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I cannot agree more! It often looks like a bomb went off when this equipment departs the location. I believe it is why so many land owners are clear cutting portions of their land at a time. I personally hire small outfits using small equipment. It takes them much longer and market swings can bite you at times. However, my forest is always healthy and therefore worth more... Nice video. Thank you young man
Modern fellers and grapple skidders are a necessity to loggers being able to stay profitable. In the early 90s I was working for a decent sized company that had a felling team and three cable skidders. Me and another guy would pull cable and set chokers all day. The trails were cut to a minimum , less work and culvert placement,basically time. We would steer around nonharvested trees with cable pulleys. Now the machine backs up to the stump,driving over the replacement trees and barking up the others. The cutting disk on the harvester is clipping the saplings off as it goes tree to tree. A lot of times felling direction is determined by the ability of the grapple to get to the stick. It is a different time. The evolution of the industry due to labor costs and increased insurance premiums. Safer and cheaper. It keeps the cost of production down and makes wood products more affordable.
Another major factor is terrain. Most of the harvest around me are on mountains, which are good news and bad news for harvesting. Trail placement is often irregular and dictated by terrain features. On the other hand gravity makes cable hauling logs out (down hill) to widely spaced trails feasible.
1:20 What productivity? Lumber? Meat? Recreation? Im sure you understand that timberland can be used for many things at once. Im sure you also know that thick forests don’t do well over time. Here in Louisiana, we make wood companies maintain the firebreaks which is what they use for trails to access and remove wood. Energy companies are also required to maintain fire breaks for their high lines and gas lines. Yes, this maintenance of fire breaks have some impact on the price of these commodities, but the price is paid directly into the timberland without going through a politician. A variety of plants and wildlife also use the fire breaks. We also have the wood companies take down certain trees in addition to the trees they agree to harvest in their permit, so the forest can have plenty of air and sunlight as well as provide buffers to minimize the spread of dangers of fire and disease.
I just had a parcel logged and I agree with a lot of what you said. My trees were mainly white pine that was mature. There was quite a bit of root and red rot. It needed to be cut 5-10 years ago. This was a good pine cone year here so I’m hoping for regeneration in the larger open spaces. I’ll be planting some areas with plugs for screening. There was more skidder damage than I would’ve liked. I’m hoping those remain seed trees for many years though. Two of the skid roads were already in place. I’ll let the other roads grow back. They’ll be good for wildlife for several years as they grow up.
It is a forever job to just pick away at it with a chain saw and a line skidder Also a forever pay check on the side but it is very cheap if you have skills and flat land. Don’t stump your trail/leave the vegetation/cut and skid when frozen/snow will protect ground/ limb and buck before you skid/do it like we did before/have the mill come to you in the next summer/
Your thoughts and methods seem to be exactly like a contractor here in BC (Freya logging) that has patterned itself off of more of a Scandinavia model of harvesting. Their equipment is certainly larger than what you use, but much smaller than what is the norm around here. A year after they finish up an area, it's in much better shape (tree quality, under growth, and wildlife) than prior to them harvesting.
Do you see any regeneration on your land that you harvested? It doesn’t look like there’s enough sunlight that’s going to hit the ground to allow any? On my land there was a section that was selectively thinned about 15 years ago. The previous owner thought there’d by sugar maple and oak regeneration because they left sugar maples and oaks. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough sunlight left for them and the beech and black birch thrived. There’s little or no young sugar maple and oaks in that patch. The black birch are dominant now. On those new trails what species do you expect to grow? It sounds like they’ll essentially be clear cuts so whatever seed trees are near should fill them in if they are allowed to grow up??
Here’s a thought/question: if you have a piece of clearcut land and you are starting from scratch, would it be worth it to plant tree species in such a way that the trails are planted with fast growing marketable species (I’m thinking pine, but not sure) and line that with your slower growing but higher value tree species so that when you are ready to harvest your higher value trees, the trees that are cut for the trails will be mature enough to be profitable? Obviously you don’t want a monoculture, but you also don’t want to be cutting trees before they are ready. So this seems like a decent compromise
okay, we probably operate in different conditions and on a different scale, but: Couldn't the trail related losses be minimised by planning where the trail should be at planting? Then you can just plant less valuable pulpwood species that stabilise the forest ecosystem along the trails, and the light - hungry species in the neighbouring rows, or just double the amount of those pulpwood species in the roadside rows bc you widened the row spacing (and those 6m is in normalrange for distance between the rows of mature trees). U can even plant some willowto be removed when making the trail Doesn't the number of trees per acre refer to the area between the trails? I don't see how leaving too much trees there directly makes up for removing trees from trails unless the extra trees u leave are all right by the trail
Even in those cases, planning the trails from the beginning incurs an opportunity cost. Increased light can make up for it, but only to a point and where quality isnt important. But the other point to consider is the productivity of thinning. The trees taken in trail during the first thinning are around 50% of all volume removed, and it tends to be the easiest, most productive wood. Outside of the trail, the machine must carefully pick and choose between trees (unless its a strip removal or something), so not having that trail can increase costs dramatically. So long as costs are increased, we have to ask whether that is the best way to utilize that extra expense. My argument is simply that it makes more sense to put that extra expense into more specialized equipment And of course, the more mature trees are, the more space in between trees and the less the long-term cost of a trail, which is why this is more of a concern for selection harvests and thinnings.
I get the point of minimizing trail surface, but what's the practical alternative? Clear cut in sections? Harvesting with a chainsaw and a small logger would take forever, and labor is expensive.
"clearcutting in sections" can absolutely be a good alternative, depending on the parameters. Even though it might not look like it, Im managing one of my stands with progressive group selections, making small .5 acre patch cuts at a time. Chainsaws might be slow, but one of the benefits of forestry is that it is pretty rare that a harvest is an emergency. A farmer might have a month to harvest crops in the ground, but the forester easily has a five year window before delaying a harvest causes problems. Unless we are salvaging timber from pests, disease, or fire, the worst case scenario is the trees grow a little more, and you can harvest more wood. But importantly, there are a lot of smaller closed-cab machines that can do the work just fine. They are used in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries frequently. But the US doesnt yet have the commercial infrastructure for those machines, mostly because of the industrial history of how our forestry practices developed--up until surprisingly recently, our forest production far outpaced harvest, so we didnt have to pay as close attention to per-acre production as they have in Europe, where their forest resources are more limited. That's why I say the market needs to be developed more. Labor is definitely a problem though. But that's going to be the theme of the American economy for the foreseeable future.
@@nhmountains5683I’m guessing it equally hard to find land owners who understand true cost of harvesting with minimal damage or impact to the property. Can’t always maximize everything. Pick your poison!
As someone once said, nothing is so simple that it can’t be fu@k up! Not just in forestry but in all industries. We focus on immediate gratification rather than long term benefits. That in my view is why our auto industry is almost gone. Yet foreign owned companies can come here and succeed in building cars. Instant gratification also explains why our government has failed us.
I grow P. radiata, I thin to waste and prune to 6 meters in 3 lifts about 300 stems per Ha . have tried using thinning for post production limited market due to too much corewood , but a little forwarder trailer might be useful Not in The US
If you don't like logging just say so. I also suspect the ability of the great un-washed accessing forests is another irritation. Alaska is a win for enviror's shutting down logging.
Not unsubstantiated at all. Ruts in trails can absolutely reroute water and change hydrology. There are ways to mitigate that problem, but it's still a huge concern.
I have a prediction. I know you don’t believe in AI and robotics, but i know otherwise. I engineer these systems for work, and the robots are coming. And I think it’s going to be a very good thing for many industries. Imagine having a crew of 20 robots that can harvest your land with minimal big equipment. 20 bots at 10k each, that’s only $200k, and could potentially do the work of 1/2 million dollar harvesters , without impacting the land quite as much. It’s going to change everything. But this isn’t going to happen in 2-5 years. Try 10-20 years. So investing in land and new types of forest management practices today will pay dividends in the future. You are on the right track and setting yourself up for some big gains.
Ideally, yes, but the reality is even in the coldest areas, the ground is only frozen for about 3 months a year. It can be hard logistically to make that happen.
@@craigwillenborg1831 Uh dude - did you watch the video? He has footage in this very video of how to do it.... Also if you click his channel name - then click videos - BAM there is all the info you wanted right at your fingertips. Why are you so angry? Were you determined to be angry before you even clicked play? Did you comment this before you even watched the video?
🌲Get my free guide to DIY forest Management to learn more about how to manage your property: thetimberlandinvestor.com/how-to-read-your-forest-an-intro-to-diy-forest-management
🌲Take the Silviculture Course: thetimberlandinvestor.com/enroll-in-our-silviculture-course/
🌲Take the Tree Felling Course: thetimberlandinvestor.com/enroll-in-our-tree-felling-course/
I cannot agree more! It often looks like a bomb went off when this equipment departs the location. I believe it is why so many land owners are clear cutting portions of their land at a time. I personally hire small outfits using small equipment. It takes them much longer and market swings can bite you at times. However, my forest is always healthy and therefore worth more... Nice video. Thank you young man
Modern fellers and grapple skidders are a necessity to loggers being able to stay profitable. In the early 90s I was working for a decent sized company that had a felling team and three cable skidders. Me and another guy would pull cable and set chokers all day. The trails were cut to a minimum , less work and culvert placement,basically time. We would steer around nonharvested trees with cable pulleys. Now the machine backs up to the stump,driving over the replacement trees and barking up the others. The cutting disk on the harvester
is clipping the saplings off as it goes tree to tree. A lot of times felling direction is determined by the ability of the grapple to get to the stick. It is a different time. The evolution of the industry due to labor costs and increased insurance premiums. Safer and cheaper. It keeps the cost of production down and makes
wood products more affordable.
Another major factor is terrain. Most of the harvest around me are on mountains, which are good news and bad news for harvesting. Trail placement is often irregular and dictated by terrain features. On the other hand gravity makes cable hauling logs out (down hill) to widely spaced trails feasible.
1:20 What productivity? Lumber? Meat? Recreation? Im sure you understand that timberland can be used for many things at once. Im sure you also know that thick forests don’t do well over time. Here in Louisiana, we make wood companies maintain the firebreaks which is what they use for trails to access and remove wood. Energy companies are also required to maintain fire breaks for their high lines and gas lines. Yes, this maintenance of fire breaks have some impact on the price of these commodities, but the price is paid directly into the timberland without going through a politician. A variety of plants and wildlife also use the fire breaks. We also have the wood companies take down certain trees in addition to the trees they agree to harvest in their permit, so the forest can have plenty of air and sunlight as well as provide buffers to minimize the spread of dangers of fire and disease.
I just had a parcel logged and I agree with a lot of what you said. My trees were mainly white pine that was mature. There was quite a bit of root and red rot. It needed to be cut 5-10 years ago. This was a good pine cone year here so I’m hoping for regeneration in the larger open spaces. I’ll be planting some areas with plugs for screening. There was more skidder damage than I would’ve liked. I’m hoping those remain seed trees for many years though. Two of the skid roads were already in place. I’ll let the other roads grow back. They’ll be good for wildlife for several years as they grow up.
The spaces make open canopy which for wildlife is probably a good thing. So it depends on your goals, wildlife or lumber production.
Your videos are absolutely fascinating, and make me crave a wood lot of my own. Thank you for creating this amazing resource!
I been thinking about getting into oxen logging
Thank you ! Great info
Nice video. Love the Chinese logging trailer.
Great points to ponder
It is a forever job to just pick away at it with a chain saw and a line skidder
Also a forever pay check on the side
but it is very cheap if you have skills and flat land.
Don’t stump your trail/leave the vegetation/cut and skid when frozen/snow will protect ground/
limb and buck before you skid/do it like we did before/have the mill come to you in the next summer/
Your thoughts and methods seem to be exactly like a contractor here in BC (Freya logging) that has patterned itself off of more of a Scandinavia model of harvesting. Their equipment is certainly larger than what you use, but much smaller than what is the norm around here. A year after they finish up an area, it's in much better shape (tree quality, under growth, and wildlife) than prior to them harvesting.
That's great to hear!
Do you see any regeneration on your land that you harvested? It doesn’t look like there’s enough sunlight that’s going to hit the ground to allow any? On my land there was a section that was selectively thinned about 15 years ago. The previous owner thought there’d by sugar maple and oak regeneration because they left sugar maples and oaks. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough sunlight left for them and the beech and black birch thrived. There’s little or no young sugar maple and oaks in that patch. The black birch are dominant now. On those new trails what species do you expect to grow? It sounds like they’ll essentially be clear cuts so whatever seed trees are near should fill them in if they are allowed to grow up??
Here’s a thought/question: if you have a piece of clearcut land and you are starting from scratch, would it be worth it to plant tree species in such a way that the trails are planted with fast growing marketable species (I’m thinking pine, but not sure) and line that with your slower growing but higher value tree species so that when you are ready to harvest your higher value trees, the trees that are cut for the trails will be mature enough to be profitable?
Obviously you don’t want a monoculture, but you also don’t want to be cutting trees before they are ready. So this seems like a decent compromise
So true, true, true….main reason why irregular shelterwood with reserves is about the only viable option for silvercultural management.
okay, we probably operate in different conditions and on a different scale, but:
Couldn't the trail related losses be minimised by planning where the trail should be at planting? Then you can just plant less valuable pulpwood species that stabilise the forest ecosystem along the trails, and the light - hungry species in the neighbouring rows, or just double the amount of those pulpwood species in the roadside rows bc you widened the row spacing (and those 6m is in normalrange for distance between the rows of mature trees). U can even plant some willowto be removed when making the trail
Doesn't the number of trees per acre refer to the area between the trails? I don't see how leaving too much trees there directly makes up for removing trees from trails unless the extra trees u leave are all right by the trail
Even in those cases, planning the trails from the beginning incurs an opportunity cost. Increased light can make up for it, but only to a point and where quality isnt important.
But the other point to consider is the productivity of thinning. The trees taken in trail during the first thinning are around 50% of all volume removed, and it tends to be the easiest, most productive wood. Outside of the trail, the machine must carefully pick and choose between trees (unless its a strip removal or something), so not having that trail can increase costs dramatically. So long as costs are increased, we have to ask whether that is the best way to utilize that extra expense. My argument is simply that it makes more sense to put that extra expense into more specialized equipment
And of course, the more mature trees are, the more space in between trees and the less the long-term cost of a trail, which is why this is more of a concern for selection harvests and thinnings.
I get the point of minimizing trail surface, but what's the practical alternative? Clear cut in sections? Harvesting with a chainsaw and a small logger would take forever, and labor is expensive.
"clearcutting in sections" can absolutely be a good alternative, depending on the parameters. Even though it might not look like it, Im managing one of my stands with progressive group selections, making small .5 acre patch cuts at a time.
Chainsaws might be slow, but one of the benefits of forestry is that it is pretty rare that a harvest is an emergency. A farmer might have a month to harvest crops in the ground, but the forester easily has a five year window before delaying a harvest causes problems. Unless we are salvaging timber from pests, disease, or fire, the worst case scenario is the trees grow a little more, and you can harvest more wood.
But importantly, there are a lot of smaller closed-cab machines that can do the work just fine. They are used in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries frequently. But the US doesnt yet have the commercial infrastructure for those machines, mostly because of the industrial history of how our forestry practices developed--up until surprisingly recently, our forest production far outpaced harvest, so we didnt have to pay as close attention to per-acre production as they have in Europe, where their forest resources are more limited. That's why I say the market needs to be developed more.
Labor is definitely a problem though. But that's going to be the theme of the American economy for the foreseeable future.
It’s hard finding loggers with smaller machinery and willing to take on smaller lots. It’s all about the $$$ unfortunately.
@@nhmountains5683I’m guessing it equally hard to find land owners who understand true cost of harvesting with minimal damage or impact to the property. Can’t always maximize everything. Pick your poison!
Can't you harvest some of the timber that is cut to clear the trails?
As someone once said, nothing is so simple that it can’t be fu@k up! Not just in forestry but in all industries. We focus on immediate gratification rather than long term benefits. That in my view is why our auto industry is almost gone. Yet foreign owned companies can come here and succeed in building cars. Instant gratification also explains why our government has failed us.
I grow P. radiata, I thin to waste and prune to 6 meters in 3 lifts about 300 stems per Ha .
have tried using thinning for post production limited market due to too much corewood , but a little forwarder trailer might be useful
Not in The US
If you don't like logging just say so. I also suspect the ability of the great un-washed accessing forests is another irritation. Alaska is a win for enviror's shutting down logging.
Great points and message, thank you. Harvest trails could also have an indefinite influence on hydrology and soil. (My own unsubstantiated claim).
Not unsubstantiated at all. Ruts in trails can absolutely reroute water and change hydrology. There are ways to mitigate that problem, but it's still a huge concern.
It's no wonder why the horses are making a comeback in logging
I have a prediction. I know you don’t believe in AI and robotics, but i know otherwise. I engineer these systems for work, and the robots are coming. And I think it’s going to be a very good thing for many industries. Imagine having a crew of 20 robots that can harvest your land with minimal big equipment. 20 bots at 10k each, that’s only $200k, and could potentially do the work of 1/2 million dollar harvesters , without impacting the land quite as much. It’s going to change everything.
But this isn’t going to happen in 2-5 years. Try 10-20 years. So investing in land and new types of forest management practices today will pay dividends in the future. You are on the right track and setting yourself up for some big gains.
Heavy equipment should only go in forests on frozen ground.
Ideally, yes, but the reality is even in the coldest areas, the ground is only frozen for about 3 months a year. It can be hard logistically to make that happen.
I just purchased a property last year,have already had 2 loggers call me to harvest it. No thanks.
Ok hear me out, we need sci-fi mech suited loggers with chainsaws, capable of lifting entire trees themselves with their enhanced power
Sign me up!
🇺🇸🇩🇰🌳🌲😀
So please show us how to do it. Love when people say what is going wrong but won't show us how they do it. Oh wait does he ever log himself?
Uh... Yes.
@@thetimberlandinvestor so show me in a video how to do it properly. What type of equipment do you use?
@@craigwillenborg1831 Uh dude - did you watch the video? He has footage in this very video of how to do it.... Also if you click his channel name - then click videos - BAM there is all the info you wanted right at your fingertips. Why are you so angry? Were you determined to be angry before you even clicked play? Did you comment this before you even watched the video?