Taking down trees with tractor help

[Danno1]

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Ha, ha....... I hear ya!

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[jpm1]

Checked out the pictures of your tractor, real nice and that cab, well I suspose one could get real soft blowing snow in a heated cab. . . . all I can say is enjoy it ! To the subject of pushing trees with a tractor, I wouldn't do it! A tree is very hard to estimate weight wise, and there's the wind factor. I've done it with a skidder and a crawler tractor but I draw the line on my wheel tractor. Use a good notch while cutting your tree. wedge it a bit if necessary,and always leave your self a clear way out of the area if need be. We've cut our share of saw logs and firewood in the past years. Tractor parts-expensive, story of what happened to tractor- difficult to keep straight but body parts- irreplaceable! remember play safe to play another day!, John

 

[MidnghtOwl]

Why go to all the hassle? We have plenty of heavy equipment operators around us, i've called my favorite excavator every spring to bring his JD400 over and push on the winter kill. On an average hour, he can push over about 30 trees. Root balls come up when the tree falls down.

nice thing about BIG equipment is that the size of the tree isn't an issue. Most of what he has helped me with are 80' oaks between 2 and 3 feet.

Last spring he pushed over 25 trees for me and my bill was $160.00. Then use the tractor for cleanup.

 

[wedge40]

Why go to all the hassle? We have plenty of heavy equipment operators around us, i've called my favorite excavator every spring to bring his JD400 over and push on the winter kill. On an average hour, he can push over about 30 trees. Root balls come up when the tree falls down.

nice thing about BIG equipment is that the size of the tree isn't an issue. Most of what he has helped me with are 80' oaks between 2 and 3 feet.

Last spring he pushed over 25 trees for me and my bill was $160.00. Then use the tractor for cleanup.

Not everyone has easy access to heavy equipment and most of us would pay close to the $160 just to get the equipment delivered. Besides there are a lot of folks here that like the challenge of it.

Wedge

 

[davitk]

Some of you may have heard of the recent accident up in my neck of the woods (so wi) where a tractor was pulling a tree being cut, as the tree fell it hit another tree knocking loose a branch which just happened to be over the tractor operator's head. Med Flight arrived, wasn't much they could do.

 

[patrick_g]

I wonder how much money he would have saved, if he had lived, by doing it himself?

Pat

 

[witterbound]

I'm new to tractors, and new to this site. On my first morning with my Challenger (55hp), I pushed over about a dozen trees with my FEL that were up to 12". The ground was very wet, and that helped. No problems, and seemed like a very safe way to do it. Safer than using my chainsaw, in my opinion.

 

[RayCo]

I'm a bit late on this thread, but I figured I'd add that using a loader can be done safely, but I wouldn't try it on a machine that doesn't have a FOPS. This may have been the funnest day of my life, since my father-in-law let me use his backhoe for a bit. My little Kubota is only used for pushing over small, dead, limbless trees.

 

[Treemonkey1000]

That rotted tree looks like a good opportunity for a Darwin award... Rotted tree tops and branches can get you in a hurry. If you have had a chance to watch the Axe Men series on the history channel. The guy was operating a grapple cutter. It knocked loose a branch that came down heavy end first and hit the roof of the Grapple cutter. That had 1" thick bullet proof lexan glass. The branch went through the glass and nearly took out the operator...
Food for thought........

 

[pitt_md]

I once had the opertunity to watch an expert crew take down a very big oak tree in my neighbors yard. The professional crew had a chevy luv truck tied to the upper end of this tree that had its limbs cut off.
They cut a wedge out of the tree in the direction of the truck and put tension on the rope before making the final cut. As they cut through this huge tree trunk it started to fall away from the truck back towards the house.
The truck started to slide accross the yard with increasing speed until the little crome bumper shot up into the air as it was ripped from the truck. The tree cleanly cut the cornner of this old guys house off as it came down.

If you have a tree wanting to go the wrong way then take little chunks off the top until its not a danger.

 

[RayCo]

The truck started to slide accross the yard with increasing speed until the little crome bumper shot up into the air as it was ripped from the truck.

Not that this is the only thing that's moronic about this, but they had the tree hooked up to the bumper? They should have hooked it up to the FM antenna or perhaps a windshield wiper - both if they wanted extra safety.

 

[Treemonkey1000]

Oak is such a heavy dense wood that it would scare me seeing a little truck attached. Plus it grows so gnarly that it isn't as centered as an evergreen..I had the chance to work on oak when I did Missions work in Mississippi for 3 weeks after Katrina did her deed.. That is amazing wood. We don't get much oak up here in Washington. They let it grow out over power lines on streets. Around here the wood is too soft to let grow out like that in hazard areas. Plus we get snow and ice that tends to break branches and trees..
Bummer for the home owner to have that happen..Getting high up in a tree for good leverage is a bonus. And taking off branches that are putting weight in the wrong direction helps..Even PRO'scan have a bad day....

 

[davitk]

I once had the opertunity to watch an expert crew take down a very big oak tree in my neighbors yard. The professional crew had a chevy luv truck tied to the upper end of this tree that had its limbs cut off.
They cut a wedge out of the tree in the direction of the truck and put tension on the rope before making the final cut. As they cut through this huge tree trunk it started to fall away from the truck back towards the house.
The truck started to slide accross the yard with increasing speed until the little crome bumper shot up into the air as it was ripped from the truck. The tree cleanly cut the cornner of this old guys house off as it came down.

I miss all the fun

 

[Ductape]

I once had the opertunity to watch an expert crew take down a very big oak tree in my neighbors yard. The professional crew had a chevy luv truck tied to the upper end of this tree that had its limbs cut off.
They cut a wedge out of the tree in the direction of the truck and put tension on the rope before making the final cut. As they cut through this huge tree trunk it started to fall away from the truck back towards the house.
The truck started to slide accross the yard with increasing speed until the little crome bumper shot up into the air as it was ripped from the truck. The tree cleanly cut the cornner of this old guys house off as it came down.

If you have a tree wanting to go the wrong way then take little chunks off the top until its not a danger.

C'mon ! You don't expect us to believe this story, do you???

We all know the last running Chevy LUV rusted into the ground back in 1983 !!

 

[pitt_md]

C'mon ! You don't expect us to believe this story, do you???

We all know the last running Chevy LUV rusted into the ground back in 1983 !!

Did you notice how the story started? "I once had the opertunity to watch an expert crew take down a very big oak tree"

It was in East Moline IL. I had just started dating my first wife and yes the year was 1982!

 

[xkrfan]

maybe 25 years ago i hooked a rope halfway up a poplar, then ran it through a snatch block and cleverly attached it to the trailer hitch of my wifes chev astro mini van. Thinking I had her secured, I started cutting into the poplar.maybe 60-80 feet tall. Sure enough the wind caught the crown and started pulling her in the opposite direction from that which was intended. Problem was, this was February...my driveway was ice and I turned to watch this tree pulling my wife's van along the icy driveway straght at me. There was little danger though because the tree fell onto a power line and I watched a pretty spectacular light show for a few minutes before I put about 40 or 50 residents on the lake out of power until Hydro came out and fixed the problem.
Should've seen the looks on their faces

 

[RayCo]

Picture a "LOL" smiley here repeated over and over. That's absolutely hysterical!

 

[TBH_Farms]

To add to Pat's post, the way I understand it is good old boys minimum safety requirement = cooler full of ice. We all know warm beer sucks.

Yes, sadly it is true. While I am not necessarily proud of it, it is a scientific fact that the more beers (or margaritas, or whatnot) that have been consumed, the larger the tree you can push over with your loader.