Track Feller Bunchers Logging Equipment Upcoming Auctions

About Track Feller Bunchers

Forestry, construction, and logging companies are some of the primary users of track feller bunchers, which fell trees and bunch them in piles in a staging area where other equipment, including forwarders, grapplers, and skidders, take them away. Track feller bunchers are useful in clear-cutting, selective-harvesting, thinning, and other applications. Unlike wheel feller buncher models that traverse jobsites on wheels and drive right up to trees to harvest them, track feller bunchers employ tracks and operate mostly from a stationary position, using a swing boom to move trees.

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2006 Tigercat 822 Track Feller Buncher

The Advantages

Both track and wheel feller bunchers generally use a chain saw, disc saw, or shear-type cutting head to fell trees. Unlike a wheel feller buncher (also referred to as a “drive-to-tree feller”) that has the cutting head directly mounted to the machine, however, a track feller buncher has the cutting head attached to the hydraulic boom. While both types include ROPS (rollover protective systems) and FOPS (falling object protective systems) for operator safety purposes, they differ in the types of conditions under which they work best. Track models are generally considered preferable in unstable, wet, loose, and sloped terrains, while wheel models offer faster speeds and greater maneuverability but less stability on slopes.

The Origin

The first feller buncher model traces to 1968 when Erv Drott, a logging equipment developer, introduced a machine that reportedly featured an excavator base and a shear-type felling head that Drott mounted on a knuckle boom. The machine was said to have the ability to clear about 100 trees per hour. Today, leading manufacturers and brands of track feller bunchers for sale include Caterpillar, Deere, Tigercat, Timbco, Timberjack, and Timberpro. Tigercat’s LX870D is an example of a heavy-duty track feller buncher that includes full tail-swing ability and offers such features as a leveling system, camera systems to increase visibility, and a telematics monitoring and management system.