Running a forestry business is a challenging and rewarding endeavour. Forestry business owners need to secure continual access to lucrative woodlots, and they also need to invest in heavy timber equipment that cuts back on labor costs and maximises productivity. This guide to forestry equipment introduces the top attachments forestry businesses can invest in for success. It outlines the different forestry attachments and provides tips for choosing the right forestry attachment for your business. It also explains why choosing Cat® forestry attachments ensures the best value for your investment.
A crucial consideration is which types of work tools you’ll need. With the right work tools, any standard heavy equipment can be taken and turned into a highly functional and versatile machine that takes on specific duties. Here’s a guide to forestry equipment showing five of the best attachments for a forestry businesses to invest in:
Log and lumber forks
Widely utilised for Cat wheel loaders in forestry applications, load and lumber forks attachments have been designed from the beginning to work exclusively with Cat machines.
Only Cat forks are built to precisely match the performance characteristics of Cat machines.
These forks come with a top clamp and with a pin-on or quickcoupler pick up. They offer the best productivity for loading and unloading logs or lumber on forestry sites and in processing plants.
Millyard Forks
Similar to log and lumber forks, Millyard forks also offer distinct quality and feature benefits which competitors can’t match – like a next-generation top-clamp design with superior strength and durability in mind. Cat top-clamp wrapper is made from a single, seamless piece of cut steel to minimise welding, increasing the strength and decreasing the likelihood of cracking.
Buckets
As one of the most versatile attachments in heavy equipment, bucket attachments are necessary for site clearing and cleanup. Use a bucket attachment throughout operations to clean up debris and clear access ways. An excavator bucket can also be used to dig around tree stumps to extract them for removal. Or, put the bucket attachment to use in a final cleanup pass, loading and hauling away unwanted brush or trees.
There is an extensive range of buckets available to attach to your heavy equipment, whether it’s an excavator or a loader. Cat general-purpose, severe-duty and excavator buckets with thumbs all help to clean up with precision and efficiency.
Forestry grapples
Grapples are attachments designed to fit on forestry machines and make quick work of transporting trees. Their unique curved design means multiple trees can be gripped at one time, making them very efficient at relocating trees after they’ve been processed. Additionally, grapple attachments are used to load and unload logging trucks before and after their journey, making them useful in the forest and at the lumber’s destination.
Forestry mulchers
After trees have been harvested, their stumps may still remain. These can essentially make the land unusable. Luckily, forestry mulcher attachments are designed to tackle the problem of leftover tree stumps.
Forestry mulchers attach to forest machines and excavators and work by rotating a shaft containing many hardened steel teeth. With a combination of downward force from the forestry machine and the rotation of the mulcher shaft, the teeth are able to pulverise the remaining stump.
Forestry mulchers are so effective in destroying stumps that they can often remove the stump below the ground level. Afterward, the stump hole can be filled with dirt and smoothed over, leaving no trace of the stump.
Contact a Cat dealer
Businesses looking to invest in new forestry attachments need to source them from a reliable dealer. For more information about Cat forestry attachments, visit your local Cat dealer:
• NSW/ACT, WesTrac: phone 1300 881 064
• VIC/TAS, William Adams: phone 1300 923 267
• Western Australia, WesTrac: phone 1300 881 064
• QLD/NT, Hastings Deering: phone 131 228
• South Australia, Cavpower: phone 08 8343 1600
• NZ, TERRA: phone 0800 93 39 39.
To see the range of Cat attachments, log on to cat.com.