“You watch,” says Iron Tester Shaun Field. “Gareth will probably come around the corner in a big black Dodge Ram.”
The RT crackles as we sit and wait as instructed on the side of Parapara road in central Kaingaroa Forest and then, sure enough, a huge black Ram appears.
We follow Gareth, owner of G. White Logging, further up the road and turn off into the standing trees. It seems like quite flat ground here. Not really hauler country. Typical deceptive Kaingaroa ground, as we are only about 300 metres away from rock bluff riddled faces, some that are too dangerous even for tethered harvesters and they need to be manually felled.
The wood in here is about 1.8-tonne piece size and once processed and loaded it is bound for either Red Stag Sawmill or the Murupara log rail yard about 15 minutes down the road.
We arrive at the G. White skid and it is ground-based. Gareth gets us signed in and briefs us on hazards as we will be walking through standing trees to where we can view the felling face.
Another skid on the opposite side of the gorge has the Madill grapple swing yarder on it. A huge Komatsu 350 with super high cab, live heel and 13-metre reach is clearing the chute for the Madill 122.
“That Komatsu is mean,” says Gareth. “You can stand behind the hauler and reach past it and clear the chute. Just awesome.”
The Dodge Ram is also impressively large and there are various other impressively large machines with us on the ground-based skid. A mint-looking Sumi SH240 with a live heel and high cab looks like it just arrived from the dealership and is fleeting off a Tigercat 880 processor.
Shaun points out an older but very handy looking Tigercat 630B grapple skidder complete with winch. Tucked in a corner is a large Terex bulldozer with twin winches, used for tethering but that can also be used for setting up the straw line on the hauler.
“That thing has mean pulling power,” says Gareth.
A super-wide Chevrolet dually tool truck and company mechanic is doing service work on several machines.
But taking top spot on this skid is the John Deere 859MH zero tail swing tethered levelling harvester that we are here to Iron Test.
A monstrous beast
This thing is an absolutely monstrous beast. Obscenities are muttered quietly as we walk around it and start opening up the doors. The toolbox on/inside the track frame below the cab is surprising to see but fits in neatly. The levelling rams are huge. Because of the height of the cab above the tracks, several ladders are built in and slide out to make machine checks possible. Being zero tail swing it is very compact but still somehow gives the impression of being well laid out and spacious. This new model has significantly increased engine power on the previous model, up from 285HP to 300HP, with the option of getting a further 30HP from John Deere’s 6090H 9-litre diesel engine; but in the...
