Have you started practicing methods of saving fuel?

[cantcutter]

I am wondering what methods loggers are deploying to save on fuel on a daily basis. Are you shutting your equipment off instead of leaving it running all day? Have you bought smaller skidders or downsized your trucks? Finding more efficiant methods of getting the timber out of the woods?
What practices have you put into use and if you know, how much has it saved you? 

[Sawyerfortyish]

I don't see how downsizing a truck would help. I can haul 3000-3500 bd ft of logs. By getting a smaller truck it would mean more trips with less logs and increased fines for over weight as well as more fuel to do the same job. Sometimes bigger is better. As for shutting off machinery yes if I know it may be a few minutes to a half hour to do something else We now shut machines off.

[Cedarman]

I grew with parents that said shut the lights off when you leave the room. So I have always done everything to conserve fuel. If I go to town I want to make one trip to get all things done. (Doesn't always work that way though). Since we can get most parts next day UPS ground, I let them bring the part to me as long as shutting down for a day creates no problem. We have so much work to do that there are always things to do for a day. We steal my daughters gas mizer to make all the trips we can instead of my 1 ton diesel truck.
As far as trucks go, it is important to have the right size truck to be the most efficient.  You can be penny wise and pound foolish if you have the wrong trucks.  We hire most of our trucking done.

[bull]

We stopped skidding out tops and are bucking into firewood length were they lie then load FEL bucket haul to skid path no more than 100 yards to good hard skid road, { If your not in the seat the engine is shut off}.
Able to drive truck in...split onto truck and shipout...... so far saving about 5 gallons of fuel a day...
also recovering more wood from tops taking down to 2 inch, customers like the round wood for some reason, also leaving tops alone until we need the wood,hopefully fuel will go down,yeah right!!

[cantcutter]

I don't see how downsizing a truck would help.

The Mack I use can hual 1000-1500 bf hardwood. A diesel pickup and goose neck could haul as much and I think the fuel would be less. I am not sure about that though.

[Brian_Rhoad]

I changed trucks about 8 years ago. I went from a Ford LN 7000 that could haul 8 tons to a Ford F350 dually and gooseneck that can haul a little more than 8 tons. Went from 5-6mpg to 15 mpg. The dually is also more useable for other things too. I got a Ford Ranger to use when I don't need a full sized truck. It gets over 25 mpg just runnung around localy. That made a big difference in fuel useage.

[stonebroke]

I bought a s10 when gas went to 1.25$ ibnstead of going to town in the one ton big block. Saves a lot of gas. My 1990 one ton only has 64,000 miles on it so you can tell I only use it when I absolutely have to. Primarily tohaul a livestock gooseneck.

Stonebroke

[Furby]

I bought a s10 when gas went to 1.25$ ibnstead of going to town in the one ton big block. Saves a lot of gas.

How much are you saving when you add in the plates and insurance on a second vehicle?

[Corley5]

We've started looking for another vehicle for my wife to drive.  She's been driving the 02 Dodge Cummins to work since it was new.  It was great when diesel was cheaper than gas now it really sux    No more unplanned, unnecessary trips to town.  Every trip needs justification.  I raised the price of firewood a bit to cover fuel costs and one customer said if it went any higher they'd cut their own.  I told her I couldn't afford to haul it to her for any less now 

[arojay]

If they were going to cut their own they likely would be already.  That is one of the issues for those of us who sell firewood.  People think it should be cheap because it just grows on trees so they could go and get it themselves.  Hardly anyone has their own oilwell in the yard and even if they do the crude has to be refined.  Fuel has always been expensive around here, it's just more expensive now.  I can't cut much more fuel waste out on the job, but at home we burn wood and oil.  We are planning to replace our 'over 30 year old' wood/oil combination boiler that can't burn wood anymore, with a new one that will burn wood whenever we are home to fire it.  We are also buying a small car to replace the Suburban that got awesome mileage per occupant when our kids were at home.

[WH_Conley]

What Furby said, cheaper for me to work the hinny off the 94 ram 2500 than to make the occasonial load on the 78 Ford F600.

[Ron Wenrich]

We wait to haul lumber where we have logs to bring back.  Back hauls are pretty important.  I have always made it a point not to let the gen set diesel idle for any longer than necessary.  Unfortunately, we have a knucklehead operator who always has some piece of equipment idling because its "good for the engine". 

There's a local truck stop where the trucks sit all night with their engines on idle.  If there is a temperature inversion, you can see a haze overtop of the area that is nothing but diesel exhaust.  I've seen where a typical diesel truck will use about 0.8 gal/hr on idle.  Very easy to see where a trucker can lose a couple hundred dollars a week just by letting the truck idle.

When diesel first hit $4.25, I also noticed a lot of the big trucks had slowed down.  Instead of doing 75-80, they were down to the 65-70 range.  But, after the sticker shock, I've also noticed that they are starting to let their speed go back up.

I bought a scanguage which hooks into the computer on your truck.  It tells you everything you would need to know about speed and milage.  You would be surprised how things like speed and idling effects your milage.

[cantcutter]

Most people think that letting an engine idle dose not use much fuel. We have a hybrid car that shuts off at every stop light. I can shut that feature off and when I do I loose 10 mpg per 10 gallon fill up.

Last summer I supplmented my income by driving a concrete mixer. The company had 35 mixers on the road each day and they where all idleing between jobs to keep the concrete from building up in the drum. They started making us dump 1000 gallons of water in each drum and rinsing the drum down so we could shut the truck down. Apparently 35 000 gallons of city water is cheaper than letting 35 trucks run for 10-15 minutes until they got their next load.

[Timburr]

From a mechanical point of view, periods of idle glaze the cylinder and contaminates the oil quicker.  A glazed bore burns more oil.  So by switching off, fuel, oil and engine wear are saved.

[stonebroke]

Furby

The plates and insurance are about 450$ which is about four tank fulls for the big truck. So I probably  pay for it after the first month. Also repairs are cheaper on the smaller truck. And Tires . I am now driving a 95 Ranger with 213,000 miles on it.

Stonebroke

[Frickman]

I have stopped idling equipment as much. Just enough to warm it up or cool it down. I work by myself alot in the woods, so I shut down the skidder sometimes when I'm felling. I'll spend an hour or so felling and trimming a bunch of trees and then an hour or so skidding. On my current job the landowner said she could hear me pounding in wedges and then the tree crash to the ground when I was working up the hollow from the house. She got a big thrill out of that. She wouldn't have heard it as well if the skidder was running.

[zackman1801]

i have been starting to look into using biodiesel  to hopefully decrease the ammount of fuel we have to buy. I am having a hard time finding some of the materials to make it locally but once its done we are trying to experiment if its cost effective or not to make it in larger quantities for use in the old dozer and skidder. plus anything i can make at home can go into the oil tank!

[Tom]

I've always been conscience of fuel usage, but more-so now.   It's so difficult to pass on the increased costs that I have pretty much quit sawing.  Since I started burning diesel in 1999, my fuel costs for the sawmill have risen from about $4 per day to $40 per day.  It's a good time to retire.

Lots of logging equipment parked on the side of the road now.

[rockenbman]

I have been trying to save on fuel for some time now.I owned my own truck about 2 years ago and  had a rig master generator on it.It saved big on idle time and fuel use.The cost was about $6500.00 installed of course this is only used on over the road trucks cant see spending  that much on a logging truck.That type of truck should only idle about 5 min in the morning for warm up and really dont need to idle while loading unless the motor is used to run a crane or somthing and about 3 min at the end of the day.Keeping speeds around 65mph or less and using cruise as much as possible will save you 10 - 20 gal fuel use a day and right now in my area were paying 3.859 gal.

[OneWithWood]

Make my own bio diesel for $2.17, all costs included.
I still kill the engine if I am not sitting in/on the equipment.