LowBoy
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2006
- Messages
- 1,149
- Location
- Southern Vt. on the Mass./NH borders
- Occupation
- Owner, Iron Mountain Iron & Equipment (Transport)
Recently I had the opportunity to run a job consisting of clearing, stumping & grubbing 1500 feet of roadway, 25' wide easement, and at the end a 100'X100' lease clearing for a cellphone tower site in southern Mass.
It started with 3 men with saws and a rented 9" chipper that was a joke really, compared to the 2400 Morbark that later showed up on the site that a friend owns. He did the majority of the bigger trees, and feeds the chipper with his rear mounted log loader. Way faster than us 3 monkies with the Taylor Rental piece that the boss brought onto the scene...
Then once the trees were tipped over, I was on the Komatsu loader skidding the logs up out of the way to the staging area. This job was tight to begin with being 25' wide. 3000' of silt fence and 1200 bales of hay were placed, and the silt fence was spec'd on the plans to be imbedded 12" deep, to protect a "worm snake" that is supposedly endangered there. I was mad at that snake since I saw the plans calling for a ditch 12" deep all the way around that job, so much so that when I walked into the woods one day for a nature relief, one of them startled me and curled up into strike position. I wasted no time turning him into food chain material for the other critters. I figured that one less worm snake around would mean one less 12" deep ditch for silt fence somewhere...
That was a real pain to do. I had a 370 Deere with a 60" wide bucket, and ended up jabbing the teeth into the ground every 5 feet to make the ditch. The boss didn't think my idea of spending a couple hundred bucks for a Ditch Witch made sense evidently. So I burned 5-6 gallons of fuel an hour (approximately $26.00/hr. in fuel alone, not counting operator, wear&tear, etc.) over a day and a half to accomplish the task. He thought we'd do it by hand, but I explained... only if we were all chained together by the ankles with striped jumpsuits on, would we be doing it that way.
Anyway, a couple shots of the 320 Komatsu loader I was "skidding" with, and my buddy's Bell feller buncher with a dangle-head grapple.
The Bell machine is pretty interesting. Built in South Africa, their original purpose was to harvest sugar cane with a set of forks with a grapple. The owners of the company split up and one modified the design a bit to accomodate a different boom configuration and a hydraulic grapple head with hydro chain saw for the forestry industry. My buddy buys, sells and services them as a sideline business.
Enjoy.
It started with 3 men with saws and a rented 9" chipper that was a joke really, compared to the 2400 Morbark that later showed up on the site that a friend owns. He did the majority of the bigger trees, and feeds the chipper with his rear mounted log loader. Way faster than us 3 monkies with the Taylor Rental piece that the boss brought onto the scene...
Then once the trees were tipped over, I was on the Komatsu loader skidding the logs up out of the way to the staging area. This job was tight to begin with being 25' wide. 3000' of silt fence and 1200 bales of hay were placed, and the silt fence was spec'd on the plans to be imbedded 12" deep, to protect a "worm snake" that is supposedly endangered there. I was mad at that snake since I saw the plans calling for a ditch 12" deep all the way around that job, so much so that when I walked into the woods one day for a nature relief, one of them startled me and curled up into strike position. I wasted no time turning him into food chain material for the other critters. I figured that one less worm snake around would mean one less 12" deep ditch for silt fence somewhere...
That was a real pain to do. I had a 370 Deere with a 60" wide bucket, and ended up jabbing the teeth into the ground every 5 feet to make the ditch. The boss didn't think my idea of spending a couple hundred bucks for a Ditch Witch made sense evidently. So I burned 5-6 gallons of fuel an hour (approximately $26.00/hr. in fuel alone, not counting operator, wear&tear, etc.) over a day and a half to accomplish the task. He thought we'd do it by hand, but I explained... only if we were all chained together by the ankles with striped jumpsuits on, would we be doing it that way.
Anyway, a couple shots of the 320 Komatsu loader I was "skidding" with, and my buddy's Bell feller buncher with a dangle-head grapple.
The Bell machine is pretty interesting. Built in South Africa, their original purpose was to harvest sugar cane with a set of forks with a grapple. The owners of the company split up and one modified the design a bit to accomodate a different boom configuration and a hydraulic grapple head with hydro chain saw for the forestry industry. My buddy buys, sells and services them as a sideline business.
Enjoy.
Morbark used to sell those Bell machines under the name of Mor-Bell
