Low Impact Forestry is a new company offering environmentally sensitive forestry services in North Yorkshire and the North East. At the heart of the operation is the Logbullet, a compact, lightweight mini forwarder from Finland. Forestry Journal spoke with Low Impact Forestry’s Mike Tyson to learn more about his new business and his new machine.
SETTING up your own company can be a daunting prospect, regardless of how ready you feel you are. After eight years specialising as a self-employed groundsman, Mike Tyson wanted to take his career in a new direction. With an upbringing in farming and experience of operating plant and machinery, the switch to becoming a forestry machine operator made sense to him. However, it was only when he discovered Finnish mini forwarder Logbullet that the project became viable and his business, Low Impact Forestry, could be born.
Originally from the Lake District, Mike now lives and works in North Yorkshire. Forestry Journal caught up with him on the Zetland Estate, once the site of the APF show, where he has been working for the last few months to thin a five-hectare block of woodland. Mike, who lives nearby, drives in to the site every day with his lightweight forwarder on the flatbed trailer.
In just five minutes it can be unloaded and put to work in the woods.
“It’s really nimble and quick, and I’ve enjoyed getting to grips with it,” said Mike, who’s done about 150 hours on the machine so far.
His Logbullet was the fourth in the UK. The first was purchased by Jonathan Robinson in Devon, and Mike was open about copying Jonathan’s approach as he went about setting up his business.
“I have basically piggy-backed on someone else’s hard work,” Mike said. “Jonathan is on Arbtalk quite a lot and so am I, which is how I got to see his posts about the Logbullet. I went down to visit him in January, saw it in action, thought it was a great little machine and decided I would, as it were, bite the bullet.”
The Logbullet was designed by Finnish entrepreneur Pekka Syvänen to provide a practical, manoeuvrable and economical solution for woodland thinning, which would cause far less damage to the surrounding environment than typical forestry machines.
Utilising tried-and-tested technology like its Kubota V1505 diesel engine and Farma crane, the machine is compact, reliable and, Mike said, easy to use.
“I think its main selling points are its nimbleness, its capacity to work and its very competitive price point,” he said. “But for me, what I really like is its simplicity. There’s hardly any electronics on it, and most stuff, if it breaks, can be fixed by me, a pal or my local engineers.
“Another thing that’s quite good is the low impact element. A lot of people these days are very conscious of the effect we have on the environment. One of the key things to remember is it is low impact, not no impact. There is still going to be a bit of disturbance where it’s been, but when you compare it to some of the other methods, it’s a world of difference.
“It can move hardwood no problem at all, so on some big sites, especially clear-fells, it could probably hold its own. But it’s not going to have the same degree of disturbance to the ground. When you’re thinking longer term about your management plan, if you’ve got great big ruts everywhere and the ground’s destroyed, that’s going to affect your ideas about replanting. This thing, it tends to snake through one route and doesn’t leave a lot of damage.
“It’s hard to gauge the weight of my machine. I think it weighed 1.5 tonnes as standard, but it’s been modified, so I think it’s now closer to 1.8. It can carry around 1.5 to 1.8. So when you’re moving upwards of three tonnes, it’s going to disturb the ground a bit. But on the whole, it’s not bad.”
Getting to grips with the machine’s particular quirks has been quite fun, he said.
“I still think I’ve got a distance to go before I find its real potential. Even with 150 hours on it, I’m still being quite cautious. This is the testing season now, so we’ll see how it performs. I’ve not got it stuck yet.”
Mike established Low Impact Forestry in February 2019 and took delivery of the Logbullet in April, but it was a few more weeks before it could be put to work as he had a few modifications to make.
“There were things like the extra guarding on the cab, extra guarding for the hydraulic feeds and other extras I asked my local engineers to do. Just because I felt the first thing, when I looked at it, it was a bit of a weak point, especially when you’re bringing in a bit of timber and suddenly something drops out, it’s in line for being hit.
“Also, the bumper bar on the bonnet is an extra, as is the roof rack and roof box, which holds the pulley for the winch, the fire extinguisher, tool kit and other bits and bobs. Just a few minor modifications to make it mine. They also did the extra guarding on the front and side. I felt the radiator was a little vulnerable from brash and stuff like that.
“I’ll be adding some additional LED lighting. There’s already front and back on the cab, two on the crane as well. But I’ll be adding another one each front and back, and side as well, just for when it gets into really deep winter, it gives you a bit of casting light so I can work into the night for a little longer without getting lost.”
There are also a couple of extras on his machine that Mike requested from the company.
“One’s a bed extension, which I’m not using at the moment,” he said. “I’m only moving three metres, but with the bed extension, you can get up to about 4.8. You wouldn’t want to have a full load doing that, but you can move them. It makes it a bit more versatile, but I’ve not had any need to use it yet.
“The crane has a high-aspect boom extension on it and the larger grapple. This is off the advice of Jonathan, who I have to take my hat off to. He did all the work. I’ve simulated his business model and made a few of my own modifications. He said to definitely get the extension. I don’t think I could do without it. It gives you a metre extension and it makes such a difference in these tight, little woodlands, allowing you to pick up so much more.”
When Forestry Journal met with Mike, he was a few weeks into the respacing and selective thinning of mixed conifer on the Zetland Estate site and had covered about 1.5 ha, bringing out mostly larch and some lodgepole and Scots pine, with a bit of spruce and birch.
The trees are marked by the estate to be felled and processed by Mike. And mostly, he has been doing all the cutting and forwarding himself.
“It’s not the fastest of procedures, but I need staff,” he explained. “One of my goals was to give my body a bit of a rest by moving into machine operating. It hasn’t quite worked out like that so far, because I can’t find anyone to cut for me, so the majority is still being cut by my fair hands.
“Ideally, I’d like to be on the machine with a couple of cutters working for me, but I can’t find anyone who wants to cut. It’s definitely the biggest problem I’ve faced since starting the business. There is a complete void of staff in this area. It actually gets me down, how bad it is. Good folk are hard to find.”
One alternative might be to invest in a modest harvester to complement the Logbullet – an idea that Mike has certainly considered.
“Mechanising all elements of the business is something I’ve been paying a lot of attention to,” he said. “But trying to find a machine as nimble as this that can do the harvesting is the hardest part. You can get stroke processor heads that will go on a 2.8-tonne digger, but they’re quite slow. In a lot of respects, you’d be better paying two cutters than you would the outlay, etc. However, if there’s no cutters, it might have to be a route I go down in the future. That, or a slightly larger machine that combines the two. I don’t know. For the immediate future, the trickiest thing is just trying to find someone who wants to work.”
In the meantime, Mike’s doing the lot himself, felling the marked trees then returning with the Logbullet to carry the timber out.
“All of the product is cut to three metres and it’s all kept on the estate for biomass,” he said. “It’s 95 per cent softwood. You’ll occasionally find some birch, but that’s the only hardwood, really.
“The long-term picture is to have a better product from here in 20 years’ time. But it also means they’re not having to buy in timber for the biomass boilers they have. It’s quite a straightforward job spec, really. Shaun goes in a few days ahead of me, marks, I come in, take the trees down then come back with the Logbullet and take it out. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing since around May.
“We’ll take product right down to almost an inch in diameter and get it on the machine, whereas previously a lot would have been cut to waste. It really is trying to make something out of what was waste before.
“Probably on its worst day I’ve only got six tonnes out. On the best day, 25. If you’ve got a nice, flat run and the timber’s decent, you can really make some headway. Its average is probably 17 to 22 tonnes a day, which is more than reasonable for a little machine.”
Mike admitted he’d been quite lucky to land a job 10 minutes from his house where he had been able to cut his teeth on the Logbullet, and paid tribute to forester Shaun Purkiss-McEndoo for bringing him in.
Shaun has been on Zetland Estates for 40 years and has seen the woodlands through a full rotation.
“One of my aims was to shorten the rotation so that I’m now felling areas I’ve already felled and replanted,” he said. “When I started, 70 years was the minimum for softwoods and 100 plus for hardwoods. Now, the mills don’t want big timber. If you grow it properly, you can get it away in 35 or 40 years.
“We were one of the first estates to get stuck into biomass. From the estate’s point of view, it’s a big plus that we can activate some thinning and move these crops on. This is still cheap wood for us, but at some point someone’s going to have some saleable timber to fell.”
He said Mike’s approach, bringing timber out with minimal damage and leaving it on the ride for collection, was ideal for the estate’s needs, even if it didn’t make for the fastest of operations.
“I would hate to put Mike on a tonnage rate,” he explained. “It wouldn’t work with his kit. We have to work together, look at the site, look at the logistics, agree on a fair rate and go with it.
“From a manager’s point of view, you have to accept these people need to earn a living and make a business. It has to be right for both parties so he stays solvent and we get what we want, which is a well-managed woodland and feedstock for our biomass.
“We have a Palms trailer behind a Valtra, so we can come and pick it up where he drops it. There’s no need for him to transport it miles.
“I’ll pay him by the hour or the day. He’s done the hard part, which is bought the kit, laid out the capital. Now it’s just a matter of improving speed and efficiency. From a standing start, over a few months, he’s got a lot quicker. You can see how tidy it looks when you go through the site. There’s hardly any damage at all.”
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