Heavy Equipment in Oregon

By Lloyd Kahn on August 17, 2014


Not sure what its function is, but it’s sure heavy duty. Somehow used in logging I presume. Note how they have used chained treads around tires to create Caterpillar-like tractor treads.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
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4 Responses to Heavy Equipment in Oregon

  1. Lloyd;

    The equipment depicted is one type of tree harvester. On less mountainous terrain, it can drive up to a mature plantation tree, grab it, slice it off cleanly at the base, then lower it in a controlled manner to be processed by other automated equipment that limbs the trunk and cuts the resulting logs into industry-standard lengths.

    While some may be aghast at the concept of handling trees this way, it's actually a lot less damaging to the land and much less destructive to the trees being harvested. I've watched similar machines clear an entire unit of timber, and there is a lot less disruption to the surface of the soil, resulting in less run-off and erosion in ensuing rainy weather. Since the trees aren't falling and impacting the ground, they tend to break up less, yielding more useable lumber. It goes without saying that not having loggers with chain saws dodging falling trees is a lot safer as well.

    Machines can only do so much, though. Very large (old growth & similar) trees, and steep terrain still require the old methods, although taking the resulting logs out "by wire" or with helicopters lessens the environmental impact of the operation.

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  2. Interesting change not caused by spotted owls. On one side of me a couple of decades ago or so fallers on the ground with chainsaws clear cut a Weyerhauser unit and dragged the logs to the landings and local loggers had signs about liking spotted owls fried. About 3 years ago they clear cut the unit on the other side of me. Nobody on the ground, all sitting in the cabs of monster wheeled rigs with computer controls. Don't see those spotted owl signs much now. Good jobs climbing and topping old growth trees with a chainsaw for spotted owl habitat.

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  3. FYI… this machine will not fall trees but drives around and picks them up. After another similiar type machine has cut down the trees down and cut them to length. With all the wheels and chains it will have the least amount of impact on the ground. Rather than dragging the trees and hurting the dirt. It will carry them to the roadside and pile them for trucks to deliver them to mills.

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  4. it is called a clambunk forwarder. it hauls whole logs to a landing where the logs are cut to length and delimbed by another machine called a processor,then loaded onto log trucks by the processor,or another machine called a shovel.though you can also load logs with the forwarder.

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