Hybrid cars and trucks seem to be everywhere these days—but a hybrid piece of logging equipment recently started working in the forests on the British Columbia coast, and it’s getting some attention.

And it all started with a mini unintentional demo in the yard of T-Mar Industries of Campbell River, on B.C.’s Vancouver Island, a couple of years ago.

Family-owned T-Mar Industries is a long-time supplier to the forest industry, meeting the needs of B.C. loggers—and loggers as far afield as New Zealand—with heavy duty logging equipment that the company manufactures, and rebuilds, in Campbell River, such as grapple yarders, grapples, and related logging equipment.

In other words, they deal big time in the heavy duty equipment required for steep slope yarding.

For those in other parts of Canada unfamiliar with the equipment, Tyson Lambert, Vice-President of T-Mar, described grapple yarding as a “zip line for logs”. Cables are laid out over a steep slope area from the grapple yarder, logs are attached to a grapple that rides the cables, and reeled back in. Grapple yarders are used in areas that are inaccessible to conventional machinery, such as skidders.

“We’ve been around for 40 years, producing equipment,” explains Lambert. “And we’re always looking for ways to improve on our designs.

“And the idea of doing something hybrid came up in our engineering department a few years ago, what with all the electric powertrain parts that were becoming available.”

The thinking was that perhaps the traditional powertrain components that T-Mar had been using for many years—decades, really—could be replaced with new electrical drive technologies.

“We started doing a little research on it, and we had had an engineer, Philip Biebach, that was pretty conversant in that hybrid world, and had done some of that work in the past.

“We started out by designing and building a small prototype, just to make sure that these types of drives and components would work in a grapple yarder.”

At its core, the hybrid concept was solid, since a grapple yarder is a regenerative machine—it can utilize regenerative braking to recapture energy that would otherwise be spent keeping the cables tight, and convert it into electrical energy to reuse.

They built the prototype, and it worked really well—better than they expected, said Lambert.

“We were doing that on our own, and Dorian Uzzell and the people from Wahkash Contracting came to visit the shop one day.

“We had the prototype set up in the yard, and we were simulating pulling in logs—and the Wahkash guys went on the controls, and had a go at it.

“Dorian and the guys were so impressed with what they saw that day that they commissioned us to build a full-scale working hybrid grapple yarder, using the technology.”

When it comes to B.C. coastal logging, Wahkash Contracting, also based in Campbell River, knows its stuff. For 35 years, it has been providing stump to dump logging services in remote locations throughout coastal British Columbia. When it comes to dealing with grapple yarders, it has been there, and done that, for many years. It speaks a lot about the work T-Mar had done, and their business relationship, that Uzzell and Wahkash would commit to a hybrid machine based on a prototype—and an unintentional demo in the T-Mar yard.

Wahkash, which has a fleet of coastal logging equipment, was looking to re-power one of their existing grapple swing yarders, a Cypress 7280. The Cypress machines, built in the 1980s and 1990s, are quite common on the B.C. coast, and are robust workhorses. They are the giants of B.C. coastal logging—weighing in at 190,000 lbs., and equipped with a 70-foot boom.

“Instead of just rebuilding it, though, Wahkash wanted us to put the best technology in the yarder,” said Lambert. “We said, OK, based on the hybrid work we’ve done, it will be easy to do that.

“It wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be,” he quickly added.

They worked on it for two years, and this past summer, it was at the point that the hybrid machine was ready to go logging.

“It is,” says Lambert, “the first machine of its type in the world.”

He notes that the yarder marks the first time anyone has tried to put a hybrid electric power train, or any sort of electric power train, in any type of logging equipment.

To build the hybrid yarder, T-Mar had to develop the drives that were going to drive the large winches on the machine.

“We had to build everything that makes the powertrain work—we could not just go to a drive supplier, and purchase their industrial drives and put it in the yarder, because nothing would fit. We designed and built all the electrical, the drive, the cabling and components.”

They could buy the specialized, high power electrical motors—“everything else, we had to build ourselves.”

They initially built a 1/5 size, working prototype, which helped tremendously, says Lambert. “It was a lot of learning along the way because this is the first time anyone has done it,” he explained. “We figured out the sizing of components based on how fast or slow the machine needs to go—it was really the nuts and bolts of it. We needed to know the specifics on what an average turn cycle on a grapple yarder actually looks like so we can build equipment that meets that need.”

The learnings from the prototype were passed on to the production machine, which is now out in the B.C. woods, grappling logs on Vancouver Island, for Wahkash.

Even though T-Mar has a very impressive history of equipment innovation for the forest industry, tackling such ground-breaking work was a big challenge.

“It was daunting at the beginning, it was daunting in the middle, and only now is it becoming less daunting now that we’ve done the machine,” Lambert says.

The 7280E diesel-electric hybrid yarder is powered by Infinity 1132 drives developed and built by T-Mar. The drums on the machines are completely electrically driven, as is the interlock. Each drum features a dual motor drive. Each drive is capable of 1140 hp, and a little over 125,000 foot pds of torque. The slack line puller features a single-motor drive.

The generator sits where the transmission/torque convertor used to be on the machine. The generator is connected to the engine through the pump box assembly.

“This set up allows us to run the engine at any speed we want and generate the voltage we want. So, the engine can be throttled up and down, and it can still be making power and running loads dynamically. It allows us to run the machine very economically.”

Big picture, it was important, also, to realize that some of the suppliers for conventional components were nearing the end of their product development cycles—making moving ahead with new technology even more imperative.

“With major components, the clutches we use to manufacture grapple yarders were getting harder to get, with longer lead times, and with transmissions, some companies were starting to leave the market,” says Lambert. “All sorts of components are becoming harder to get, because other industries that also use these components, such as oil and gas and mining, are moving to similar technologies: electrostatic or hybrid drivetrains.”

At one point, though it may be quite a bit further into the future, it may not be possible to get some of these components, at all.

“It seemed like there will come a day when we would not be able to buy the components we need to build the machines the way we build them now, or customers might not be able to use them because they could not train people quickly enough or they required too much maintenance, so the cost of using them would fall out of line with where the market was at.”

For the forest industry as a whole, finding, and training, operators is an ongoing challenge. The hybrid yarder is easier to operate, and more intuitive, than traditional yarders, with very user-friendly operator controls.

In this respect, it was a matter of T-Mar seeing where things were going—before they got there.

“I thought that not doing anything posed a much bigger risk for T-Mar, than trying to move the industry forward in a meaningful way,” says Lambert. “There was risk everywhere, but the risk of doing nothing was always higher.”

In terms of development and manufacturing the machine, Lambert said the whole process involved a lot of plain hard work.

“There were many things around it that we were going, ok, how do we approach this or that—but we have an excellent engineering team and shop at T-Mar,” says Lambert.

There is a real sense of pride in what T-Mar has been able to achieve.

“I can’t overstate how proud our crew is that this technology was designed and produced here for a local logger, and the B.C. logging industry will be the first to use a machine like this that was built right here in B.C.

“One of the things that made this project less daunting was the support of Wahkash Contracting—they have been very accommodating and 100 per cent supportive all the way through, from commissioning us to do the project, to helping us set it up to test.” (on page 12 see the sidebar story on the benefits Wahkash is looking to get from the hybrid yarder). And Mosaic Forest Products, who Wahkash does most of its logging for, also supported the project.

They also received some federal government funding, which helped with some of the costs.

“You roll all of that together, and all of this really made the project possible,” explained Lambert. “We could not have done this on our own without everyone who has been part of it, helping along the way. A lot of people and organizations wanted us to succeed at this, and we are very grateful for their support.

“The real prize for us at T-Mar is that we can now take that technology and integrate it into the new machines we build here, going forward. Our intention was always to use this machine as a platform for the machines we build here.

“We were really fortunate to have a stepping stone along the way, with the conversion for Wahkash, so we could focus on the power train for an existing machine, which was a lot of learning and a lot of work. And that, of course, will also be available for the other machines that could be converted.”

So, what has the end result been? How does the hybrid machine perform?
“I’ve personally run the yarder quite a bit in our testing, and it is incredible,” says Lambert. “It’s quick and it’s powerful, and easy to run. It doesn’t struggle to do anything—we’re really happy with the results.”

The government funding makes a lot of sense, says Lambert. “We’re a Canadian manufacturer developing a technology that no one else has, that we can use here and also export.”

There is possible opportunity to transfer some of this hybrid technology for use in other industries, such as mining and marine industries, says Lambert. “It could be something the federal government could look at supporting to make sure new infrastructure projects are more efficient and make sure Canadians have the best gear to build and operate those projects.

“This is the type of equipment we need, to build Canada.”

As for the hybrid yarder, T-Mar has already received interest in the hybrid model from New Zealand and American loggers who are using their diesel-powered Log-Champ 550 and 650 yarders. One customer is looking at employing some new logging techniques, that would involve the use of more powerful winches and require more control, which is right up the hybrid yarder’s alley.