No. 97 

1960 

COST OF SKID ROADS 

FOR ARCH LOGGING IN WEST VIRGINIA 

In the mountain hardwood country of the northern Appalachians, tree-length skidding with tractor and arch has 

proved to be economical logging. One essential part of this 

type of logging is that tree-length logs are winched to the 

skid roads: tractor and arch do not run around through the 

woods. Winching distance is commonly 200 to 300 feet; and 

occasionally an extra length of cable is added to permit 

skidding up to 400 or 500 feet. 

On the Fernow Experimental Forest in West Virginia 

this skidding method has been used for a number of years. 

Hundreds of acres of timber have been logged and many miles 

of skid roads have been built to accommodate a TD-9 crawler 

and rubber-tired sulky. These skid roads are of such high 

standard that often they can be converted to dry-weather 

truck-logging roads with only a moderate extra cash outlay. 

Further, if the roads are properly "put to bed" when the 

logging operation is completed, they will be usable for 

future logging operations. 

Some doubt has existed about the profitability of 

this method of skidding. Construction of arch skid roads 

with a gentle grade in this rough mountain country was 

thought to be an expensive undertaking. This paper presents 

briefly the method of road construction followed on the 

Fernow Forest and the costs compiled on seven different logging chances totaling 660 acres over a period of several 

years. 

Perhaps the most important single factor in the success of the arch skidding method is the careful layout of 

the main skid roads. The roads must provide access to every 

part of the logging chance. They must also be held within 

certain grade limits to make skidding efficiency high, and 

erosion and road deterioration low. The main bulldozed skid 

roads are located on about a 10-percent grade; after dozing, 

the grade of the roadbed will vary between 5 and 15 percent. 
There are locations where dozing to get a level roadbed is not necessary. Generally these are short spurs over 

which only a few loads are to be skidded. There is little 

soil disturbance and little or no erosion. Because of this, 

the undozed spurs can be located on steeper grades than the 

bulldozed roads. 

Main-road location involves a study of available 

maps, then ground reconnaissance, and, finally, laying out 

the road on the ground. The road locator should be a forester or a well-trained logging boss. In the field he uses 

a helper in sighting the grades with an abney level and in 

marking the road location. Location of non-bulldozed spurs 

is a simpler matter, usually involving only ground reconnaissance by a trained man, the logging boss. 

All the main skid roads on the Fernow have been built 

with a TD-9 tractor and bulldozer. The machine operator 

supervises the job. A swamper, equipped with a power saw, 

accompanies the tractor to check road alignment and to swamp 

out vegetation where necessary. . No rock blasting has been 

done. On the undozed spurs only the swamper and his saw are 

needed to complete the road. 

Skid-road costs do not end with the completed road 

system. Unless adequate surface drains are put in after 

logging, much of the road may wash out and the capital investment may be lost. After-logging care--mainly the installation of water bars--is a standard practice on the Fernow 

Forest. 

Few water bars are needed on non-bulldozed roads unless the roads have worn down into the subsoil. On bulldozed roads with a 10-percent grade, about 50 surface drains 

per mile are needed. These include natural outdrainage dips 

as well as dips cut with the tractor blade and more elaborate water bars dug out by hand or constructed with logs. 

On the roads of the seven chances studied, some water bars 

were put in by hand and others were dozed out with the tractor blade. Costs of the two types of drains were not kept 

separate. 

The final average cost1 of the permanent main skid 

road was about $318 a mile (table 1). (The range was from 

about $200 to over $400.) Of this, about 9 percent was 

charged to the cost of location, and another 9 percent was 

he average costs were compiled from all seven logging chances studied, 

using labor and machine rates considered appropriate at the present time. Labor 

costs do not include the costs of social security, accident insurance, and 

similar items. burs of labor and machine time are tabulated for those who 

have different cost rates. 
1 2 Table 1.--Skid-road costs per mile on the Fernow Experimental Forest 

Bulldozed Non-bulldozed 

Cost Rate main skid roads spur roads 

item per 

hour Average Average Average Average 

time cost time cost 

Dollars Hours Dollars - Hours Dollars 

ROAD IOCATION 

Locator 3.00 8 24.00 5 15.00 

Helper 1.20 4 5.00 - - -- 

Tot a1 -- - - 29.00 -- 15.00 

ROAD CONSTRUCTION 

Bulldozer 4.35 2 8 122.00 -- - - 

Operator 2 .OO 3 7 74.00 -- - - 

Swamper 1.20 38 46.00 2 3 28.00 

Power saw -50 38 19.00 23 12.00 

Total -- -- 261.00 - - 40.00 

AFTER-LOGGING CARE 

Bulldozer 4.35 1 4.00 -- - - 

Operator 2 .OO 1 2 .OO - - - - 

Helper 1.20 18 22.00 -- - - 

Total -- - - 28.00 - - - - 

Total road cost -- -- 318.00 - - 55.00 

'~11 costs are rounded off to nearest dollar. 

2~ased from records of almost 18 miles of skidroads on seven logging chances totaling 660 acres. 

charged to cost of after-logging care. These two elements 

contributed about $57 a mile to the final cost--much less 

than the cost of building new roads for the next operation, 

which might be necessary if the roads were not located and 

cared for properly. 

On the average, 65 feet per acre of bulldozed main 

skid road and 74 feet per acre of non-bulldozed spur road 

were constructed to log the 660 acres for which these records were kept. On this basis, about 1 mile of combined 
bulldozed and non-bulldozed skid road is needed to log every 

38 acres. The total cost per acre of the 139 feet of skid 

road was about $4.70--of which about $0.90 per acre was 

charged to road location and after-logging care. This is a 

very modest cost, particularly if one considers that most of 

it is capital investment that will not need to be repeated. 

-- GEORGE R. TRINIBLE, JR. and CARL R. BARR~ 

2Mr. Trimble, a research forester is in charge of the Northeastern Forest 

Experiment Station's Elkins Research Center at Elkins, R.Va. Mr. Barr is logging superintendent on the Fernow Experimental Forest.