You should see some of the messes over here. Some growers do not map out their system and have the ripper operator "guess" where the lines went. All of the effort to avoid damaging the pipeline wasted. One tenant has decided to leave their little SANY excavator here, because they keep having to chase down ruptures in the system.
I am one not to rip an orchard that has had an irrigation system put in place prior to tree removal.
BTW, in the orchards here, a 36A is still a sought after machine for ripping the centers. My narrow 8U's are gems for ripping the vineyard rows and olives; too bad nobody has extra $ this year to hire me!
Tailseat15: You need to quit holding out on us and show us what you are buying next! JM

Hi, Neil.
An excavator is fine for working within its own working radius. If it has to travel to do its job, f'rinstance, to get trees to a heap, it faces a serious handicap.

From my own 'limited' experience, a decent track loader, preferably with a 4-in-1 bucket and a rear ripper, and fitted with a respectable brush rake - see video below - is hard to beat for clearing. It has reach, power, traction and some speed.

I have cleared a fair bit of DowNunda with such rigs.



Just my 0.02.

This is what’s happening today 

Neil- yes around here in California where we're at, most orchards are taken out with a 336 size cat excavator, with a root rake (locally made to replace the bucket) and thumb. That will walk down the center of 2 tree rows, and pluck out the stump roots and all, and combine the two tree rows into one center row. Then that big row of brush is later picked up with a large front end loader such as a 950 with a grapple attachment and fed into a big tub grinder or piled up to burn (we have co-gen locally and could make electricity with the wood, but our former governator killed that unfortunately).
The ripping will turn follow all that clean up. Some farms are also spreading the wood chips and incorporating back into the soil.
At one time (some still do) guys would push each tree out with a dozer with the blade tilted all the way. Talk about lots of forward and reversing all day at 80+/- trees per acre!!!! The old powershift gates would be about worn as loose as a goose after awhile.

Yes Neil, since this is irrigated agriculture we are essentially applying 2-3x the amount of annual rainfall as water so it accelerates soil aging and compaction. Combine that with constantly driving on the soil for growing operations and it hurts water infiltration, reduces soil pore space and basically helps the trees to grow better with a shattered, mixed soil horizon/profile. If the water doesn't drain well through the soil, it promotes root rot etc and there are hard, cemented layers which can prevent water drainage if not treated.

CR by the looks the excavator pushes the trees out and not pull towards the machine? a clearing company I worked for had montebert (I think) tree shears that would pull towards machine with 2 long kind of rippers (like a BBQ fork) and a push block at the rear to push away trees, if rolled under enough you could dig holes with it, the knife to split/cut trees was on the machine side that cut between the 2 ripper arms, we had toro tub grinders to finish the trees off

The excavator pushes the tree out because usually the trees especially in walnuts would tower over the machine. That company came into the area about 35 years ago with a contract with a former co generation plant that was about 5 miles from that unit. Back then everyone used a D8 maybe get by with a smaller machine in the apricots, almonds cherries peaches and nectarines and pushed everything over and into a burn pile. Then the same machine would come though with a HD ripper and pull the roots. A long slow labor intensive process. Many passes with hand crews to pull roots, and if you wanted any kind of crop rotation roots were a problem for the next few years. That company came in with a 80k cat wheel loader with those two prongs on the front and would work around the tree and lift up the whole tree with many of the tap roots and surface roots heading out 15. ‘ in every direction. That became a quantum leap forward in orchard removal in our area. Simply just knocking trees over the fastest is playing the short game, the local retired heavy hauler would call that bottom dump logic. A good operator on that excavator from the grower and business man point of view would get those 3’ long tines in the ground and start working the roots loose then try and get as many of those roots attached to the trunk as possible. The grinder and wood processing plant would probably want as much dirt left behind as possible, however every root that follows that tree into the grinder is one less root that someone doesn’t have to go and pick up. That’s one less root that’s going to stop the Wilcox chisel operator after he just unplugged the chisel 100’ back, that’s one less root that could end up in the Price thrasher on the next crop, thats one less broken Draper or one less broken sickle section, that’s one less root that someone doesn’t have to pull off the CTM harvester on the next crop, that’s one less root that could cause a load reject at the USDA inspection station on the next crop. That’s one less root that gets into a bale of dairy hay….