Recently I had the opportunity to run a job consisting of clearing, stumping & grubbing 1500 feet of roadway, 25' wide easement, and at the end a 100'X100' lease clearing for a cellphone tower site in southern Mass. It started with 3 men with saws and a rented 9" chipper that was a joke really, compared to the 2400 Morbark that later showed up on the site that a friend owns. He did the majority of the bigger trees, and feeds the chipper with his rear mounted log loader. Way faster than us 3 monkies with the Taylor Rental piece that the boss brought onto the scene... Then once the trees were tipped over, I was on the Komatsu loader skidding the logs up out of the way to the staging area. This job was tight to begin with being 25' wide. 3000' of silt fence and 1200 bales of hay were placed, and the silt fence was spec'd on the plans to be imbedded 12" deep, to protect a "worm snake" that is supposedly endangered there. I was mad at that snake since I saw the plans calling for a ditch 12" deep all the way around that job, so much so that when I walked into the woods one day for a nature relief, one of them startled me and curled up into strike position. I wasted no time turning him into food chain material for the other critters. I figured that one less worm snake around would mean one less 12" deep ditch for silt fence somewhere... That was a real pain to do. I had a 370 Deere with a 60" wide bucket, and ended up jabbing the teeth into the ground every 5 feet to make the ditch. The boss didn't think my idea of spending a couple hundred bucks for a Ditch Witch made sense evidently. So I burned 5-6 gallons of fuel an hour (approximately $26.00/hr. in fuel alone, not counting operator, wear&tear, etc.) over a day and a half to accomplish the task. He thought we'd do it by hand, but I explained... only if we were all chained together by the ankles with striped jumpsuits on, would we be doing it that way. Anyway, a couple shots of the 320 Komatsu loader I was "skidding" with, and my buddy's Bell feller buncher with a dangle-head grapple. The Bell machine is pretty interesting. Built in South Africa, their original purpose was to harvest sugar cane with a set of forks with a grapple. The owners of the company split up and one modified the design a bit to accomodate a different boom configuration and a hydraulic grapple head with hydro chain saw for the forestry industry. My buddy buys, sells and services them as a sideline business. Enjoy.
Another shot of clearing job. One last pic of nothing. Just me on a 370 Deere moving some stumps... with my buddy's CL700 log truck and his Morbark model 2400 chipper in the background.
um you might wanna edit your "food chain material" line.... never know who is reading.... kinda like the Cali kit fox i never seen 1 but heard story's of big fines handed out by the govnt. for messing with the habitat!
Those bell's are amazing what they'll do. I worked a job where the boss had one.
Ok I have a question, Do you find it easier to cut the tree's first, drag them out and then dig up the stumps? I know whenever we do clearing I always push the entire tree over, stump and all, then have the saw guy(s) chop them to length. Then grab the logs and haul them to the staging area with the skid steer. I just find it quicker and easier to push trees over than to cut them then dig up the stumps later. Of course I see your using a 370 deere which probably get stumps up better than out 210 size machines. Just like to see how others do the same tasks:drinkup
In my opinion it is much easier to push the tree down then stump it, but alot of people dont like the teeth marks in the logs and your taking a chance on busting them!
I didn't know you could get our Bell log loaders in Amrika. Pics of a log loader in Africa.
Does your buddy's have a harvester head. The Bell company never split, but the product range expanded. More pics...
I'm sure everybody's got a different approach, but then again, every site is different. Given the fact I only had a 25' wide easement,(30' offsets,) I found it easier to cut everything down first, then top them in place, leaving the mess in one area headed in the same direction.Dragging the logs tree length up to my ONLY area to stage them, then bunching the tops up after I got the good wood out of the way. My focus was to keep a neat and organized jobsite at all times, not only for appearance but also to keep it safe and free of hazards. The first day in with a rented chipper and 3 other guys, I wasn't able to watch every move they made. The chipper was being dragged through the job with the Dodge 1 ton utility truck.(another method I thought wasn't really all that clever.) Somebody cut a small 2-3" sapling down and left a "spear" sticking up and lo & behold, when one guy pulled the truck ahead he demo'd a $200.00 front tire on the stump.This is the result of having one other guy on site that thinks he's capable of making good decisions, but once something goes wrong sticks his head in the sand... Keeping a neat site kept the snooty town people within arms length, and pleased the GC as well. I had logs seperated, brush, chips, and a massive stump pile that needs to be trucked off site, but it's all easy to deal with when organized like that. As you said, with a machine like a 370 Deere, it makes short work out of any size or species of stump. I was also dropping trees strategically, making room as we went to keep from hanging them up in others, and to eliminate any busted limbs 50-60 ft. up that they'd make us trim later anyways due to hazards. I think if I had unlimited room to work and pile debris, I probably would do the "push and cut" method. It's definitely quicker than the way I did it, but again, we were limited in a few different areas.:drinkup
Yes Bellboy, this one we were using has a harvester head. Very agile, manuverable machine. Perfect for thinning out thickly grown forest, and for bunching. I'm sorry if the info was inaccurate about the co. splitting. I'm repeating what the owner of it (the Bell,) stated. He works closely with the factory and reps in your country, so I assumed he was giving me correct information. This one was powered with a Deutz air cooled diesel. Others he has are Cummins powered. The harvester head he said was a "copy" of a Swedish head.:drinkup
thats fine. we use them more for moving than harvesting.
Hey Dirtman, Talked to dad about this last night actually. If we were just pushing everything into a large pile we would do it whole, dig around and take the stumps with it. Even when burning for the most part we would leave the stumps on and let the fire burn as much off as it could, then bury the stumps. However, somtimes due to the landowner, we would have one guy cutting trees down and the other skiding them to an area to be cut up for fire wood or logs and then spend a day grubbing stumps out. I know on oak groves that works the best for us, you know what a mess an oak makes if you try to "roll" it. Keep in mind that the machines used in all these processes are TD-15C Dresser dozers and we did use the 312 CAT somtimes. Trbo
We took out a tree by hand, wow, big job, but we dug the whole tree out and then pulled it over with a 1978 VW kombi. i didn't think it would do it, but it managed somehow. I would much have preffered a Bell 315Sj, but hey, just doing what we can with what we got...
Morbark used to sell those Bell machines under the name of Mor-Bell My son actually ran one for a while He called it "Tinkerbell" Dave
I did a little research and found that a Mor-Bell Logger as well as a Mor-Bell Feller Buncher were offered in the 1980's. One had a grapple head on the boom for skidding and loading while the other had a hydraulic shear and accumulating fingers. I don't think that a hot saw was available at that time, but I'm not sure! Dave
Your friend wouldn't be named Henry Zambesi by chance? Henry is from South Africa and used to work for Bell. He now lives on the east coast and owns a business that buys, sells and services Bells. I purchased a Bell Ultra T from him a few months ago and he has made the trip to Tennessee 3 times this year to help me track down a gremlin in the hydraulics. I think we finally have it cured this time! I will say that Henry goes way above and beyond what a typical equipment dealer would do. He takes customer service very serious. Plus he's an all around nice guy. Anyways, there's not many guys around that are still servicing the Bell machines. Bell stopped importing them into the US in 2001, so finding a good used machine is becoming nearly impossible, especially the later Ultra C model with Cummins engine. In fact, I'd like to find another one for myself! --Barry
Post some pics. I'm not familiar with the model, so pics may help. Its so cool to see our equipment overseas. Sorry, I'm shedding a tear of joy...:crying
I'll do that as soon as I get picture posting privileges.
These are the only pics I ever took of the one I worked around.
Thats the extraction jobbie? otherwise, thanks for the pics.
Bell Ultra C Here are some pictures of a 2001 Bell Ultra C that was recently rebuilt from the frame up. I asked the dealer to email me these pictures. When I called the next day to talk to him about it I found out someone else had came by and purchased it. I'm still sick about missing this machine!
There is a few of those Ultra C's floating around here. Yearwood logging had one with tracks. Quick little friggin thing
Ok, now I understand. That model's base is popular for building on forklifts and 'Versa-Lifts' They are supposed to be like loader arms for buckets or pallet forks. What model? 225 or 250? Really like that setup. It must work really well. Pity about that other bloke buying. deereman: Do you have pics. Would love to see tracks on one of these!
Does the rear wheel steer or just crazy-wheel? Looks like it would be nice for maneuvering to have each drive wheel independant and able to go their own speed and direction. I wonder how difficult it would be to drive a straight line with it that way, though. ?
I saw one of these machines in Connecticut yesterday. Was out on the KTM and saw it sitting in a feild. Looks to be in use had a bunch of wood around it.
Nice pics. Tough work, hey?
I looked around the bell website and found a triwheeler with four wheels, more of a quad, but its got a debarking head, really cool. Never seen one though, but I hear that there is one in my area.
Did the guy running it make it dance for you on the front 2 wheels?I worked around a morbark 3 wheeler with a bunching head on it, instead of a directional feller.The guy would drive all over with the back wheel in the air.
Down here they do it all the time. At first you nearly xxxx yourself, then you realise that this guy is just that, dancing with the machine. You might think that these jobbies might fall over, but they are designed in such a way that even doing that won't topple them. 'Pick" up a heavy log, and drag it out backwards like a skidder.
You guys seem to know something about the bells and how they work can you tell me how big of trees you can cut with one and whay type of saw head are you using. We do some landclearing every year and my crew, [ family ] is tired of running chainsaws seven days a week and is going on strike on me, something about get off your a-- and do it yourself we'll run the cats and excavators. Can't complain but are looking to mechanize the cutting down and sawing up operations somewhat and to speed them up slightly also. We do anything from grubbing and burning to cutting down and chipping tops and harvesting firewood from bigger material. Hows everyone else out there gone about this. Someone told me to get a Bell unit with a dangle saw head and put a longer bar to handle bigger wood and make several cuts around the tree and take it down and saw it up with the unit and sort out what we want to keep and pile that out of the way and move onto the next tree. That same guy said to find a track Bell and they were better? Any experience here? Some have told me to stay away from disk hot saw heads, too heavy and not as handy and don't cut up trees very good just drop them and thats about it. Any ideas or experience would be nice. We are looking at bidding on a clearing job that can't be grubbed and they have deadlines that are pretty tight to meet and we need to speed the process up somewhat and are looking at all options. Not a big operator so spending 500 thousand isn't an option. Thanks
Here the Bell machines are very popular, especially the HD820Eiii tracked excavator and Waratah harvester combination. Very simple to operate compared to a whole harvester machine from JD, and I would say a good deal cheaper than a volvo with similar setup, or Komatsu at the same time. The excavator is cheap, it is Kato really, but what puts the price up is the waratah head. As for the tri-wheeler, you can't go wrong. Beautiful little machine, but rather tricky to get right for the first time. Very basic as it is made really for the SA market, but very powerful and extremely versatile. It easily fits on to a 6x4 rigid flatbed/beaver tail, so transporting the lil baby should be easy. Good luck
I will try to find that pic. it was a neat little machine.
Check out www.ryansequipment.com This guy has experience with both the Bell and Morbark 3 wheelers, I think he worked on or ofr both. Now he owns a comapny that makes attachments. Either way I bet he could steer you in the right direction! He is located in Michigan!