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South East Forest Products
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2010-08-26 |
 When South-East Forest Products was looking to replace the cutting heads on one of its harvesters two years ago, the woodlands manager, Rene Levesque, shopped around and did some research on available products. Ultimately the decision was made to go with a heavy duty Log Max head.
“We had heard good things about Log Max and decided to give the 7000XT a try,” said Levesque, who heads the woodlands department for South-East Forest Products, which is a sawmill in Blumenort, Manitoba, about a half-hour drive southeast of Winnipeg. The company, which has been in business for close to 50 years, employs about 30 people, split between woodlands and the sawmill.
The mill owns cutting rights to 80,000 cubic metres of forest from which it produces a variety of lumber, pallets, crating, sawlogs and pulp.
“We read the specs on the 7000XT and heard that it was more powerful,” said Levesque. “And with us doing 40 per cent hardwoods, we were looking for something that was more robust, with more delimbing power.”
Levesque said the 7000XT has lived up the favourable reviews and their own high expectations. “It’s very fast,” he said, commenting on the 7000XT’s performance in the bush. “We find it very quick on the delimbing aspect of it.”
It has also proven to be durable. “Right now we’ve got 8,000 hours on this head. It’s been a very trouble-free head. It’s a very low maintenance head and it’s been very reliable.”
Aside from regular half-hour of maintenance conducted between shifts, Levesque said, “We go weeks without opening the cover.”
The benefit of working with a trouble-free piece of equipment, he said, is that “it has reduced our downtime by quite a bit.”
It’s not just the performance in the field that has garnered Levesque’s praise but the customer service they have received from Log Max.
“One of the key things is having access to the factory technicians when we have questions or do have problems,” he said.
South-East Forest Products has its own mechanics who work on maintaining forestry equipment. Occasionally, however, if they come across unfamiliar problem with a piece of equipment, they’ll contact the manufacturer and speak with a technician hoping to resolve the matter over the phone. Levesque said his mechanics have had good experience accessing Log Max technicians when they’ve needed technical advice.
“When we call up, we’re not put on hold or told that someone will return our call. We get immediate access to a technician who will solve our problem within minutes instead of days.”
South-East Forest Products now has one harvester with a Log Max 7000XT heads and, Levesque said, they are looking to purchase another.
“Right now we’re looking at buying another unit, updating some of our older units,” said Levesque.
Log Max is based out of Kamloops, in the heart of the interior of British Columbia, and has a distribution territory that covers the Pacific Coast eastward to Manitoba. |
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