The History Channel has a new series called AxMen and I have seen a machine called a yoader. Can anyone explain this beast to me?
It is a yarder/loader, hence the name yoder. The first ones around were the old Washington TL-6,s, Skagit SJ4RT’s and a few others. Nowadays the hydraulic log loaders with a set of hydraulic yarding drums on them are the yoders. They can yard logs and when a truck shows up the just remove the butt (yarding) riggin and suck up the lines and load logs. The older ones had to unhook the lines and hang a set of tongs to load logs with. Most had Tommy Moore sheeve’s in the heel boom so they didn’t have to take the butt (yarding) riggin off too load, all they had to do was unhook the haulback line hook the tongs to the butt riggin and go to loading. I'll see if I can drag up some pic's to show you
It's a log loader/shovel equipped with hydraulic winches for yarding.
sj4 My Dad had a sj4 in the 50's and 60's and just the mention of it brings back great memories. I crawled all over that thing when I was a kid. thanks Scott
The old SJ-4 and SJ-4RT's were awesome little machines, big producers and cheap to run.
Yoders Does anyone know anything about the hydraulic loader type yoders? 1. How much line pull do they have? 2. How fast is the winch speed? 3. How much cable do they carry? 4. How big are the machines? 5. Who makes them? 6. How much do they cost?
I have one. It's a 300 Kobelco with Jewell mounted drums. The line pull is limited by the machine tipping up or the stick boom starting to sag. You can pull really hard in closer by raising and lowering the boom while winching in, sort of like reeling in a big fish. We mostly shotgun with it but I have set it up to highlead downhill. The winches are controlled by the travel levers, a switch on the dash swaps the functions from travel to winch operation. The winches also have a control panel where you can choose various functions and set brake pressures. We hang a block on each side of the heel rack, it takes about 10 minutes to go from loading/shovel logging to cable logging. My setup has two speed drums which are adequate in low and really quick in high, both drums will hold 1400 feet of 5/8 but wouldn't recommend it. We put around a 1000 on each. My Kobelco 300 with drums weighs 115,000 lbs. Cost? we paid $400K for ours in 2000, I have heard of figures as high as $650K recently but I haven't seen a new one for sale for some time. Of all the machines I have this is one I am asked if I will sell the most frequently, maybe someday for the right price....
Thanks for that Scott. Your Kobelco sounds like a fine machine. 650k for a new one is serious money though! Do you have pictures of it you could post? I have a daewoo 220 that has a tower and hydraulic skyline winch that I use for skidding and acts as a fixed liner running a carriage on it! It also has a igland 8000 double drum winch which pulls the carriage on the skyline or we use the double drum winches for highlead but these drums will only pull about 3tonnes with the drum full of rope! I am looking for a second machine with a bit more pull to feed the harvester! I don't know what to go for though!
There was a nice Hitachi 300 that was painted green at Cascade trader for sale awhile back. It has sold but you may be able to track it down and buy it. It had two yarding drums, a haywire drum and a guyline drum mounted on the top of the main boom. It was a 1997 and previously owned by Parker-Pacific from Buckley. I believe it had 14,500hrs on it but had many major work orders in the last 2000 hours also. Hope this helps, Darren
Do you know if they have a website or email address? Thanks for the help
Cascade Trader Inc. Chehalis Wa. Ask for Jim Wark and tell him Darren Hall refered you. He was my hitachi salesman when he was with Pape'