SAFETY AND SECURITY FOR SETOUT TRAILERS IN THE WOODS

INTRODUCTION: Glatfelter’s Spring Grove, Pennsylvania company logging operation uses a few “simple setout trailer solutions” to control vehicle access to its harvesting operations after hours and to ensure safety around its in-woods setout trailers. Where available, we construct a logging road gate from a hardwood tree cut on the tract, and we use steel plates underneath the setout trailers to stabilize them. Additionally, we place orange pylons alongside the steel plates to help the truckers center the trailer on the steel plate when jockeying trailers.

Fig. 1: Logging road gate is built from a tree on the harvest site.

GENERAL FEATURES: The logging operation (or the landowner or timber buyer) identifies a suitable spot to place a temporary logging road gate on the tract. If we can find a large pulpwood-sized tree growing right along the road, the crew can simply saw the tree off at about a three-foot-high level and use the base of the tree as the bottom support post for the gate. The length of the tree serves as the gate across the road, and another section of the tree is sunk into the ground on the other side to serve as gate closure post. If there is not a suitable tree growing along the road, then one can be brought from the harvested portion of the tract.

Fig. 2: Metal hardware on both ends of gate is minimal.

The Glatfelter crew places 4-foot by 8-foot steel plates, approximately three quarters of an inch thick, under the landing gear of each setout trailer to improve the stability of the loaded trailer and to make it safer for a tractor to back in to it. (The steel plates were previously highlighted in FRA Technical Release 05-R-19: www.forestresources.org/app/bulletin_pdfs/05r19.pdf.) We usually place two metal plates side by side so two empty trailers can be positioned next to each other and adjacent to the knuckleboom loader. Additionally, we position orange pylons next to an empty space for a setout trailer, to help a returning truck driver appropriately center the trailer and back it into the right spot.

APPLICATION: While the temporary logging road gate does not does not prevent access from someone who is determined to get in, it discourages casual vehicle traffic or others who might be tempted to vandalize equipment, cut firewood, or snoop around the log deck and setout trailers after hours.

Fig. 3: (Left) To close gate, insert open- end hole...

Fig. 4:(Right) over spike embedded in far-end post.

SPECIFICATIONS AND COST: The cost for the logging road gate is simply the cost of the metal hardware (shown in photos). The steel plates for the setout trailers can be obtained from scrap metal or purchased for a few hundred dollars each. The orange pylons are fairly inexpensive.

Fig. 5: (Left) 4-foot by 8-foot steel plate under landing gear to stabilize setout trailer.

Fig. 6: (Right) High-visibility pylons help guide trucker as he backs empty trailer over the set-out plate.

Jeff Hoko
Logging & Equipment Supervisor
Glatfelter Pulp Wood Company
717-225-4711 x2347
jeff.hoko@glatfelter.com

Reviewed by:
Rick Meyer
Appalachian/Southwide Region Manager