I’m posting this here because it has a factual answer, even though the question came to mind while watching the show.
They use a high line and a carriage that runs up and down the line to haul the logs up slope to the landing. The carriage has a diesel engine on board to power the winch line that lifts the logs off the ground. The Yarder then pulls the carriage and attached logs up the slope. What’s unclear to me is how the winch on the carriage is controlled. The carriage is hanging from the high line on pulleys, and there a line from the Yarder attached to the carriage, but I don’t see any control for the winch. Some of the fellows working down slope have a “bug” that’s used to signal the Yarder operator to run the carriage up and down the line. Maybe there’s a radio control for the winch built into that unit. But it’s never been mentioned that I’ve noticed.
I’d never last an hour at one of those jobs, but I still like to know how it works.
I recall from the show there were two guys rigging the cables to the trees. The guy withouth the remote told the guy with the remote that he controlled the tension on that cable and that he should raise it up. My guess is it is part of the remote he uses to communicate with the crane operator.
You’re probably right about that. They showed how the backlash on the winch caused the problem with the engine on the carriage, so I figure they should explain how it all works.
Are you sure there’s an engine on the carriage (I only saw the first episode)? I figured there were two winches at the top; one cable ran down to the carriage, the other went to the carriage, over a pulley, and down to the ground. Once the log is hooked up, run the second winch to lift it off the ground, then run both winches together to bring it up the hill.
There’s definitely an engine in the carriage, in the second episode one of the guys forgot to put the gas cap back on and it spilled all it’s diesel halfway through the haul.
Yep, there’s an engine. Besides the gas cap problem, one of the crews had a winch backlash loop of cable hit the air cleaner housing on the engine and bring things to a sudden stop. Someone had to go down the mountain and get another carriage.
And about the two cables; I don’t think that would work too well. As you put tension on the cable to lift the logs into the air I think there’d be no way to keep that tension from pulling the carriage up the hill toward the landing. No good way to keep everything under control. And when you tried to send the carriage down the hill you’d need to pay out two cables at once.
Well, I did the really radical thing and went up to the Ax Men site on www.history.com
I thought the site was a bit heavy on eye-candy with not enough technical info, but hey, whatever sells cornflakes, right?
Anyhow - in the video on “communications” the loggers talk about their waist-mounted communications device which is, apparently, audio. One of them states that they use it to signal the “yarder engineer” (presumably, the man in the cab of the machine) to haul the logs up the hill. So the guys dancing around the logs down below aren’t controlling the carriage, it’s someone else. How the guy in the yarder controls the carriage I’m not sure, but as pointed out, the carriage does have its own engine on board.
I work part-time as the IT guy at a small research lab in central WA, located on ~75 acres that’s pretty remote (about 7 miles up an unpaved road). The guy who handles the land management and maintenance was a logger for a number of years – in fact, his login name on one of the computers has the word “yoder” in it. One of the nicest guys I know…makes the show that much better for me, as it gives me some personal connection.
Assuming I see him this morning, I’ll ask him for the lowdown on how a yarder/yoder works. I only go in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but if there are any other questions about the logging biz, I’d be happy to relay them and report back.
I’ve not seen the show but from your description it sounds like they’re using a Motorized Slack Pulling Carriage perhaps? If so, there’s this… “The radio system was in the 475 mhz band, and was controlled by the yarder engineer or the rigging slinger.”
The ones I saw in the second show looked like they were Motorized Drop Line Carriages. I say that because they showed the inside of the unit and there was a winch drum with cable wound on it.
I asked my co-worker and, as mentioned by others, he said that the carriage has a motor and is operated by the person in the cab using radio control. Generally, at any rate – he said there are any number of variations on the basic workings, and I got a brief histroy lesson on how the machinery developed. If I understand/remember it correctly, the way they used to do it was to cut the top off a tree, put a pulley up there, then string a loop back to the origin. They’d winch the line back and forth, after letting out slack to lower the lines down, hook the trees, then pulling it taut to raise the timber. With the carriage, they no longer have to slacken/tighten the cable, and I got the sense that it’s easier to string the first line and get the whole thing operational.
One thing he’s mentioned time and again (paraphrasing): “Y’know, a lot of people have this mental image of loggers as being ignorant and stupid. I’ll tell ya, it takes about three years to actually learn and get good at it – if you’re not smart, and you’re not constantly aware, you won’t ever get to be a logger. You’ll be dead.” I don’t know which episode contained the bit with stringing the first line with the helicopter, but I mentioned that to him (and how that one guy had to jump out of the way when the line came loose from the tree it was hooked on and continued unspooling). “Yep,” he says, “those cables can cut someone right in half. Like a cheese slicer.”
Then I got one of his own injury stories. Felling one tree, he made his cuts and scrambled away, then turned to watch it go down. Woke up some time later – he never saw the chunk that kicked back, cracked his steel hard hat, and split his head open. Blood soaking his front, he had to hike out of the fold he was in to get one of his mates to take him to the hospital. For sure, a different life than any I’ve known.
All those shows on discovery are the same when it comes to the narration. “Safety takes a back seat to keeping the operation running”
That bloke climbing the tree to anchor the sky line had worn out equipment to climb with. Every one is pushing to get the line tied so the logs can get to the mill.
I worked 33 years in the Mining industry, and was filmed in an episode for Discovery called “Extreme Engineering, Excavators”. same thing, Running against the clock.
Busting your ball’s is only going to make you sore, as the paycheck is the same pittance if you take a few extra steps and do the job safely. That Bloke shouldn’t have climbed that tree until the climbing equipment was repaired properly.
It goes much deeper than that too.
I own a small crane (boom truck) and MN OSHA requires all crane operators to be Certified. I took the certification, and Now I am certified to operate the largest hydraulic cranes in the world (per-osha) But the small fixed cab like the one i own, I am to slow running it to be certified. No points deducted except time.
Then there are crane operators that have been running for 30 years and can’t pass the written test. Their reading skills just aren’t good enough.
