Excerpt from Great Lakes TPA Magazine
October 2016

Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association Logging and Heavy Equipment Expo held in Oshkosh, was the venue that Woodcracker Forestry and Land Clearing Products debuted at recently.

Woodcracker Forestry and Land Clearing Products recently made its debut in the Midwest at the Great Lakes Logging and Heavy Equipment Expo, and found strong interest for its line of log splitting tools from suppliers to the paper and pulp industry.

After a successful roll-out in North America earlier this summer, with its launch at the Northern Logger show in Burlington, Vermont, Woodcracker, the name of the product line from Westtech Maschinenbau of Prambachkirchen, Austria, carries its line further West to the Great Lakes region, as it expands sales to include all of North America.

Founded 12 years ago in Austria, Woodcracker is best known throughout Europe as primarily excavator attachments, used to harvest the biomass market and for land-clearing tasks such as road widening projects, gas pipelines, developments, etc. Designed for simplicity and very low maintenance, they are used in virtually every European country. Woodcrackers are busy working throughout the world in locales such as Cuba, Argentina, Turkey, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and two African nations. Here in the USA, Woodcrackers have already been put to work keeping cellphone towers along the East Coast free from branches. In New England, they have also started to be used in land clearing projects and tree maintenance jobs.

Woodcracker’s “C” line of tree shears quickly and efficiently shear tree trunks 22” in diameter. The sheers are finding favor among land clearing contractors as evidenced by a successful demonstration held in New Hampshire, August 26 and 27. Utilizing a shearing action with a knife and having far fewer moving parts than alternative options, they also require less operator training.

Following removal of the trunk, the Woodcracker “R” stump shear and Woodcracker “G” clearing rake finish the job, as even roots and stumps are harvested in Europe as precious fuel.

However, the tool that most caught the eye of loggers visiting the Great Lakes Logging & Heavy Equipment Expo was Woodcracker’s line of splitting tongs. Mike Albrecht of Mike Albrecht Trucking, Inc. from Laona, WI, who attended the show noted, “Having one of these splitters, I could see using it on a loader, excavator, or just as a stationary tool, that could break up culls into smaller sizes the mills would purchase, resulting in less waste and more income for my business.” Woodcracker offers two different styles of splitters, in seven sizes. Commonly used in Europe as a stand-alone machine, loggers grapple oversized logs into the splitting jaws, and “crack” the log into pieces. Every conscious of high fuel costs, the smaller pieces can then be processed with smaller chippers, eliminating the need for large fuel hungry machines. Loggers can also mount the splitter on excavators or loaders of just about any description, therefore “bringing the tool to the work.” Mounted on a carrier vehicle, the splitter then doubles as its own grapple.

In response to Woodcracker’s first visit to the Great Lakes Logging & Heavy Equipment Expo, Werner Steininger, President of Woodcracker stated, “It was very interesting for us to visit the Great Lakes Logging Expo. We met a lot of interested people at our booth. I was very excited how the visitors responded to our Woodcracker products. I noticed that nearly every Woodcracker product is interesting for the U.S. market.”

For more information about Woodcracker, the company and the products, visit: www. Woodcracker.com.