First Pickup with my new Urban Logging Trailer

Welcome to my backyard! 

We’re actually going to be leaving today because I just finished building this bad boy right here. And today we are going to put this thing to use for the very first time. 

My buddy Brandon sent me a picture of a tree he’s removing, and he said it literally has my name on it. We’re going to go watch the removal, and then when the tree actually gets down to the trunk, we’ll see if we can get it onto this trailer. It’s white oak, about four feet in diameter and it’s about 12 feet long. It should be up in the 7,000 pound range. I’ll have a better idea once it’s on the ground, and I can get some real measurements on it. So let’s load up and head out! 

Here is the white oak tree, which has some significant die back. It looks like maybe it got struck by lightning at some point. This tree is at a church, and there’s a whole crew of people here who are going to help remove the wood and repurpose a lot of it. Hopefully the main trunk will be solid, and that will be hauled back to my place.

Brandon made a lot of progress so far today, and he’s only been up there for a few hours. This church has a daycare center, and they’ve already taken chunks of the tree into the daycare area for the kids to jump and play and climb on. They’ve got balance beams and all kinds of stuff for the kids, and they are collecting all of the twiggy branches so the kids can build their own little forts and shelters. As a father of three young kids, that makes me really happy. 

The first thing Brandon’s going to do today is get this thing on the ground, and then we’ll see about loading it. I’m probably going to end up taking this base section, as well as another log like that.

Timber!

There we go! I have to tell you, I am super, super ecstatic right now! This went so well, no issues getting this thing up onto the trailer and getting it back here. This thing tows so smoothly. It is insane how well this trailer handles this kind of load. The estimated weight with the log weight calculators puts it at 7,700 pounds. I’m going to call it eight, just to make it a nice even number. Four tons, that’s a lot of weight. 

We are 37 inches in the narrow area here on this end, and the other end is 52 inches. Total length is 11 feet, so that’s a really good size log. This is exactly what this trailer was designed to do: pick up large urban trees like this one, and it did it so well. This is a dream trailer for me. It is 100% designed for doing this. No compromises anywhere else to make it do more than one thing, because this is his primary function. 

On this end, there is some blue stain, which is embedded metal. So somewhere in this location, there is some piece of iron or steel in there. A nail, screw, bolt, who knows what, I’ll find out what it is when I cut it up. I do know that that metal is somewhere in this log, because these stains are not on the other end of the log. If that metal was higher in the tree, above where this was cut off, that stain would be present in both ends of this log. This is going to be a really nice character slab log. Can’t wait to get it on the saw. 

It has been a few weeks now, and I’m back to grab the upper section of this tree and pull up on the trailer. It’s a lot smaller than the other one, diameter wise, but it does have a lot more nubbins. 

There we go! I am super thrilled that it actually worked. That’s the best part of building something that’s custom made for a task: actually using it for the first time and finding out that it works exactly, or even better than, you had anticipated. Even going down the road with this giant log on here, I had no problem towing it behind me. The trailer follows steadily behind me, and it was very different compared to my old trailer. It was a lot smoother and just felt a lot safer in general. 

A big thank you to Brandon and the folks that Overhead Spirit of Hope for inviting me over to watch the removal and then letting me take this back with me. I’m going to be giving a few of the slabs back so they can make a table or something for the church there, which should be pretty nice. Look for the sawing video for these logs in the near future. 

That’s going to do it for this one. I have a trailer that works, and it’s a little bit more scratched than it used to be, which feels good. It can’t be a showroom trailer, it has to be actually used for something! Thank you as always for joining me, I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on the trailer, the sawmill or anything back in the shop, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have, and until next time, happy woodworking!