I'm not against less poluting, more fuel effecient vehicles. I also think they took the diesel emissions too far,too fast.
I've lived around logging my whole life and I am in the woods a lot and I can tell you that we could "sustain" more logging. (This is NOT a rant directed at you tbone91). Everyone's lumber would be cheaper and the schools around here would have more funds, although they would largely waste that money to.
The dumbest thing is that you can have a forest fire and they won't let anyone go get the useless timber. All it does is rot and become a tree-killing-insect breeding ground so those bugs can go out and kill perfectly good trees that people could have went out and hugged.
All of that logging has been stopped by the tree-huggers and their stupid lawsuits. It kills me when some yuppie in the city thinks they know how to maintain the forest. Just like P.E.T.A. thinks they know all about the nice fuzzy little animals, THAT EAT EACH OTHER.

 

Dodge/Cummins I agree completely. I'm originally from the Seattle area and I've seen what over regulation has done to the logging industry (especially the small towns that lost mills and such). One afternoon of setting chokers for my older brother convinced me that my original goal of being an "ingineer" was a better fit for me.

What would be so much better than more regulation would be a lot less greed.

BTW, bunnies don't eat each other

 

Yeah, but cougars and coyotes do


Jason

 

Back in the late 70's I was in Chicago reading the local paper.
There was this big article about the smog controls on the 70's cars.

Someone took a 34 Packard limo, that had a V 12 engine with a couple 4 barrel carbs and weighed something over 6,000 pounds in to one of the local emission test stations.

I don't remember what the current model car that they compared the Packard to was, but the Packard got better MPG and was a cleaner operating car than the new one was.
I think the CO was the big thing they were trying to reduce at the time, the new car just squeeked by and the Packard passed with flying colors.

All of our off road diesel here is now ULSD, has been for over a year.
All the new construction equipment from Cat has the new Acert engines, computer controlled low emissions and all.

 

Heres somthing for you guess to ponder. I work for Case IH and they have been using Iveco engines in the bigger STX Stiegers and in the 7010 8010 combine. At the service schools I've been to they have told us that the EGR is built into the engine using the camshaft. They slightly open the exhaust valve during the intake stroke to get the EGR effect. No more adjusting valves in 2 rotations of the engine.

Also I was wondering when they do these emissions test the amount of fuel burned. Sure a new diesel only produces half of the NOX that the old ones do but they use twice the fuel. So isn't the same amount of the bad stuff still getting into the enviorment. There is still the same amount of bad stuff in that one gallon of fuel the older trucks just go further on it.

Or maybe I'm way off.

 

If you think that logging is still big in the PNW, you are sorely mistaken. The timber industry is just a shell of what it used to be. In the heyday, the county I live in was the biggest timber producer in the nation. There were 40-50 rough cut sawmills in the area and many other finish mills. Today, you might be lucky to find 3 or 4 of them left. Weyerhauser used to have 150 train cars of logs a day to unload from the operations to the east, and 200+ trucks a day into the mill.

Most of the large companies such as Weyerhauser and Boise Cascade have been practicing sustainable harvesting for many years. In fact, some parcels of land are on their second and third generation of growth. Sustainability is good all the way around. Its good for the environment and it makes good business sense. These large companies and most loggers agree with it.

Most all of the loggers and others involved in the timber industry are environmentalists. They realize that timber is one of the greatest natural resources that we have and that reforestation is important. The problem is the few gyppo operations that rape the land and only care about the money being made in the present. These few have given the entire industry a bad name.

The extreme environmentalists will not listen to the other side and choose to get their point across by sabotage and violence. They've torched millions of dollars in equipment and trucks in both the logging and construction industries. They set up road blocks on legal logging operations and cost them a lot of money through downtime. And worst of all, they drive spikes into trees so that an unsuspecting faller could be injured or killed if they hit it with the saw.

Here's another byproduct of the Clinton/ Gore environmental machine. They closed off hundreds of thousands of acres of land and deemed them roadless, wilderness areas. In 2002 in southern Oregon, the Biscuit fire burned a half a million acres of pristine forest lands. After the smoke cleared and the dust settled, then the courts took over to determine whether those lands could be logged to salvage some of the timber. If they could have got in there right away, most of it could have been used. But by the time the legal system was done, 2/3 of the timber had rotted and was not usable. They could have made a lot of good out of this bad situation by the salvage. This would have employed hundreds of workers and would have been great for the communities around there and for the entire state. And even when they had access to the site, the extremists stepped in, roadblocked the area, tied themselves in trees and basically shut down the operation until law enforcement intervened.

The sad thing about that fire. A friend of mine had a water truck within a 1/4 of a mile where it had started. They would not let him drive down a road to run out hoses and contain it at under 5 acres.

Jason

 

That to bad these enviormentalists don't realize how much harm they actually doing.
And like you said they will pound spikes into trees to make a point.
They even hurt the things they are trying to save.

 

Loggers don't want to cut all the trees down any more than hunters want to shoot all the animals.
You cut down all the trees, there's no more to cut. You kill all the animals there's no more left to hunt.
Loggers, hunters and responsible fourwheelers are the real environmentalists because we are actually spend time in the woods unlike the Greenies in L.A.
Rcrawler is dead on with the Biscuit fire! There was BILLIONS of dollars just flushed down the toilet. It was a basically free resource that we could have put to use creating job and revenue. Instead it was just left to rot. That's what I was talking about in my first post.

 

Wow, thats a helluva read. Its much the same up here in B.C. Logging has been second and third growth for many years now. I also agree that forestry management is recognized as being the key to long term financial stability, and everyone seems to be taking that seriously. Tree huggers seem to have been less trouble lately, and seem to only focus on old growth forests for their part. We are seeing many sawmills and other forestry jobs dissapear lately, but that probably has more to do with unchecked globalization than tree huggers.

Working close to the housing construction undustry, it can be a real eye opener when you see chinese writing on plywood that houses are made of. The wood is most likely local, but the finishing is done offshore. Its only a matter of time before all jobs in the forestry sector are confined to the forest, and the finishing is all done offshore.

 

Wow, that's red tape for ya.

Question I have, and this thread is getting way off base , but- are loggers required to plant new trees?

I'm curious, because I swear the guys that log here don't. They logged in out behind our house years ago (not on our property), and made a bunch of roads all up through the woods. Knocked over a bunch of small trees to make the roads, took a few big trees here and there, blocked the roads off and left. Didn't look to me like they planted anything, which I thought was kinda odd. BTW this was all standing hardwood that they cut.

 

If it is on private land they don't need to, unless it is deemed a watershed or otherwise environmentally fragile area. Depending on what type of logging job it is, BLM or the Forest Service will go in and replant. On a thinning operation, they are taking trees to help others thrive. Most of the large companies with their own lands reforest after a harvest.

I'm sorry for the long, drawn out off topic post. This is close to my heart as the downfall of the timber industry and farming has directly affected myself and my family.
Jason

 

Even though it's "way off topic", it would be nice if some of the common sense flying around here would rub off on the guys who make the laws.

Regulations should protect us all from the losers who don't care about anyone or anything but themselves, and leave the rest of us alone... Isn't that supposed to be the fundamental basis of the good 'ol USA? Or, am I just a couple of generations too old?

 

We need a B/S thread in the diesel forum for interesting stuff like this.

 

Well, I started the thread and I like where it's gone personally, in fact I probably am most to blame for where it's gone. So keep it going as far as I'm concerned...lots of common sense here. It might suprise someone looking at the title though.

 

I like this off topic thing. Keeps you interested, instead if the same old stuff everyday. Like you said it's nice to talk with people that still have some common since. You don't find that every day. It seems to get worse the closer you get to the big city's.