Twice in the last 12 months Tony Hill has needed machinery in a hurry. Both times it was TDF Solutions he called. There was a reason why he made the first-up call. Five years previously, he had met TDF Solutions co-owner Frankie Davidson. At the time, Tony was running a harvesting crew for Kuru Contracting, but had expressed to Frankie his desire to run his own crew. They exchanged numbers, but for the next five years, neither man picked up the phone. By the winter of 2025, Tony had established his own operation and was running two crews. But a wet season threatened to bring everything to a standstill.
"We were roadline logging and it just got too wet," he says. "We couldn't get roads in, the ground-based crew was grinding to a halt and we were running out of trees."
The options weren't appealing.
"We could have parked up and probably waited for a slow death."
Instead, an opportunity presented itself, to take over a yarding contract within the forest. The challenge was that Tony needed a swing yarder – and he needed it fast. That's when he remembered Frankie, and called him.To read what happened next, get your copy of the July 2026 edition of NZ Logger magazine, on sale from 6 July. Check the link on this page to subscribe to either a printed or digital copy (or both).
