Forum Discussion

Explorer III

Apr 16, 2018

TC Report -- Time to go milling!

Ready to get underway to the next milling job 100miles from home. Camper packed and ready, mill loaded up and ready and I headed to the scales. Without the mill in tow and no mill gear in the back seat area of the truck (and minus a few other light items) the truck weighed in over 12000lbs. My E rated tires are rated at 4080lbs's ea so with a rear axle tire rating of 8160, stables loads (upper and lower) and air bags I wasn't too concerned when the rear axle weight was 7680. However, I'd had the hitch beefed up (basically a custom superhitch) and added the 36" supertruss extension I new I was starting to get closer to what the tires could handle. The rear end is actually rated by Visteon (the manufacturer) at 9750lbs's so I wasn't worried there but getting close to max on the tires was a concern.

I figured the mill had a light tongue weight and thought I'd still be under but I was wrong! With the mill in tow, about 100lbs's of hitch and truss and all the gear etc I weighed in over 13000lbs's! Rear end sat at 8240 -- 80 pounds over the tires :(

Decided to drive slow (55) and see who she did. Research told me the tires are rated at 4080lbs given standard road speeds (legal limits) and 50,000 miles so in theory, 40 pounds over on the two rears and lower speed (less heat) should be fine.

I headed out and got 9MPG on the 100 mile drive (with some good hills to climb) and all seemed fine. Felt the tires and hubs at the end of the drive and they were cool. I think I'm ok!

I arrived at the location, set the mill in front of the logs, dropped it, pulled ahead and set up the camper :) Life was good!

21 logs turned into 22 by day two but I knew I could get them all done :)

After milling up some locust I got into real logs :) Customer wanted 3x12's out of this guy so I offset the pith and split that sucker!

Another big log and more 3x12's

The customer wrote on all the logs what he wanted :) Very nice.

At the end of the day I'd milled 2300bf of various stuff from small locust and walnut logs to big fir. It was a good day and I was ready for a shower, a drink and some chow!

The awning helped keep the rain off my gear and I was really loving the generator! I could run my compressor during every blade change and get things cleaned up nicely with air! :D

Some of the days results

After a shower in a bathroom that I actually can use! dinner and a drink I was ready to crash and the nicely laid out 'bedroom' was rather inviting! I crashed at 8pm! Can you tell I took too long off milling?

Couple cups of coffee in the morning and a little breakfast and I was ready to clean up some flitches and get to the big monster log waiting for me :)

This big log was 9 feet long and measured 42" outside the bark on the long axis. I knew it would be a fun one! But before loading it up we removed a 4" screw clamp used to clamp phone wire to the tree! It was HUGE

Not much room for play here!

Time to start gun barrelling this sucker down!

After getting into it we found 5 or 6 nails (DanGit) and the customers worker offered to trim bark with the chainsaw.

At least he put safety glasses on but I have to admit it makes me nervous seeing others run a saw without at least having chaps on.

On a side note, I got my Husky 576xpw out since it was newly rebuilt (thank you Husky and Bailey's) and it ran well. I didn't push it hard wanted to be sure it was well broken in and ran Husky bar oil and TruFuel 50:1 in it. So far so good.

Later in the day the last big log was milled into 1x4's. I was having trouble with knots causing waves and cursed myself for bringing the wrong box of bands (only brought 10's but meant to bring a box of 4's) which cut fine all day, and later but not on the big wood with knots. Changed bands, checked everything and determined the 10's just suck on big cuts with knots and discounted the customer the 3 bands I cut nails with in exchange for what I felt were poor 1x4's. He said he was happy with them anyway but accepted the exchange :) But then I'll be back in May so I'd say it's worth it!

Clean 3x12's cut nice and square. I knew my belt tension was fine or this could not have happened! Darn 10's. I'm starting to only use them on small wood now and replace them with 4's or 7's when I need replacements.

Oh Arctic Fox 990 how I love the! :D

The LT40 turned 428 and I need to do some maintenance before next weekend where I'll drive 110-120 miles to the next job and mill up a dozen logs or so. Then I'm off a week or two and back to milling local for a few days, then back to Chelan to mill 20 burned pines. I'm busy through to June now :)

Cheers

Erik

Truck Campers

Kayteg1
Explorer II
Apr 16, 2018
So now you REALLY know what 100 lb on ball placed 8 ft behind rear axle can do :)
When I picked my 12 ft camper with SRW, I had way more overweight on tires than you did, yet drove 2000 miles home just fine. I bought new tires just for the trip.
Nice mill. I used to have dual blade mill years ago, but that was lot of hassle to use.
emcvay
Explorer III
Apr 16, 2018
Kayteg1 wrote:
So now you REALLY know what 100 lb on ball placed 8 ft behind rear axle can do :)
When I picked my 12 ft camper with SRW, I had way more overweight on tires than you did, yet drove 2000 miles home just fine. I bought new tires just for the trip.
Nice mill. I used to have dual blade mill years ago, but that was lot of hassle to use.

How long did you drive it like that? Or are you still?

I think being 40lbs over on the two rears is probably not as much a concern as some think and I only am there when towing the mill so perhaps not too much worry ;) Though i tow the mill 8 to 10k a year.
thundercloud
Explorer
Apr 16, 2018
Man you are pretty serious about your campfire wood
emcvay
Explorer III
Apr 16, 2018
LOL I do make a lot of 'firewood' in the form of slabs :) 4 per log. And lots of kindling from trimming wane off of 'flitches' :) One can truly enjoy the woods this way!

Thought it's green wood so not the best for a good campfire until it's cured a while.
Kayteg1
Explorer II
Apr 16, 2018
emcvay wrote:
Kayteg1 wrote:
So now you REALLY know what 100 lb on ball placed 8 ft behind rear axle can do :)
When I picked my 12 ft camper with SRW, I had way more overweight on tires than you did, yet drove 2000 miles home just fine. I bought new tires just for the trip.
Nice mill. I used to have dual blade mill years ago, but that was lot of hassle to use.

How long did you drive it like that? Or are you still?

I think being 40lbs over on the two rears is probably not as much a concern as some think and I only am there when towing the mill so perhaps not too much worry ;) Though i tow the mill 8 to 10k a year.

I bought the camper 2000 miles from home and knew SRW will be stretch and that is why I bought new tires and put spare on front bumper, but drove via scales 40 miles from the seller on both ways.
The winterized camper overloaded my rear tires by more than 200 lb each. Still having confidence in good tires (I choose the highest load capacity I could find in the size), I pumped them them to max and drove home just fine.
Later I moved batteries on front bumper, removed rear generator so even with water I was on the rear tires margin, but still basement camper sitting on flatbed went 13-6 high and I could not stand vision of tire blew up.
Couple months later I bought dually.
If you think you'll be OK with your set in tire blow up, good for you.
Tiger4x4RV
Nomad
Apr 16, 2018
I am always amazed by the new and different uses folks have for their TC's. Yours is the first mill I've seen. Thanks for sharing.
woodhog
Explorer
Apr 16, 2018
Thanks for the nice post, nice to see someone using their camper
for something a bit different, also rare to find someone who will
do actual work !!!
That was nice...
emcvay
Explorer III
Apr 16, 2018
Thanks and thanks :)

I've always wanted a TC and love them! Can't wait to do actual camping but the mobile office idea came to me on one of my long drivings to and from a remote milling site. No more long drives! Now I can kick back and relax :D

I specialize is 'remote' milling and enjoy the work. It's not full time though, for that I work for a phone company as a Supervisor by day ;) I've always enjoyed hard work in the old marine in me won't let me quit LOL but I do enjoy the milling and had thought it would be a good retirement plan. With the new rig my DW may even come along when she can :D
zcookiemonstar
Explorer
Apr 17, 2018
Very nice set up and work. If your worried about the weight on the truck maybe you could put some truck boxes on the saw mill and put all your equipment in them. You can then remove them at the job site and use them as a workbench.
emcvay
Explorer III
Apr 17, 2018
My initial thought was putting gear in the rear seat area of the truck would help but I guess it distributes that load fairly evenly. So I need to look at the mill again and see what I can do to load a little more on it. I can also reduce some weight there since I carried two chain saws and really only need one, carried extra fuel for the saws and could cut that down, carried 5 gallons of extra water and could insist the customer has some on hand etc...little things can add up. Heck, that's at least 70-80lbs right there.