the bulk of your distance is covered by the wheel tractor.

One thing I dislike about that Logrite setup is the winch position. Securely fixing big logs to small equipment on big hills is a (sooner or later) messy way to die. The day comes when the log rolls over the edge of a sidecut or something and if you can't freespool the winch or release the attaching point FAST things get exciting really really quick. The one thing worse then watching a big log thunder down the side of a hill and waiting for the snap as it hits the end of the cable/chains is the sideways lurch when she goes and starts dragging the machine back with it. You need whatever winch control you're using to lift the thing right there by your hand in the cab.

That leads to needing a cab guard of some sort because parting cable can chop you clean in half.

This of course all depends on the size of your logs in relation to the size of your equipment, and just how steep the ground you're trying to work is. Sometimes the safest course is to buy bigger gear, or to hire bigger gear in for the few logs your own gear might be marginal for. There's no log out there worth dying for. Whichever way you go you need to really think worse case scenarios when you're setting all this up.