forwarding wagon??

[Anonymous]

I have been thinking of buying a forwarding wagon to use behind my tractor and was wondering how often those of you that are commercially logging with your horses would think a forwarder of some type would be useful. I have read a few posts where a forwarder was brought in on a job that made the overall production more efficient because of landing and truck access locations. However, would having a forwarder be beneficial on most of your jobs, only some, or not enough to justify the cost of owning one. It seems like this was an extra expense in most of the posts because it was someone else’s equipment, but would you feel that you would use a forwarder more often and that it might open up more jobs for you if you owned one?

The other question I have been wrestling with is whether a forest wagon makes sense or if buying a used smaller self powered forwarder would be better. Price wise you can find both units in the same price range, although admittedly the wagons are new and the forwarders are likely at the end of their life span. The other aspect is that I can move my tractor and the wagon myself, but would have to get someone to move the forwarder, which would again effect the bottom line.

Interested to hear people’s thoughts.

John

[Rick Alger]

Good Questions.

Most every job is different, and most areas are different. For me in northern NH, no more than 30 % of my jobs would benefit from the tractor drawn forwarders that I have seen in action. They don’t do well in peat soil with cradle knolls and blow downs, and they can’t function at all on boulder strewn side hills without a road builder in front of them.

A purpose-built forwarder, such as a Rotne or an Iron Mule will do the job 100% of the time, but the amount of wood I’d need to produce to make ends meet (fuel, maintenance, payments) would increase dramatically, requiring a crew and a whole lot of wood ahead.

So I try to be content with this: I cut and short-skid for a few days with a single horse. I forward with my Barden cart every third or fourth day. I load with my farm tractor and deliver with my utility trailer the week’s production on the fifth or sixth day. (multiple trips)

No big income. No big expense.

But if I lived in Corinth VT, with the rolling hills and the acres and acres of old agricultural soil coming back to beautiful stands of timber I would certainly consider a tractor drawn forwarder. That consideration would likely lead to thoughts of employees, insurance, trucks, and other challenges that would not add to my serenity. (Been there – Done that)

Anyway, good luck, and please say hello to Ginny Barlow for me.

Rick Alger

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the input Rick. I was thinking it would be useful but wanted to make sure it wouldn’t sit for long periods of time without use. For the price it would need to be useful more often than not.

I am relatively new to Corinth, so I know of Ginny but have yet to meet her in person. I am working on a job right now with Redstart, but it is with the fellow that bought the business from Ginny.

John

[Carl Russell]

John, any time we get into machinery, we open ourselves up to expenses that outstrip the horses. That said, the forwarder could be used on nearly all of the jobs I have done….. at least half, maybe 75%. As you point out the time it isn’t being used is going to be a cost that will have to be carried when it is being used.

This is one of our cultural problems, us using horses. We don’t have the skilled labor close enough for us to increase our capacity enough, so that we can integrate technology that can increase our capacity. That is why some of us have tried to make the cooperative approach work, which it does to some extent.

There is a risk is being a one-person operation with lots of expensive equipment… and that is that the horses stay in the pasture, and you run the equipment. I am looking seriously at improved forwarding capacity for the horses, something on wheels without the loader. If the tractor you already own can be used to load the wagon, then it can also be used to haul the wagon with a short tongue, or if conditions and time are right, with a long tongue, the horses can haul the load….. just my $.02….

I have also seen a drive-wheel power-assist on a Payeur forwarder (on the website) which may address some of those rough terrain issues.

There is no doubt that the mixed power systems are going to be a part of our expansion in this field, we just don’t want to see good people drowning in debt…..:mad:

Carl

[Baystatetom]

I have been administering timber harvests for 15 years now and have never seen a tractor/forwarder wagon in use. I am not saying that they wouldn’t be a great addition to a horse crew but that is not the road most crews take when stepping up from a cable skidder or farmi winch. On the other hand moving costs is definitely something to think about, a couple hundred bucks between every job can bite into the profit made by the added production.
~Tom

[irish]

a couple of things to consider first
type of operations you want to use it for,
are you going to operate it long side the horses at the same time on the same sites of different sites
the size of blocks you in
type of operation you are doing ie is it a first, 2nd thining or clear fell or is the stand being managed for CCF continous cover forestry
types of soil
amount of rain fall
the terrain
distance between sites as self propled machines can not be driven on a public road (at least here in the uk) and therefor are costly to move from site to site un less you can do it your self but a tractor can be driven on a public road,
the distances to the road side

and is your current tractor up to the job of towing a forwering trailer in the woods
2wd or 4wd
What is the oil flow (remember manufactures often use the pump capacity and ofthen includes the oil requirement for the power steering) as this will limit you hugely if to small as the crane will perform slowly but you could go down the pto pump route at extra cost
what hp
ground clearance
number of reverse gears
cab space as were you are going to operate the crane from inside the cab or out side
how much is there under the tractor that could be damaged by sticks (how much guarding dose it need)
some even use a reverse drive tractor
and what other things do you use you tractor for

but the benefit of one is limited for horse operations to more secondary extraction to the road side operations, but horse drawn one you have less tided up in tractors and you all ready have the motive power on site so the you can park it up when not needed and they are about the same cost as a forwarding trailer but you have not got the extra cost of a tractor let alone running it.

[Andy Carson]

I think that despite the technical aspects of a forwarder and forwarder design (which I find fun to think about), there is an underlying more important question. Who is running this? Is this a one man operation where the one man alternates between forwarding and skidding? Is this a two man operation where one man skids and another forwards. What does the other man do while the other is catching up? Perhaps they work part-time? Perhaps they fell? Anything else that needs done? Are they perhaps people who would want to become independant horse loggers later (and would likely want to use horses)? Are they perhaps local landowners or farmers who have tractors and want to make a little money on the side in the off season? I think the answers to these strategic and logistal questions will have have huge impacts on the potential forwarder design and implementation.

Perhaps the answer is any and all of the above situations… In that case, the “best” design might just be the most flexible.

[Andy Carson]

Here’s a stab at what might be most flexible (from someone who is just guessing)…

Why not a simple wagon with wide maximum floation tires and a mobile winch/sidejammer setup to load logs?

The wagon could be pulled by a team if you have a collaborator who has horses or wants to work with them. It could be pulled by a tractor if you hook up with a local who owns a tractor and wants a part-time side job. It seems cheap to buy and modify wagons to be suitable, which means that there is not a big expensive piece of equipment laying around if you are on a one-man job.

Having the gas-powered winch/sidejammer would be cheap, able to be used by both animal and tractor folks, and I would expect easy to repair should collaborators break something.

I think there are definately more productive choices than this is you knew the nature of the job, and had lots of jobs lined up that are nearly identical. If the jobs vary a lot, perhaps flexibility and low cost are more critical than raw productivity under ideal conditions.

[Jim Ostergard]

Some good discussion above. I like Andy’s thinking about being flexible. Now I have driven all the motorized equipment discussed here and all of it has its place. Like Andy one needs to think about how you work, alone, with partners or some sort of other arrangement as you probably won’t want equipment you pay some good money for standing idle. I am currently back on a skidder crew and two of up produce about 3 plus tractor trailer loads of pulp/saw logs in a 30 hour week. On guy in the woods with a shear and grapple and me on the landing doing all the bucking and piling with the little excavator with a grapple bucket. The machines are always being used so its pretty cost effective that way. With my horses I have a wagon I used back a ways with 4′ wood and am now going to put the walking beams from my arch on it and when the money comes build a wire crane. Simon has contributed pictures here on various wire crane designs. For me when I work alone I think this would be the least costly. The woods trailer fits on a small beaver tail trailer and tows behind my half ton. Hope this helps

[Steven Q]

I learned the trade in a mixed use situation, so that is what I have come to understand. Forwarding trails, twitch to a landing with the team, forwarding take it to a main landing. I find it very efficient and able to move quite a lot of wood, while staying on the forwarding trail reduces impact.

Was at the harness shop last week, talking to the Amish fellow about my operation, as I recently acquire a small forwarding trailer to increase what I can do, he laughed and said I was cheating. I guess in some respect yes, but without being able to make it worthwhile, I can’t be doing it for nothing. My two cuts have been mostly firewood, with some sawlogs coming out. So volume is what is paying, Still relatively new to this, been working at it for 3-4 years, small steps ahead.

I was able to buy the trailer outright, if I had to make payments there is no way I would have moved ahead with it, I figured it was a long term investment, enabling me towards the point that I could go full-time seasonally. Currently I am mostly going on the weekend, luckily the two contracts I have been able to get are right across the road from my farm, again I got pretty lucky on those.

I already had a small 4wd tractor 50hp and that lil bugger will pull a decent load as long as it can get it’s traction, will be upgrading chains next year though, trailer holds about 2 cords @ 16 foot logs and has a 14’boom, that can lift some decent logs. I am a one man operation mostly, really speeds up production having a second man running it, although it is new enough that the few times I have had a second man out, slowed me down as I was getting him familiar with the machine and my personal ethics on using in the woodlots.

Hopefully the time will come that I need to upgrade to a full on forwarder, but I think with the tractor(multi use), trailer and my team, we are on the right path. Weather or not some see it as cheating is beyond my control. For what I need it works.

[Ronnie Tucker]

i will have one someday .i will use more mules no tractor.in the meantime crosshauling is cheap and efficient .i wish for someone to help me that wants to learn.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to all for the comments. Like Steven Q, I am currently working close to home and alone. I am finding good efficiency with twitching out to a temporary landing and then forwarding out to a class 3 road. I am certainly interested in making the most of my horses as using horses is the why I am doing what I am doing, but I also want to be using them as efficiently as possible. The size forwarding wagon I am looking at is made for the size tractor I currently have (65 hp FWD), but also small enough to be used behind the horses on the right job. My current contract is all downhill (with the exception of the road out) with a good distance from the woodlot out to the class 3 road. I don’t know that using the horses to forward all the way to the road would be effective or even possible (the last stretch up to the road is pretty steep). My wife and I have a small horse farm so I already own the expensive bits (tractor, trucks, trailers, etc). But, I agree with Andy that most times I like to make my own stuff, but the expensive part of these wagons is the loader not the wagon. The logistics of working alone is not something I had factored into the equation and the aspect of the forwarder sitting while I am working the horses is definitely something that needs to be thought through. Also the trap that Carl mentioned about potentially having the machinery slowly take a stronger foot hold in the operation is food for thought.

John

[Scott G]

@Carl Russell 40447 wrote:

…we just don’t want to see good people drowning in debt…..:mad:
Carl

‘Been there, done that’, with my mechanical operation. No fun. Use a really sharp pencil…

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