|
If you have 100 acres and plan on getting more in the future, than I would get the biggest machine you can get for your money. That's a LOT of land to work, and the smaller the machine the harder you're gonna have to work it (and yourself). I'd go with a 70hp and up dozer or loader. Something in the 8-9 ton and up category. You can do a lot more with a loader especially with a 4-1 bucket than you can with a dozer. On the other hand if you're on steep slopes and muddy ground alot, you would probably be better off with a dozer. Loaders tend to be heavier and are easier to get stuck in the mud. They usually have lower profile grousers (i.e. track cleats) than dozers do, which limits their traction in mud. They're also more top heavy and not as stable running along the sides of steep hill sides (generally). Otherwise a loader with 4-1 bucket wins hands down. As far as whether or not you need to push trees over, a loader would be better for that - although you can get tree pusher bars for dozers too. But do you really need to push the trees over? That uproots the stump leaving an ugly hole to fill and a stump to burn later. If you don't need to remove the stump, then you're probably better off just cutting the tree down, leaving the stump to rot and towing the log out using the crawler/winch. If you do need to remove the stumps, then the loader would be much better for that than a dozer (although a backhoe would be ideal). As far as desirable features for logging - make sure you have a solid tree cage minimum and preferably a ROPS with sweeps. Also a winch would be really good to have, it can retrieve trees that are hard to get to and also get you out of mudholes when and if that ever happens (and if you use it long enough it WILL happen!). Or at least a 3 point hitch on the back to pick the ends of the logs up which makes them much easier to tow. As far as what brand - all the major manufacturers made good machines. Dresser made good machines that used to be IH (now called Dressta). There's nothing wrong with them, if the one you see that's breaking down all the time is like that, it's almost certainly from either abuse and/or poor maintenance and/or it's just plain wore out. Likewise the reason the Deere is looking so good in comparison is because that same situation hasn't existed throughout its life (although the Deeres are good machines too). For your relatively meager $10K budget, I'd stick with something like an old 1960's-70's IH (TD9 or bigger), Allis Chalmers (HD4 or bigger), or maybe a bigger old Cat from the 50's. If you stick with these older machines, especially in the case of IH and AC, you're definitely going to get a lot more bang for your buck - a bigger machine that can do more work, faster and more easily. And since the machine will not be worked as hard, it will be much less likely to break down on you. You will not regret having a bigger machine as opposed to a smaller machine working all those acres. Especially if you're working all by yourself, or maybe with only a helper or two. Size matters, don't settle for a lil ole 350!
|
