Tracked Access

Skidmore brothers mechanize tough terrain.

FREEBURG, Mo.

Don’t let the name fool you: Skidmore Lumber Co. centers on a mill now, but the family-owned business has its roots in the woods, and today fields a top-notch logging crew, one that’s ahead of the curve in its area. Owners Doug Skidmore, 60, and his brother Howard, 62, have been running the show here together since they took over from their dad Oreal and other brother Odis in the early ’90s, about 30 years ago. Some families have trouble working together, but that’s not the case here, the Skidmores agree. “We get along great,” according to Howard, who performs a mechanical engineering role and focuses on day-to-day production at the mill. Doug, who oversees operations in the woods and manages business in the mill, says he couldn’t ask for a better partner.

Their father started out in the woods, but after getting into the sawmill business in the late ’70s, the Skidmore family had left logging in their rear view mirror, or so they thought.

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“We got plum out of logging,” Doug says. But, about seven years ago, the brothers set out to grow the mill’s business without increased log purchasing. That led them back to logging. “If we were going to do that, we decided we were going to do it safe,” Doug adds.

To that end, they invested in machines, even though mechanized felling still isn’t terribly common in their part of Missouri. “We are not against the idea of cutting trees the old fashioned way,” Howard stresses. “That just isn’t what we wanted to do. Around here it is still mostly a man on the ground felling with a chain saw. That is still very common here, the most common by far. There are getting to be more machines in the woods though; 10 years ago there weren’t very many.”

Instead of chain saws, the Skidmore brothers opted to start out with a used Bell feller-buncher. “We had an employee who knew how to run one,” Doug says. The machine worked well, but had limitations; for example, he adds, “You go down a hill in the Bell and the only way to come out is backwards, and you can’t see. You really had to watch what you were doing. They didn’t have cameras on them back then, but they cut a lot of timber.”

Since then, they’ve replaced it with other, larger tracked feller-bunchers: The current machine is a Timber Pro TL745D with Quadco 2900 intermittent sawhead. Brad Arlen Jr. runs the machine (his father, Brad Arlen, Sr., is crew foreman).

Working with the two Brads, another Arlen fills out the woods crew: Rusty, brother to Brad, Sr., and uncle to Junior.

Tracked Productivity

The Timber Pro isn’t the only machine on tracks out here. A Tigercat 610E skidder rides on a set of tracks from G&R Manufactured Solutions. Howard and Doug learned about G&R Tracks from a video on the internet.

Impressed, they quickly got in touch with G&R sales manager Robert Reeves and bought a set. “They have been great to work with,” Doug says. “Any issues we have had, they have supported us very well.”

G&R tracks have enabled the skidder to pull wood out in both wet and steep terrain where tires would bog down or lose traction. “They have so much flotation,” Doug points out. “You don’t realize how low the ground pressure is because you have eight feet tracks that are two feet wide to spread all that weight out.” About two years ago the crew was working on some extremely wet ground, and yet the skid trail looked as smooth as a road, Doug says. “When we ran a wheeled skidder for a day, just one day, it had ruts everywhere. We went right back to the track machine, and after a day or two it looked like a road again; it just leveled it right back out, even though it was still wet. That’s dozer work I don’t have to do later.”

Howard adds, “We got those tracks to use in wet weather, but we’ve ended up using them 12 months out of the year because it can go in the slopes.” Anywhere the Timber Pro can go to cut trees, the tracked skidder can now follow and drag the logs out. “If we are not running tracks, sometimes the TimberPro has to take it somewhere where the rubber tire skidders can get to it,” Doug adds. “It is unbelievable where it will go.”

The Skidmores credit the G&R tracks for allowing the crew to keep working when conditions would likely have otherwise halted production, especially since many of the hardwood tracts this crew tackles are in areas that are difficult to access. In fact, Doug estimates that those tracks on that skidder have probably pulled about 75% of the wood that has gone into the family’s sawmill in the last two years.

Of course there are some places too steep for even the tracked machines to access. Last fall they cut on a church property that was almost a vertical incline at points; that required cable skidding and chain saw felling in some places. And one down side of having extreme condition machines, Doug mentions, is that if they break down on a hillside it can be hard to get to them with repair trucks.

The Skidmores are planning to purchase a second set of G&R tracks for one of their Deere skidders, a 748L-II with low hours on it.

Operations

Besides the tracked machines, the Skidmore crew uses a pair of John Deere 748L-II rubber tired skidders. A Barko 595B knuckleboom loader, paired with CSI pull-through delimber and ground saw, handles sorting and merchandizing. Several compa- taking off if the ground is soft.” Howard adds, “It’s not so hard on drive lines, there’s less to repair, and it’s so easy to move around back and forth and to get situated. And it is quiet.” ny-owned Western Star and International log trucks also have Rotobec and Barko self-loaders mounted on the back. They pull shop-built pup trailers, customized to the Skidmores’ specifications.

The crew averages about three to six loads daily in hardwood; it varies depending on timber quality and skid distance. With pup trailers, that’s about 5,000 board feet. The crew mostly cuts white and red oak, sycamore, soft maple and cottonwood for the Skidmore Lumber mill, selling walnut and the occasional veneer log elsewhere. They also sell some white oak to McGinnis Wood Products, a stave mill in Cuba, Missouri.

One company truck has an automatic transmission, and Doug says it pulls just fine coming out of woods. “We don’t have but about 8,000 miles on it so we are still learning,” he allows. “It will downshift on a corner if you don’t watch it. If you go into a corner too fast, it will let you know; it will shut you down. But it is a nice truck. It is more expensive and you have less power but it is so easy. If you stop on a hill, you don’t worry about a clutch, or

The Skidmores aim to do more than just profit from their operations in the woods. They strive to act as responsible stewards of the timberland they harvest. “We focus on land management as well as logging,” Doug says. “When we are done in the woods, we have a John Deere dozer with a six-way blade and a skid steer that we use to put in water breaks on all our skid trails, because we are on hilly ground. We try to take care of the land.”

The brothers use Polaris Ranger and General side-by-side UTVs (utility task vehicles) to get around on job sites in the woods.

The Skidmores are members of Missouri Forest Products Assn., where Doug served on the board for 10 years or so. He is a current board member of the Missouri Wood Industry Trust, through which Skidmore Lumber obtains workers’ comp insurance. “It has been a good thing for us, especially in the woods,” Doug says. “Workers’ comp would eat a man alive almost.” TH