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Logging Equipment Operators

Drive logging tractor or wheeled vehicle equipped with one or more accessories, such as bulldozer blade, frontal shear, grapple, logging arch, cable winches, hoisting rack, or crane boom, to fell tree; to skid, load, unload, or stack logs; or to pull stumps or clear brush. Includes operating stand-alone logging machines, such as log chippers.

What you’d do

  • Inspect equipment for safety prior to use, and perform necessary basic maintenance tasks.
  • Control hydraulic tractors equipped with tree clamps and booms to lift, swing, and bunch sheared trees.
  • Grade logs according to characteristics such as knot size and straightness, and according to established industry or company standards.
  • Drive straight or articulated tractors equipped with accessories such as bulldozer blades, grapples, logging arches, cable winches, and crane booms to skid, load, unload, or stack logs, pull stumps, or clear brush.
  • Drive crawler or wheeled tractors to drag or transport logs from felling sites to log landing areas for processing and loading.
  • Fill out required job or shift report forms.
  • Drive tractors for building or repairing logging and skid roads.

Skills that matter

  • Operation and Control
  • Operations Monitoring
  • Equipment Maintenance
  • Active Listening
  • Monitoring
  • Quality Control Analysis

How to get there

Little to some preparation: usually a high school diploma or GED, though some jobs do not need one

Also called

  • Loader Operator
  • Logging Equipment Operator
  • Skidder Driver
  • Skidder Operator
  • Delimber Operator
  • Feller Buncher Operator

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