Re: Unbelievable Horse Logging pic

Posted by Hugh MacKay on December 26, 2004 at 03:46:11 from (216.208.58.114):

In Reply to: Unbelievable Horse Logging pic posted by Nebraska Cowman on December 24, 2004 at 09:39:32:

Cowman: My dad did some of this in his early days. He only used a two horse team and sleds with 10' load bunks. Our farm was a mixed farm in the 1930, every winter my dad would take the team and sleds off to some lumbering operation, while my grand parrents tended the farm.

The logs he hauled were much longer 16' 18' to 26', thus they only piled them about 6' deep on sleds. I've heard him speak of putting 5" pole under runners during loading so the start would be easier for the horses. On the down grades they used sand, straw, sawdust, chains around runners. They would use a two road system much like our freeways, the road for taking empty sleds back was never sanded. These guys never hauled up hill, logging in the early days was about pileing the logs on the river or lake bank for the water drive to mill in spring. Horses all had corked shoes.

My dad tells a story about a logging boss fed up with all these farm boys and their horses. Many of the operations he went to would have 15-20 farm teams with sleds. This particular boss decided it was time to go with a Cat 20 crawler. He cut the tongue off one set of sleds, put a guy to work on same road with horses. The area they were working had some down grade but nothing that required sanding, etc. for the horses. The 20 could not haul any more load than the horses, whats more it couldn't hold back near as much as horses on the down grade. 3 times the first day, they had lineups of horse teams waiting for the jack knifed 20 to be removed from trail.

I saw something similar much later, Farmall 560D with ice chains hauled a load on sleds, on hard frozen ground, that a Cat D-7 could not handle. I say not handle as the D-7 did get up the hills with a lot of scratching and spinning. On the down grade the D-7 would jack kinfe at the slightest mis allinement between tractor and sleds. The 560 rolled up hill and down 3rd gear and never missed a beat.

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