Brian Rue, owner of Rue Logging Inc. in southwestern Colorado, is a prime example of logging for better forest health. Brian’s operation works mainly on forest and habitat improvement projects in New Mexico and Colorado.

Brian has relied on John Deere equipment for decades, and his newest Deere machine is a 748GIII skidder. Brian likes the power of his John Deere skidder. It fits well into his philosophy that you can do something small with something big, but you can’t do something big with something small.

“We’re just cutting little trees, but we’ll pull as many as forty or fifty at a time,” Brian explains, which eliminates the need for two machines. “The 748GIII just gets more work done by the end of the day… If you lay down thirty trees in a pile out there, the 748 will take the whole thirty at one time. It’s agile. It’s a big machine that has the characteristics of a small machine. You can run around in the forest, and you’ve got the weight, the control… It has a tremendous amount of control.”

Because of it’s agility, Brian has found that the 748GIII John Deere skidder fits right in with their forest preservation projects. Not only does it allow them to do more work with less equipment, which means less ground disturbance, but it is very gentle on the land.

“The ground pressure is good. It’s nice and light on its feet, and excellent on fuel. It’s a very functional machine.”

Rue Logging covers a lot of ground, and is faced with just about every kind of terrain – but that is no problem for the 748. Stability is what Rue Logging really likes about their John Deere skidder, especially on such a diversity of ground.

“It’s very stable on side hill slopes,” says Brian. “That’s the biggest reason we run the 748 – stability... The land is flat, it’s steep, it’s good soil, it’s rocky soil – everything. There’s uphill skidding and downhill skidding. Everything we can throw at that skidder, it can handle.”

Rue Logging does most of their forest health preservation work on private land, but has also done such work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. In 2007, Rue Logging Inc. was recognized by the USDA Forest Service with the title of Small Business of the Year.

Rue Logging purchased their skidder through Triple W Equipment in Montana, and is serviced by Colorado Machinery and Holland Equipment in Durango, Colorado.

Back to Stories from the Woods