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Logging costs

Started by jim king, July 14, 2008, 01:50:04 PM

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jim king

I am calculating the cost of logging on jungle soil and building 6 miles of road for trucks to bring out the wood and the numbers scare me.  I have always done our logging by hand without any skidders and bring the wood chainsaw cut out in cants.

It appears that mechanized logging cannot compare to labor intensive logging.

What would be a typical logging cost per BF of logs taken out with a skidder on soft soil summer logging up there ??


SwampDonkey

Could you even do it with a wheeled skidder down there? When do you hit bottom? When your on the skid pans? Every wheel rut will be a river in that slop. Just something to cogitate over.  ;)

Lots a fellows to give you some figures to push pencil to real soon.  ;)

Going to depend on circumstances of the individuals. Some are going to say 4 cord others may offer 15.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Rick Alger

Cut and skid contracts around here run around $20 a ton for softwood logs. That's about $93 per mbf or 9.3 cents per foot. The contracts are not usually let out on soft ground in the summer.

Because I use horses, I do get some soft ground work. To meet expenses and make a Walmart wage I need about $140 per mbf or 14 cents a foot.

Ron Wenrich

Maybe use a Bombadier muskeg tractor instead of a skidder.  
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

jim king

Swampdonkey:  Several people are using skidders but they are all broke and now I think I know why.  Normally in two passes you bottom out even in fairly dry weather.  You are right every rut is a river and takes a lot of roots out.  The law here was copied from a temperate climate law and is not for the Amazon and soft ground.

Rick: We dont have much frozen or dry groud so you can imagine the mess with skidders.
Logs here are about 25 to 30 cents American delivered to town and that is after being skidded up to 5 or six miles and probably 12-24 hours on a barge being pushed to town.

It truely looks like it is not feasable and I will stick with the carrying cants out by hand.

jim king

Ron:  We use little Marookas and they work well and dont hurt anything.

SwampDonkey

I know you asked for cost, but production is a big part of it.  ;)
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

jim king

Swampdonkey:

A skidder here on a very good day with short hauls will get 10,000 ft to a beach ready to be craned on a barge.  We have no roads.  A good average would be 4500 feet in a day and the wet season is year around but some months are really wet and then in August , Sept. and Oct. the smaller rivers may go almost dry and drop 40 feet not permitting barge traffic. 

My wife and I lived for 3 1/2 years in the jungle about 2 hours with a 65 hp from town.  I will attach pair of scanned photos of high and low water at our jungle house.  One year we had to move our pigs, horses and cattle to another area by boat that was not flooded.  The chickens lived on a floor we put in the top of the chicken house.  One day we found a dead 6 foot electric eel and a dead 4 foot catfish in the chicken house.  They got in when the guy opened the door and dipped under  to get food in.  Not the best time of your life.


spencerhenry

25 to 30 cents american? thats better than we are getting here right now for ponderosa! thats cut skid and hauled to the mill. cut with a timbco, skid with a 748, and hauled on self loaders about an hour. the machine for the job is out there, there are some good track skidders out there, or how about an 8 wheel forwarder with tracks on it, they are made for low ground pressure

Lignorant

Jim -

I guess I really don't have a good picture of what the soil conditions are in your area, so it's hard to evaluate if this suggestion/thought makes any sense, but here goes:
How about establishing a series of anchor points along the road that you could attach a portable engine/winch combo to and then pull your loads out in bateau-front logging pans?  That would provide lots of bearing surface on the soupy ground and work even when it was raining (I think).  I know that cable cars, ski resorts, and skyline logging operations all use long cable systems successfully.  Curves could be negotiated by snatch blocks.  I don't know what a Marooka looks like, but maybe it could carry the engine winch combo, plus maybe a cable spool - should weigh less than a load of tropical hardwood. Lots of ways to expand on that concept if wiser minds than I don't poke holes in it...anyway, it wouldn't require so much in the way of building a road.

crtreedude

Jim, how about oxen? We tend to use oxen for harvest of trees here. Slow, but can go anywhere. They don't tend to tear things up too much either.

Cutting during the rainy season is always a challenge.
So, how did I end up here anyway?

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