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Moving Heavy Logs from woods to truck - Need your ideas

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I struggle to move 24" diameter x 24" long logs from the woods two my truck. A truck can not travel to exact stop of the cut tree and ATVs are too expensive. The distance traveled on foot varies up to 100 yards. I need your best practices in this area and low cost alternatives. Thanks
 

john lucas

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I would suggest making a sort of wheeled cart. Sort of like a flat wheelbarrow. I used to do that without the wheels when I first moved into my log house in the woods. I had a wood stove and couldn't afford to pay the heating bill. I would walk into the woods find a downed tree, cut it to lengths I thought I could haul, rolled them onto the cart which was more like a stretcher. Fastened that to my waist and drug them home. Of course I was only 40 then and could handle that sort of thing. Now I would use wheels.
 
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I struggle to move 24" diameter x 24" long logs from the woods two my truck. A truck can not travel to exact stop of the cut tree and ATVs are too expensive. The distance traveled on foot varies up to 100 yards. I need your best practices in this area and low cost alternatives. Thanks

Hand cart with pneumatic tires, one piece at a time. Good luck.
 
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I pull logs out of the woods whole for smaller to medium logs or in 12-20' lengths for up to 36 diameter with a Griphoist TU-28. Not the cheapest, but I picked mine up on eBay for about $400 bucks.

A Griphoist is a bit like a comealong, but with a 60' cable that passes through. It has a 3' handle, and takes about five minutes to pull a log most of that 60 feet. My five year old son can pull a one ton log easily once everything is set up. I think the TU-17 griphoist (smaller model) would be big enough for perhaps 6' lengths.

If you go the lumber cart route, I recommend a larger diameter wheel, such as motorcycle wheels. I made a cart with solid Marathon 13" wheels. The cart is solid, but smaller diameter wheels love to get stuck on roots and such. Go for at least 20" diameter wheels.
 

odie

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Well, I can't pick them up, one on each shoulder and jog to the truck any more.... I have just rolled the sections before, but most of the time keep the hand truck, with pneumatic wheels handy. If necessary, and the ground is pretty rough, I will rip them down the pith. Wheel barrow is generally not the best because you have to lift them up too high. The larger diameter the wheels are, the better on rough ground. You may be able to rent a bigger hand truck.

robo hippy
 

hockenbery

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What works well for a friend of mine is a steel cable, pulley, and tongs
I don't think he can go a hundred yards but 200 feet is within his cable length
Working from a road, Dave runs the cable through the pulley tied to a roadside tree, one end of the cable on the log tongs the other attached to a tractor( a truck would work). Dave runs the tractor down the road until the log is at the road edge. Then attaches the font bucket on the tractor to the log tongs to put the log on the trailer.


1/4" cable will pull a 1000 pounds and a whole lot more before breaking. 250 ft about $40-$50
5/16 cable will pull about a ton.
 

Bill Boehme

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What works well for a friend of mine is a steel cable, pulley, and tongs
I don't think he can go a hundred yards but 200 feet is within his cable length
Working from a road, Dave runs the cable through the pulley tied to a roadside tree, one end of the cable on the log tongs the other attached to a tractor( a truck would work). Dave runs the tractor down the road until the log is at the road edge. Then attaches the font bucket on the tractor to the log tongs to put the log on the trailer.


1/4" cable will pull a 1000 pounds and a whole lot more before breaking. 250 ft about $40-$50
5/16 cable will pull about a ton.

The safe load limit of 1/4" 304 and 316 SS wire rope is 1100 lbs. The safe load limit of 5/16" wire rope is 1700 lbs. These numbers are padded with safety margins to account for "unknowns". Unknowns are sort of like ... uh ... better safe than sorry.

You are correct that you can go a lot higher than that before it snaps, but there are plenty of good reasons not to exceed the safe load limit. Most importantly is that you don't want to get into what is known as the Hook's Law region which is where the elastic load limit is exceeded and beyond that point, plastic deformation takes place. When that happens, the wire rope is permanently weakened. Repeatedly exceeding the safe load limit eventually means that the safe load limit is no longer safe. A wire rope that snaps under tension is extremely hazardous.

I hope that your friend uses wide nylon straps rather than a steel cable to fasten the pulley to the tree. A steel cable could damage the cambium layer.

One other thought: the pulley diameter and wrap angle are very important. Think of a bandsaw blade and fatigue failure as a result of blade tension and wheel diameter. A tight radius wrapped around a small pulley under high tensile load is very hard on the wire rope. Get as large a pulley as you can find.
 
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The safe load limit of 1/4" 304 and 316 SS wire rope is 1100 lbs. The safe load limit of 5/16" wire rope is 1700 lbs. These numbers are padded with safety margins to account for "unknowns". Unknowns are sort of like ... uh ... better safe than sorry.
Another option is to use a good quality HMPE rope in the same sizes - at a 5:1 safety factor, the working load limit is actually a little higher, the rope weighs almost nothing at those sizes, and if it parts the potential for damage is a little less. Works nicely on most winches, too - as long as it is handled appropriately.
 

hockenbery

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The safe load limit of 1/4" 304 and 316 SS wire rope is 1100 lbs. The safe load limit of 5/16" wire rope is 1700 lbs. These numbers are padded with safety margins to account for "unknowns". Unknowns are sort of like ... uh ... better safe than sorry. You are correct that you can go a lot higher than that before it snaps, but there are plenty of good reasons not to exceed the safe load limit. Most importantly is that you don't want to get into what is known as the Hook's Law region which is where the elastic load limit is exceeded and beyond that point, plastic deformation takes place. When that happens, the wire rope is permanently weakened. Repeatedly exceeding the safe load limit eventually means that the safe load limit is no longer safe. A wire rope that snaps under tension is extremely hazardous. I hope that your friend uses wide nylon straps rather than a steel cable to fasten the pulley to the tree. A steel cable could damage the cambium layer. One other thought: the pulley diameter and wrap angle are very important. Think of a bandsaw blade and fatigue failure as a result of blade tension and wheel diameter. A tight radius wrapped around a small pulley under high tensile load is very hard on the wire rope. Get as large a pulley as you can find.

He does use the wide nylon. Straps.

Thanks for the more accurate number that confirmed mine.

An 8 foot 24" diameter red maple log will weigh about.
1346 according to one calculated I used.
Safer to use the 5/16 on a big log. If it were a 2 footer or 4 footer or 6 footer the 1/4" should handle it.

A wire cable snapping would be extremely dangerous.
I don't know how often they would snap pulling a log along the ground.
In my limited experience I have only seen a couple fail and they did not break in two but stretched as one or two strands broke and the cables sort of unwind and lengthen a bit. These were winches to load a boat on a trailer.

Al
 
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The trouble with all that dragging is the bark filling with dirt and grit. That's death to chainsaw chains and doesn't help with natural edges either.
 

Bill Boehme

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The trouble with all that dragging is the bark filling with dirt and grit. That's death to chainsaw chains and doesn't help with natural edges either.

Not to mention that using the log to gouge a trench in the ground with brute force dragging will require a lot more force than simply the dead weight of the log.

I need to find the web site that gave a lot of useful data on wire rope inspection. The basic idea is that a wire rope shouldn't be used until it fails and knowing when it is past its useful life is valuable knowledge. The site is oriented towards industrial use, but it is great information for the average person. There are more ways to wear out a wire rope than I ever imagined possible. Something that never crossed my mind is crush deformation of the rope due to the crushing force of being wound very tightly around the winch drum. So, if you are dragging a very heavy green log through soft dirt and ripping up roots along the way, all that tension is causing the rope strands to be distorted out of shape as it is tightly wound around the spool. It sounds like it would be smart to unspool the rope after dragging a heavy log and then rewinding it with lower tension ... sort of like why it is good to de-tension bandsaw blades at the end of the day.
 
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mount your block 5-10' up a tree

I always bring a short aluminum ladder to mount a block up in tree, enough to lift the light end of a log so it doesn't dig in. I also bring firehose to wrap around the tree before strapping the block to the tree...some trees have VERY sensitive cambium layers. My local firehall gives away old firehose.

A common mistake I've seen is to undersize the cable for the block, as Bill said. The sheave of the block should full support the cable (ie. the groove in the sheave should be only slightly bigger than the cable diameter.) If your cable is too small for the sheave, you crush the cable, and loose roughly half of the cable's strength. The smallest cable I ever use is 3/8, which is often overkill, but it also lasts a lot longer, isn't prone to kinks, etc.

Have fun and be safe.
 
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On the idea of pulling a log there is a solution to heavy moves used by the ancient Egyptians......rollers. You could use could use cutoff limbs or pipe.....drill stem comes to mind. Once the log is on the roller friction is reduced and load is also reduced. That is one part of the formula that was left out. The friction of sliding the log increases the stress load on the cable and must be added into the weight being handled.
 
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I bought one of those from Harbor Freight for just over $80 and mounted it to the front of the box on a trailer with a mounting plate welded in place, then I put an electric wench on it. It's a great tool.

Happy Turning - Tom

There is the ultimate answer, Tom got any pictures of your set up?
 
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Last year i lost a big load of sugar maple just because I couldn't use a chainsaw on the site. After that I decided either buying an old pickup truck and install that kind of crane on it, or going to get a medium utility trailer with a built in ramp. I opted for the second choice. I just roll the logs into the trailer or use a heavy duty hand track.
 
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A really cheap solution is to make a sled out of an old truck hood. Use the wire cable or logging chain and drag it wherever you need to go.
Putting holes in the sides and using a come along to secure the log to the sled works pretty well.
OLD school, but cheap and works really well, especially over leaves and snow. Mud, well that can be iffy, but works too.

Check out Matthew Cremona on Youtube. He's got a cool trailer and pivoting arch rig to bring huge logs to his home made bandsaw mill.
 
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This is an interesting design that helps lift and load logs at the same time.
This might be a novel design that could work on a pickup truck.


http://www.forestr
logs2.jpg
 
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"I struggle to move 24" diameter x 24" long logs" 2' diameter x 2' long should be a breeze to roll. If you had to go up steep hills, I'd make a rig that looked like a wagon handle with plates fastened to the ends. Drive a lag bolt through the plates into the center of the log, and now you have something that looks like a yard roller. A simple pulley and rope lets you pull it out of a ravine. Even more simple, watch for an old log roller on Craigslist and just use it for parts.
 
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Olaf,

Large wheels are the way to go, I am looking to modify a hand cart with wheels large enough
to match up to the height of a pickup truck bed when it is laid back horizontal. This would simplify
the process of loading the logs into the truck after moving them with the cart.
 
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I do not have a drawing but a couple years ago there was published a idea for loading logs in pickup. Use 2 - 8 foot 2 x 4 . Hes cut the top at about 2 foot and put a hinge (do not know why since could stick out from truck). Then the top was tapered so you could roll log onto the rack. At the height of your truck bed use 2 x 8 as a shelf. also need another cross piece a bit higher to stiffen. To load just roll log on from the top and lift like a pry bar.
 
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am looking to modify a hand cart with wheels large enough to match up to the height of a pickup truck bed when it is laid back horizontal. This would simplify
the process of loading the logs into the truck after moving them with the cart.

I thought about using a truck and that's what stopped me. Borrowed my friends truck a few times and the loading was a PITA.

So I went back to renting a trailer from uHaul. They handle a ton of weight, come in different sizes and one version has a nice long ramp. So I get the logs onto my hand truck, then get up a little speed and just run up the ramp..and dump.

Also means I can pull this behind my car and not have to deal with a truck.
 
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