BCWoodlotGuy
New Member
New to the forum doing some research on forestry specific swing machines. My family has a 1,200 acre woodlot with a mix of pine and Douglas fir mostly under 24”DBH and a mix of easy conventional level ground and some steep slope that will require cable or tethered harvesting. We’ve contracted out most of the harvesting and road building in the past but I’m motivated to get more hands on do some mechanical harvesting and road building on the easier terrain and continue to contract out the steep ground work. We harvest about 1,200-1,500m3 per year so not a ton of volume so need to keep costs low. Can’t justify brand new or multiple machines. Now that scene is set, I was hoping to get a forestry swing machine that I could convert back and forth between a harvester/ processor and an excavator. Primarily looking at JD 2154 or Hitachi 210F-3 or similar. Doable? Was thinking of starting with a processor and getting an excavator stick and bucket(s) and swapping front ends at the stick. Not sure how the plumbing works to allow for conversion between harvesting head and bucket/thumb or clam. Please enlighten me!
Used market is pretty hot these days so the forestry machines in my budget ($125k CAD) are up there in hours. How many hours are these heavy duty machines capable of running effort they start to fall apart? Thanks in advance for the insight!
Used market is pretty hot these days so the forestry machines in my budget ($125k CAD) are up there in hours. How many hours are these heavy duty machines capable of running effort they start to fall apart? Thanks in advance for the insight!