You'd have to know what you're doing to attempt using one of those unless you are hoping to see the horizon go vertical on you!
Small trees yes, each species has different weights. Ever see a picture of what happens when a good size cottonwood tree, for instance hits a house? It doesn't lean on it like some others, it goes right to the foundation.
I woke up to my wife yelling one day, the property next to us was being cut, all she could see out of the window was a 100 foot tall fir tree "walking" around!
A guy was using a big loader, I think a Cat 544 (rubber tires) to snip the 12-24" diameter (DBH to you woodsy folks) trees off flush with the ground. He would usually put them where he wanted them but the ground was rough with old stumps etc and sometimes he would start to tip and have to put them down NOW! He never put the machine over, a couple of times he waited till the last minute to drop it. Great sense of balance!
I've also watched a tree harvester do this, they grab the tree, cut it, and they can slide the tree sideways through something to delimb it, and the computer cuts it to length!
Down south in the pine country they use a device for the tree farms on the smaller trees on previously graded land where they pull the tree, stump and all, out of the ground like a weed, cut the stump off, limb it and cut it (again that's buck it) to length.
My chainsaw and I feel a bit slow and old watching those guys!
The bad aspect to this is getting a big stump out later that is flush cut is really a problem with a typical rental size dozer, nothing to push on up high for leverage. I ended up buying the property that was logged and rented a track hoe (more fun then Disneyland). I loved it and my resting-in-the-shed-instead-of-being-destroyed backhoe loved me renting it! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
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