Micro forestry

[luftwaffe]

Personally i wouldn't consider a micro machine, due to its lifting capacity, size of load etc, i owned a valmet 820 years ago, great little machine, 7 to 8 gallon of diesel per day and will lift almost any sawlog, will carry seven ton and will fit on the back of a tractor an low loading trailer for half the price of the machines that you are looking at.

[Big J]

Personally i wouldn't consider a micro machine, due to its lifting capacity, size of load etc, i owned a valmet 820 years ago, great little machine, 7 to 8 gallon of diesel per day and will lift almost any sawlog, will carry seven ton and will fit on the back of a tractor an low loading trailer for half the price of the machines that you are looking at.

 

Thing is that there are plenty of people with that size of machine - the market is quite competitive. You can't do small stands economically due to haulage costs, it's 6 times the weight empty and I doubt that grant funding would be available for that class of machine.

 

I'm not disputing that they are very good machines, and I work with an 890 quite often, so I know both ends of the scale. Small scale forestry is just something I enjoy and I believe that these mini forwarders are the best way to do it.

[luftwaffe]

How do you mean haulage costs?

[Big J]

As in haulage costs to get the machine to site.

 

With a mini forwarder, if I have a job that is 2 days (say 80-100 tonne on an easy site, 60-80 if not so easy) and it's 30 miles away, the haulage costs of getting a larger machine to site would make the job unfeasible whereas with a smaller machine, you just load it to your plant trailer and do the job with no additional costs. There are a lot of these smaller woodlands around, often with some good trees and these are the woodlands that the SRDP grants are aimed at.

[MattyF]

I would seriously consider an alpine with a decent 3tonne trailer.

Then you have a machine that can be used for many other duties from winching to splitting timber ect and would come in a lot cheaper, ground clearance is not great but a hydro winch on the front should keep you out of trouble.

[richy_B]

I would seriously consider an alpine with a decent 3tonne trailer.

Then you have a machine that can be used for many other duties from winching to splitting timber ect and would come in a lot cheaper, ground clearance is not great but a hydro winch on the front should keep you out of trouble.

 

Agreed. £27k would get you an AGT 860, 3t trailer and crane, 3.5t logging winch. Also it would be pretty straightforward to road register so you have the option of driving straight to site (<5 miles would be easy, upto 10 possible if you are patient!).

Edited April 12, 2016 by richy_B

[CHC]

The only thing a alpine would let you down on is on some terrain if it was rocky or waist deep in mud then a small fowarder would be the King but you just pick when you do it, as a lot of the point of small kit is to minimise the amount of damage done to the forest floor. the only thing I would like on my trailer would be a steering draw bar shame riko don't mention it to country who make the trailers

[richy_B]

Does anyone do a steering drawbar on a small forestry trailer? I've never seen one but could see the benefit.

[Big J]

I understand the appeal of an alpine tractor, but it's not suitable for what we want to do. Too clumsy and compromised.

 

The difficulty with a multi purpose machine is that it's never as good as something specialised. A small forwarder would be a lot quicker at forwarding small timber than an alpine tractor. There is enough work doing that, and even if there wasn't, we're not that bothered as there is plenty of other work at the mill

[CHC]

I see your point and I have been thinking about a small fowarder but I would be keen to put the two together and see the difference in what they can pull out as a lot of the speed comes with how the timber is presented in the first place