Moving a BIG Oak Tree - Video

Neat video

I'm not a machine expert but the way I see it they got is all backwards,A dozer is built for full force going forward and in my mind they should have turned the hoes around and pulled with the stick 15 feet at a time with the tracks stopped on undisturbed ground, or better yet just bring in a third crawler in place of the 2 hoes.

A question for the experts, what is the loss in pulling power in reverse, I would guess 25% ???

Must be rented equipment

I just can't see the logic of pulling with a dozer in reverse like this, even to 'lift' the front of the skid, one dozer even had a winch on the back which is more than high enough to pull with. You don't lose much power in reverse but with hardly any track on the ground, there is very little traction and the machine just digs itself in, exactly what is happening here. The dozers should have been the other way round, they are hardly going to 'lift' the skid anyway. and with the towing cables horizontal they would have kept the full length of track on the ground for best traction. They got the job done anyway, it was very impressive to move a tree without damaging it, a job well done. If you grew up like some of us though, having to get the last ounce of effort out of the machinery at hand to earn a living, you learn to get the best advantage out of everything.

Must have been backward day. Two of the three hoes were running with the tracks going backwards also.

All three hoes are running sprockets first, the front to use the towing rings I expect but not sure about the pusher, it was a lot of weight to move and I gues they did what they thought was best.

Very impressive but chances of an oak tree that big surviving is very slim. Oak trees have a very long tap root that when cut greatly reduces the survival rate. The tree experts will be very busy with that tree for a long time. With the skid they built under the tree one of those dozer pulling frontwards should have been able to pull it. Still very impressive
Chuck C

It is debatable that at 518,000lbs that one tractor pulling from its rear could pull it.
My guess is that the operators were told to be able to watch the tree, they needed to pull in reverse. I'm sure there was some justification to "lifting" the skid with the blade.
I would "assume" that the taproot was minimally disturbed based on the box being at least 8 foot tall judging by the guy walking past in one shot.
Either way it was an impressive operation! 👍
Jeff

Hi, Mike Mc.
Thanks for sharing. There was an impressive amount of hardware assembled for the task and that IS a fair lump of tree. It's not the first time that I have seen that method or a similar one used to move largish trees from one site to another but I think that one is bigger than any I have seen in the past.

The technique that I am familiar with consists of cutting the roots at a set distance all round the tree in a square, much as they appear to have done with that one, using a high-pressure water jet. Then the dirt was excavated all round the tree outside the cut by yours truly on a Cat 953B track loader, leaving a ramp in on one side and a ramp out on the opposite side. Then a steel beam was gripped in the 4-in-1 bucket of a track loader, still operated by yours truly, with 3 feet of beam protruding from one side of the bucket. This protuding beam was used to cut as far as possible underneath the root ball of the tree.

Once this undercut was complete around all four sides of the tree, two D6R dozers were used to pull a 30-foot square by 1 1/2" thick steel plate through the excavation cutting off all the remaining roots under the tree and leaving the tree sitting on the plate. The tree was then towed out of the hole and to its previously excavated new home resting on the steel plate. When the tree was in posiition, a wire rope was passed around it from the side opposite the two dozers and both ends were attached to a waiting 35 ton excavator which then anchored the tree while the two dozers pulled the steel plate out from under it.

The really neat bit, I thought, was that they had two right-angled steel fabrications made up, about six feet long by about two feet per side with a rounded corner between the two plates. These were placed on the corners nearest the dozers and wire rope passed around them so that it didn't cut into the dirt under the tree and damage the tree roots. Very considerate for the welfare of the tree, I thought.

The two trees were moved about a 1/4 mile each in the one day with the bulk of the preparation having been done on the previous day. Each tree was estimated to weigh around 80 - 90 tons, tree and 20-foot square by 4-foot deep root base, and the two D6R's had no trouble either pulling the plate under the trees or moving the trees out of their original holes and over the intervening distance into their new holes. The ramps in and out of the holes were about 1 in 4 slope.

It was an interesting exercise and I am pleased that I had the chance to see it and be involved.

Just my 0.02. Thanks again for sharing.

impressive movement of this tree!
for a bulldozer if you have a load in front (normaly dirt if your using the blade to move material, or this skid with the tree and you connect the skid to the blade) and you start lifting the blade the pushingforce (if ground conditions are good) increase a lot , so i would have placed 1 dozer d8 in the back to push ( blade connected to skid for lifting it up a bit)
as operator of a d6t i could push a concrete block with a weight of 42 tons just by pushing and lifting the blade.
the pushing with the excavator when driving i would not recommend as you can break the stickcilinder eye of.
its still impressive and they did the job just my 2cts of what could better.