How timber is grown and harvested

Manage stands, build roads

The southeastern United States has large areas of intensively managed young forest, laced with landowners' roads. Elsewhere crews need access first. In mountains or poorly drained ground the road is a major cost, while flat, well-drained country may need only a bulldozed trail.

Fell the trees

Fallers cut with chain saws, and in small timber heavy tractor-mounted shears can sever a tree near the ground. A clearcut takes essentially every tree in a chosen block, while selective logging takes only the most valuable ones.

Limb and buck the stems

Branches come off the main stem, which is then crosscut into logs. In cut-to-length logging a mechanical harvester does the felling, delimbing and bucking at the stump, leaving tops and limbs in the forest.

logs usually 16 to 48 feet

Skid logs to the landing

A cable or chain goes on one end of the log, and a tractor or other machine drags it to a landing that trucks can reach. Terrain, tree size and distance decide which system works best. Skidders and forwarders do this work in mechanized operations.

Truck and scale the logs

Trucks usually run straight to the mill's log pond or storage deck. Somewhere on the way a scaler measures each log's length and small-end diameter and reads off its board feet. At the mill, low-grade logs may go to pulp and high-grade ones to veneer.