A nifty loader
FLEETING AND LOADING LOGS ON THE SKID may not be the most exciting job in forestry, but the task can be made a darn sight more palatable if you are at the controls of a nice machine.
And they don’t come much nicer than this new Cat 538 LL. It’s a neat and nifty machine. I really liked it and was genuinely sad to leave the operator’s seat. I’ve driven my fair share of log loaders over the years, including Cats, and this one is right up there with the best.
With machines on the skid getting bigger and heavier, it’s refreshing to operate something at the lower end of the scale. Yes, it’s tall, but the overall dimensions are quite compact, and yet, it’s not a lightweight – 33 tonnes is still reasonably weighty and it coped with all the heavier loads and never gave any hint of being unstable or incapable of working with weighty wood.
It would have been nicer with a rear-entry into the tall cab, instead of negotiating the steep steps, but once inside it’s a very nice space, not much different to the last 320DFM I was in, with similar views out front and to the sides.
I can imagine that a big guy like ‘Jacko’ would find it tight in there, but it was fine for me and the big windows give the illusion of more space.
The only minus point was the seat movement. I had it pushed right back to suit me, but really tall guys might find the legroom a little short. Comfy, though.
The monitor on the right-front pillar is a bit slimmer than on a 320DFM, but still very readable and the controls all looked, and felt very familiar, following the standard Cat layout. The only thing that was different was the rotator, which had been set up to work back to front from what I’m used to. ‘Jacko’ wanted it that way, but it is easily changed if another operator hops in.
I didn’t need to change the mode that ‘Jacko’ had selected, although I thought the slew was slow to start with, but that was because I was being a bit tentative, feeling my way on a new machine. The more I leaned on it the faster it went. Once I started putting wood away it had plenty of up and go, but not to the point where you lose control over it. Just smooth and very controllable.
It’s got lots of lift power. I’d read that this was one of the features and I wanted to test it – I had some very big logs, double ups and then out shovelling one or two which were very meaty. The 538 came through with flying colours. You could feel some of those big stems but with the right technique – bringing it in closer and slewing at the same time – you overcome that.
There’s plenty of power in that slew, even working with the big stems it didn’t baulk.
The drive is good, didn’t test it much, a little bit of walking around the skid and then out to do shovelling. I tried in rabbit and turtle, no problems with either. I did like the way it handled the rough ground on the walk out – the seat and cab suspension soaked up most of the bumps and even though you’re perched high in that cab, you don’t get thrown around much at all. Very stable.
I do like that new Duxson GX171 models – it suits the hydraulic speed of the 538 LL. It’s got good grab power and is really responsive, quick, and answered everything I wanted it to do. It never felt like it would let go and when I was doing finer movements like pinching it was great – sometimes you can struggle to pinch a log, but this one is really easy to do accurate placement with no damage to the logs.
This new Cat 538 LL is easy to like and hard to fault.
NZL