CHAIN-TRACK TRACTORS ON FORESTRY SERVICE.
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A Sphere of Service in which Mechanical Vehicles are Proving Invaluable.
IN SOME parts of the world animal transport is still employed for heavy haulage tasks, which could much more .readily and expeditiously be performed by mechanical vehicles in one or other of their varied forms. There may be certain spheres of activity which will not easily be usurped by the motor vehicle, chiefly due to the fact that unusual natural obstacles have to be nags-
• tiated and that difficulties exist, in the matter of securing adequate supplies of fuel and water, although the desert expeditions undertaken of recent years— with special types of vehicles, it is true —have offcred evidence of the adaptability of the motor for operating under conditions considered more or less unfavourable for its general employment.
In some of the vast timber forests elephants, oxen and horses are still largely used for work associated with tree-felling, log-hauling and certain tasks at the saw-mills. Many of these forests are located at high altitudes and far removed from railroad or water facilities, and it is the absence of unsuitable roads which has militated against the use of the motor for such work, and often the animals which are employed have to make their way througlh small clearances linked up by rough tracks. In certain countries these tracks become very treacherous in the wet season and are virtually impassable to most ordinary and special forms of transport. vehicles.
Certain of the timber forests in British Columbia are cases in point, and these
are so located that it has been found necessary to devise some form of unconventional highway which meets the needs of the company concerned with the logging operations. The improvised road—for such it can be called—consists of a track formed of baulks of timber which have been flattened on two sides and laid parallel on a foundation of rough log sleepers, these, in turn, being secured to the surface of the ground in
a suitable manner. Other lengths of timber form kerbs at the outer edges of the tracks themselves in order to ensure that the Leyland lorries, which are used over them, keep to their proper course.
In other parts of the world, conditions associated with forestry service are such that chain tractors have been found to
give the best results. Such machines are used in the teak-wood forests of Burma, which are under the exclusive control of the India Forestry Service. It was in 1915 that a Caterpillar tractor with special logging equipment was sold to a prominent British company having timber concessions in Burma, India, and such was the satisfaction derived from the use of this machine that additional tractors of a similar type were brought into use for the same purpose. The manufacturers of the tractor saw the potentialities of this market, and accordingly, in 1919. a distributor's contract was made with Messrs. Mackenzie and Co., who are represented in Rangoon, Calcutta, Bombay and other Indian cities. Since this time the company have conducted an extensive cam
paign to popularize the Caterpillar tractor for forestry and other service, and many demonstrations, from which orders have accrued, have been given.
In the years 1920 and 1921 the Peoria plant of the Holt Manufacturing Co., of America, was visited by a number of officials of the Indian Forestry Service, who were in the country for the purpose of studying the latest and most effective methods of conducting logging operations. Before the use of the chain-track tractors the haulage work connected with the transport of felled trees had been tackled by elephants, but the training of these animals had been most difficult and expensive, and apart from the fact that the tractors can perform the work in a far more satisfactory way, they have also proved indispensable for many of the operations associated with the making of roads to certain points of the forest.
There can be little question that the tractors have proved highly suitable for the work, for a further order for twelve 5-ton chain-track vehicles and eleven trailers for use with them was recently placed and the machines will soon be in service.
Before deciding upon the purchase of chain-track tractors the Indian Forestry Service authorities carried out much experimental work with various types of mechanical vehicles in order to ascertain the merits and demerits of the respective products for work which is admittedly of an arduous nature.