Short length wood extraction

[JamesWood]

Hi

 

We have been restoring neglected mixed coppice and have 100+t of small diameter material. This has been stacked up at the edge of the coupe by hand next to a ride to be extracted when ground conditions are good. Only problem is that its all mainly 4ft lengths. Im thinking that a grab arm will have problems with such a short length if we use a forwarding trailer? Or is it better to hand ball it onto a standard farm trailer (cheaper)?

 

Sorry sure the answer will become obvious soon as we get doing it just looking to see if anyone had any experience moving lots of v short lengths?

 

Thanks

 

James

[monkeybusiness]

It will fall between the bolsters on a forwarding trailer - this will frustrate you immensely! Use a normal trailer - you can load it with a grab but it might be time consuming.

[Ty Unnos]

We have used one of these behind a quad or alpine tractor for short lengths:

 

MINI TIMBER TRAILER - tcfengineeringnew

 

But 100t might take a few trips!

[Chris Sheppard]

We've had good results with handloading a rack on the 3pl of the tractor and the grab on the loader for short extractions.

 

We moved around 40T or so that way last year on one site and hadn't been looking forward to it at all but it wasn't bad at all.

 

It was a long, narrow site though with a track running through the middle so probably the longest trip out was 50m or so.

[hedgesparrow]

when i worked with late father in law in woods we had a normal flat bed farm trailer we stacked it lengthways across bed and had two posts at back to save it rolling off used to load that. all we did was take a few off pull post out of back and tip it. did loads and could load near to where we cut timber save hand balling it

[openspaceman]

when i worked with late father in law in woods we had a normal flat bed farm trailer we stacked it lengthways across bed and had two posts at back to save it rolling off used to load that. all we did was take a few off pull post out of back and tip it. did loads and could load near to where we cut timber save hand balling it

 

This is how we extracted pulp up till 1984. Two blokes would handball randomly heaped 39" billets onto the trailer and offload them onto an artic trailer, two lines down the bed and a line across the to to bind them in. Max gross was 28 tonne when we did it, so the load was 18 tonne which was just about a days work.

 

Prior to that we had pulp crates on fore and aft of a super major.

 

We did use the grapple loader and it is quite doable, within a year the pulp mills insisted on 2m lengths, which made disposing of oak cordwood a bit more difficult as loads would get rejected if not straight enough.

 

I think I still have a cordwood trailer but the brakes will be rusted on if anyone wants it.

 

On occasion we would extract bundles on the butt plate by rolling them up with the double drum cables.

[Brushcutter]

Hi

 

We have been restoring neglected mixed coppice and have 100+t of small diameter material. This has been stacked up at the edge of the coupe by hand next to a ride to be extracted when ground conditions are good. Only problem is that its all mainly 4ft lengths. Im thinking that a grab arm will have problems with such a short length if we use a forwarding trailer? Or is it better to hand ball it onto a standard farm trailer (cheaper)?

 

Sorry sure the answer will become obvious soon as we get doing it just looking to see if anyone had any experience moving lots of v short lengths?

 

Thanks

 

James

 

Roof mount crane and a tractor trailer will get it out. You'll need a low sided tractor trailer with some home made bolster pins. 4x4s work well.

 

You could just handball it onto some tractor forks.

[TobyAllen]

Why are they cut to 4'?

[woody paul]

You could use a 3pl crane on tractor with corn trailer then just tip. But not any good if it got to be stacked roadside. I have a bolster trailer with a removable flat floor but it takes some good loading to get an even load to fill it to It's capacity.

[HertsWood]

We use this for extracting with our alpine tractor - talk to Jim at Riko..

 

 

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