Hybridized Timber Harvest – Horses and Fowarder

[Carl Russell]

Here is a link to a video of our latest logging operation…

[Andy Carson]

Thanks for the video. It seems the forwarder has a couple advangates in this hybrid set-up. One is that is has a loader arm, which seems to simplify loading the logs. The other is that the tractor can haul heavy loads long distances and up hills using tractor power that the horses would perhaps have a hard time achieving. Perhaps the tractor can move faster too (I guess the road quality would limit you more than anything)… I wonder if you could comment on the relative contributions of these different factors (loading vs capacity vs speed). I do really appreciate hybrid systems, I am just curious….

[Carl Russell]

All of the above Andy. With the hydraulics we have to handle the logs very little on our small landings…. that is IF the forwarder can keep up with us, which is a big trick sometimes. If we want the forwarder to be most cost effective on the job, we need to have it moving for most of the day, otherwise the cost of ownership makes it hard to justify sitting around waiting for logs. Conversely, if we have a lot of wood to come out of one area, and the forwarder is not on the job, then we tend to get into trying to stack logs which is more costly in terms of time than letting the forwarder do it…. So we need to plan out our cutting in a way that allows us to stockpile ahead of the machine, but doesn’t create a bottle neck for the teamsters twitching material out.

As far as capacity, especially on dry ground, the forwader can move much more wood than the horses with a sled let’s say. Coming back into the wood 1/2-3/4 mile is a back breaker for the horses, even empty. Whereas with the forwarder, it just keeps plugging along. The improved road allows for more comfortable operation at higher speeds. While the horses cost about 1/3 of what the forwarder does, and they can move a comparable amount per unit of cost, in 80º August weather it knocks the shit out of them, but old iron horse just needs a little more fuel. Then comes the hydraulics again stacking and sorting logs on the landing, requiring much less room…. stacking roadside…. convenient for log trucks and virtually no impact on the landowner’s property.

We believe that improving access is a huge piece of the superior forestry product we are providing. Number one it increases the functional capacity of the forwarder. It also, because the forwarder can be used efficiently, provides opportunity for reasonable off-trail access using the horses…. surgical harvest and forest improvement…. putting the power of the horses to its best use moving the logs out from where they are cut with precision and low impact. And it creates a long-term infrastructural asset that will stay with the property into perpetuity, amortizing its cost over several timber harvests, and allowing landowners multiple-use access to their property.

Carl

[Andy Carson]

That makes sense. I was kinda curious about the feasibility of one of those horse drawn forwarders with a loading arm and a small engine to power the hydraulics. If the forwarder is already the bottleneck, though, it might not make sense. Perhaps two such forwarders could keep up, but that adds horses and teamsters (if you can find them). Also, those horse drawn forwarders might be pretty pricey (I really don’t know about this).

[Carl Russell]

Andy, the forwarder isn’t the bottleneck, it is having enough wood that is the problem. We have found that a teamster can keep up with two choppers, especially if skid distance is kept within 300′ and log handling kept to a minimum. We also figure there should be two such teams working to keep the forwarder moving steadily. As you suggest it is difficult to find that many folks prepared to get together within a region at the same time.

This is a start. We are trying to work out the details of interpersonal/business relationships, working schedules, and in-the-woods functionality to developing a cooperative model where we can put together the forestry clientele, the overseeing foresters, the needed number of practitioners, equipment, marketing etc. to amortize the amount of individual investments and financial liabilities over the possible work in order to make animal-powered forestry more practically applicable on a landscape scale.

The forwarder can be a valuable tool, allowing us to deliver what we consider to be a superior forestry product, the residual stand, by using the horses for surgical extraction of material. Using directional felling, short-wood skidding (as apposed to tree-length), combined with non-commercial forest improvement methods such as girdling and crop-tree release and informed forestry oversight, we can deliver a residual stand that escapes most mechanical harvesters and foresters who employ them.

The kind of work we do would require that skidders be limited to main haul roads, using their winches to pull individual logs out of the brush. This would be extremely costly for them, but I have seen a few landowners who use their own skidders and crawlers under similar conditions and the results are comparable. However commercial operators are usually more interested in increasing production to maximize their income over expenses, and most foresters make accommodations for them so that they can get the harvesting done.

It is through harvesting that silvicultural treatments get done. The challenge is that most of the time the foresters are getting paid to oversee the harvest, so with no harvest there is no income, the landowner wants to make income, so the logger is pressed to be economically efficient, and therefore the forestry is often tilted toward facilitating the harvest, and compromises are accepted as necessary evil.

Since we, using horses, need to use the harvesting methods that lend themselves to surgical application we have decided that we should take it to another level. Rather than trying to use horses to compete with machines on production, we are using the horses to support a quality product that is out of reach of most foresters working with machinery. Combining horses with the forwarder allows us to employ enough power and functionality to take on larger harvest areas with access that would typically stymie draft animals. The next step for us is to find enough folks close enough together to provide the person-power and expertise……

Carl

[Baystatetom]

Carl it sounds like you are doing what I have been day dreaming about for years while out in the woods marking timber. I always thought I would have a high-bred operation where I used my steers in place of a winch, just bringing trees from the stump to the closest place I could easily get a tractor.
Down here in Mass. our Endangered Species people can make it quite difficult to work within supposed rare habitat. For example in box turtle habitat (the most common land turtle in North America) we must layout skid trails which the equipment cannot leave, then winch the trees to the skid trails. The skid trails cannot cover more then a small percentage of the habitat area. In other cases the presence of dragon flies or salamanders requires a 70% crown cover be retained.
It is very difficult to work on these properties but it would be perfect for the type of operation your describing. Just another niche waiting for us!
~Tom

[Carl Russell]

@Baystatetom 28829 wrote:

Carl it sounds like you are doing what I have been day dreaming about for years while out in the woods marking timber. I always thought I would have a high-bred operation where I used my steers in place of a winch, just bringing trees from the stump to the closest place I could easily get a tractor.
Down here in Mass. our Endangered Species people can make it quite difficult to work within supposed rare habitat. For example in box turtle habitat (the most common land turtle in North America) we must layout skid trails which the equipment cannot leave, then winch the trees to the skid trails. The skid trails cannot cover more then a small percentage of the habitat area. In other cases the presence of dragon flies or salamanders requires a 70% crown cover be retained.
It is very difficult to work on these properties but it would be perfect for the type of operation your describing. Just another niche waiting for us!
~Tom

Yes Tom it is difficult to operate contrary to these parameters, especially if we are constantly focusing on harvesting economics as our measure of forestry success. But if we really understand forestry as being more than harvesting and growing trees for timber then we can see these ecological parameters as being paramount, and we can leave the machinery operations in the dust. If we are willing to take this philosophy beyond the so-called sensitive properties, we can show everyone that all forests have sensitive aspects that are best protected by operators who are aware of them, and committed to protecting and cultivating them. Add on top of that a highly focused multi-dimensional intensive appraisal and performance of tree cultivation, and there is no competition….. really.

Carl

[TaylorJohnson]

Nice vid Carl . Taylor Johnson

[Baystatetom]

Like I said before Carl, Your preaching to the choir brother! I am still not sure this can happen on a landscape level because of that whole supply and demand thing, until the price of oil shifts the scales into into the horses favor. But I want to do it like you because that’s the way I like to do it.
I am sure you have tried everything. What about making a portable ramp to roll the logs onto a trailer, then you save the cost of the log loader. A set of forks on the tractor could unload and sort the logs on the header.
~Tom

[Carl Russell]

@Baystatetom 28853 wrote:

Like I said before Carl, Your preaching to the choir brother! I am still not sure this can happen on a landscape level because of that whole supply and demand thing, until the price of oil shifts the scales into into the horses favor. But I want to do it like you because that’s the way I like to do it.
I am sure you have tried everything. What about making a portable ramp to roll the logs onto a trailer, then you save the cost of the log loader. A set of forks on the tractor could unload and sort the logs on the header.
~Tom

Tom, I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I’m also trying to work it out through discussion and feedback so the WE can preach to others. When/How do you think the supply/demand thing is going to change? I think we need to push the envelope. If we aren’t finding ways to prepare ourselves for landscape scale animal-powered forestry, we will always be relegated to the niche market.

I know it is a chicken-and-the-egg thing. We can’t press the issue if we don’t find ways to make our solution more viable, and we have a hard time developing that viable capacity without more opportunity. For me, the key has always been the link between my forestry expertise and my harvesting desire and skills. That is why I keep “preaching” to you. I feel that the more of us foresters who think like we do, the more the LO’s get challenged to consider a different product, the more opportunity there is for folks to practice and refine methods, the more viable the offering, the more demand…..etc.

Preaching to the choir to build/enliven the network…

Carl

[Andy Carson]

I also wondered about alternative forwarding systems, especially because to keep the tractor-forwarder busy it takes 4 choppers and 2 teamsters, for a total of 7 like minded people on the same schedule. For smaller jobs, I wonder if it’s the work-flow (rather than the technology) that it a limitation. For example, if the job required two choppers and one teamster, a forwarder would require a fourth person who would largely sit around. Perhaps the teamster could split time between skidding tasks and forwarding tasks (assuming the technology was easy to “swap”) -but then they likely could not keep up with two choppers. Perhaps a chopper could split time between chopping and forwarding, but then the teamster-skidder would sit around. No matter how the work is divided, the forwarder would sit some of the time and so would need to be cheap enough that this would be affordable. Perhaps if there was a group of two committed choppers, one committed teamster skidding, and one “float” who could chop, skid, or forward (as need be) it would be workable and everyone would be busy. The “float” would probably need to be pretty savy though, and again, the forwarder apparatus would need to be fairly cheap. This is really alot of musing from someone with almost no logging experience, I am curious to hear from the real loggers. Perhaps there is opportunity for a cheap, “low-tech” forwarding system that one could afford to have sit half the time?

[Scott G]

@Carl Russell 28862 wrote:

Tom, I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I’m also trying to work it out through discussion and feedback so the WE can preach to others. When/How do you think the supply/demand thing is going to change? I think we need to push the envelope. If we aren’t finding ways to prepare ourselves for landscape scale animal-powered forestry, we will always be relegated to the niche market.Carl

Carl! I had to read your post again because I thought I mis-read it. This is the first time I’ve heard you propose landscape-scale harvesting with a mixed-harvesting system and the inherent efficiencies that are obliged to accompany it.

I’ve held back on this thread and the same on FB for the very reason that I felt I would be preaching to the choir and have been on the soap box long enough when it comes to a horse & forwarder operation.

Scheduled hours vs actual operational hours (at capacity) are the make/break when it comes to mechanized forestry equipment. Keeping enough wood in front of a forwarder relative to it’s capacity is key. It takes a lot less wood volume to pay for an old farm tractor with forwarding trailer/loader than it does for a late model JD/CAT/TJ, etc forwarder. It is imperative to know what an operation’s forwarding capability would be before any further movement happens on putting the show together. If a forwarder isn’t running at or near loaded capacity and operational hours aren’t close to 80% of scheduled hours, an operation could bleed to death rather quickly…

That said, do you put enough fallers, swampers, & teamsters in front of a forwarder to keep it fed? Utilize a smaller machine that requires less wood but give up some efficiency, economy of scale, and unit cost is higher (something that is already the norm for using draft animals and implementing low-impact forestry)? Or have enough capital to operate for a while without mill receipts and enough intermittent staging areas-decks and/or brows to where you could bring in a forwarder on an hourly or volume basis ensuring max payload during the time it was there? Example, the small diameter material we have out here, especially lodgepole post & pole material, the latter scenario would work well due to the ease of stockpiling/decking the material.

Myself, a horse-drawn forwarder equipped with brakes and draw assist, would make the most sense since I’m pretty much the only horse logger in the immediate region (lowest cost). For those of you blessed to be in the northeast or elsewhere where draft animal loggers are more abundant, a co-op approach on running a show is probably very appropriate to get full use out of the forwarding capability available.

Using forwarders with horses/mules has been gaining ground steadily over the past few years. What I’d really like to see from a forest operations standpoint are real numbers – time/motion, utilization, and costs. There was a study done by FERIC of Art Shannon in Ontario comparing his horse/mechanical forwarder operation to that of a cable skidder show. Art won hands down. I’m trying hard to get my hands on that paper but FERIC keeps a tight grip on its work. We need current & real numbers. Carl… that is a MAJOR hint!

We have numerous tools/techniques available to the horse logger of the 21st century that enables him/her to enhance the quality of product they already deliver while possibly even make money doing it… Let’s use them.

Carl, are you headed to MOFGA-LIF this year?

[Baystatetom]

I think you touched on a big part of it Carl. It’s the landowner, we need to convince more then the forester or logger. I am very lucky and never have to look for work anymore, much less have to travel more then a town or two away. But still I rarely get to work with clients who care about more then the bottom line. It does happen and some folks are happy to spend money on their forest rather then making it, but most often when I get called it is because somebody needs cash. I always listen to the landowners goals and try and explain good forestry first, then end up doing the best I can based on the parameters I have to work within. One big step in getting more operations like yours working out there is getting more landowners to be willing to make a few dollars less in exchange for your type of work. I don’t know how to do this. How do you change culture?

[Baystatetom]

When we get talking two teamsters, two fellers, and a forwarder man it makes my head spin! I wouldn’t want to be in charge of all that. You would become a manager not a horse logger. I have seen a number of guys who were excellent loggers with cable skidders think that they were stepping up by buying a feller buncher, then a forwarder, then a delimber and log loader, before you know it they have five guys on the payroll, the quality of of work drops and then they are out of business because of a negative cash flow. I would think the smaller the better. But what do I know I am forester not a horse logger (yet).
~Tom

[Carl Russell]

Scott, it’s not so much the forwarder as the landscape scale horse-powered forestry that is motivating me. I’m motivated by the need to address the needs of my client base, whom I have been working with in any way that I can manage. Mostly I have harvested by myself and my team on a small portion, sometimes in combination with other horse-loggers, the others have either done cutting themselves, or we have made arrangements with mechanical operators. Until a few years ago, I was pretty much committed to just doing some god work on a small scale, as there was no way I could make a big enough splash by myself. But now I am surrounded by other horse-loggers looking for work, apprentices looking for experience, and foresters and landowners looking for guidance.

As I have said previously, I believe the key to animal-powered forestry is the forestry component. This aspect takes time to implement operationally… cutters and teamsters seeing the forest in these terms. Add to this the intensive labor factors of AP logging and the group/coop model begins to take on favorable light. Building a model where 4-8 individuals can get together to share labor and learn some replicable methods so that these same individuals can then reach out to other smaller jobs is my main objective.

Our biggest hurdle right now is finding the people with the skills within the region to keep the machine running efficiently. A few years ago I would have said, and did say, these machines bring too much cost to the scale that I have experience with, but now I feel like we need to bring the forwarder into the equation. The economics is tough, but seeing the forwarder just as a way to facilitate the gathering of force is sufficient for me right now.

We have had trouble with all you mention….enough wood on the ground to keep the rig moving loaded….enough cash to handle the 2-3 weeks production to get that far ahead…enough side-work for choppers or teamsters to do when snags in production are encountered etc. I have a hard time seeing this machine being a component of a small operation, unless it is really inexpensive…..

Right now our problem is that we had worked for 3 weeks stockpiling logs so that the forwarder could move wood full-time for a week, and we had about 20MBF of logs beside the road ready to go….and then come Irene….. now it will be a few more weeks before we can get a truck anywhere near….:mad:

This clip shows some big logs being loaded, but it also shows the roadside log pile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mr9UfvbALk

Tom, in my experience the problem is not with the LO. It definitely is with the foresters. The change has got to start with the foresters…. believing in and understanding animal-power, and the forestry product that can be produced with it…. 😮

Carl

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