“I am doing exactly what I always wanted to do,” shared Larry Doherty on a private woodlot harvest operation, about 10 kilometres north of Sussex, New Brunswick.

Doherty has been a harvest contractor for the past 36 years, and continues to invest, and look forward to opportunities in the forestry sector.

With his harvesting machinery kit and two log trucks, along with his team of four operators/drivers, he produces around 35,000 tonnes of timber annually, supplying mills in southern New Brunswick and in neighbouring Maine.

While Doherty was recently supervising a road building contractor, Jerry Smith, on the operation, his three pieces of Tigercat gear were busy bunching, processing and getting timber to roadside, where his pair of Kenworth W900s were loading and hauling to regional mills.

The private woodlot stumpage he was operating in featured a mixed wood stand of spruce, over-mature balsam fir and a significant component of eastern white cedar, in addition to a mix of tolerant and intolerant hardwoods and a significant volume of poplar.

The Tigercat team includes a L822D levelling buncher purchased in 2020, with Tigercat 5400 bunching head. The processor, also an 822, was purchased in 2024 and handles a Tigercat TH570 harvest process head with top saw. Forwarding wood was being handled with a Tigercat 1075, twenty-tonne machine purchased in 2020.

Throughout his 36-year contracting career, Doherty has operated trucks for periods of time, as well as a wood purchasing yard. He readily admits he prefers to contract the trucking. However, in the past few years, the availability of contract trucking service has become scant, and as result he has purchased two log trucks.

Doherty’s career in harvest contracting began when he was 14, trail cutting for family and local harvest contractors. He very soon began contracting for his neighbours around Apohaqui, a few kilometres south of Sussex. He picked up a good deal of heavy equipment knowledge from his father, Joe, who operated dozers for agricultural land clearing, and who became a noted forestry road builder with dozers. Joe also had a forwarder to keep himself busy through the off seasons, and provided the opportunity for Larry to gain early operating experience.

Following high school, Doherty attended Maritime Forest Ranger School, graduating in 1988. In 1989, he began contracting as L. Doherty Chipping Ltd., delivering chips to Woodland Pulp in Maine.

Initially the operation was with chainsaws and a Timberjack cable skidder. Eventually, the operation mechanized with a Wolverine three-wheel buncher to feed a Morbark full tree chipper. Doherty relied on contract truckers to deliver chips to the Woodland mill.

In 1998, he made the move to cut-to-length harvesting with the purchase of a new Timberjack 608B harvester with a Timberjack 762C head. The following year, he added a Timberjack 1410 forwarder. In 2004, the operation added a new Ponsse Ergo harvester.

“At that time, the 608 offered a high degree of productivity and the dealer provided great service and support. I still use the 608, running a LogMax 6000B, as a processor. It is still productive, depending on the stand type and maintenance and repair schedule. It may sit idle several days a week, but it works when I need it.”

Doherty bought his first Tigercat 822 in 2020. He points to Tigercat’s reputation for productivity and reliability as key attributes that won him over.

“Where other manufacturers use half-inch plate, Tigercat uses three-quarter-inch plate,” he says, as an example. “They are built tough and they are highly productive machines.”

Doherty added a Tigercat 1075 forwarder in 2020, and added another 822 with Tigercat TH572 processing head with top saw, in 2024.

“My Tigercat dealer, Wajax, is in Moncton, which is only an hour or so from my base, and they keep a great supply of service and repair parts,” he explains. “And just as importantly, if I have an issue, I can call them and quickly sort most technical problems out with their technicians.

“Additionally, Tigercat is based in Ontario and if I ever need a major Tigercat-exclusive component, I can have the piece here in a couple of days. I have continually had great support from the Tigercat factory and their management team.”

The decision to purchase the Tigercat 822 levelling buncher with Tigercat 5400 buncher head came after long discussions with Wajax rep Sandy Hodgson.

“We operate on some steep ground, up to 80 per cent slope, so the levelling capacity is a great asset,” says Doherty. “In our forest type, we have a good deal of supressed understory, and over-mature and unmerchantable stems to deal with, as we are harvesting. The Tigercat buncher offers a quick and very effective means to clear away that unmerchantable growth, to reach the timber. To handle that understory and over-mature and unmerchantable trees with a harvester would be time consuming, less productive, and risk damage to bars, chains and the harvester head.

“My vision for the buncher was to have a quick-attach mounting system, so I had the option to drop the buncher head and hook on a processing head, to ensure my operation was versatile and able to move wood to roadside smoothly, and ensure fresh deliveries to mills. I did not want to see a lot of wood bunched on the ground and then idle the buncher while the trees were processed and then forwarded.”

Doherty talked to Tigercat engineers, and the response was that his concept could not be engineered effectively. “They pointed out that the Quick-Attach hardware would put heads eighteen inches out from the original engineered position. Several months later, Sandy Hodgson came back with the suggestion that Tigercat was interested in my project and ready to offer support.

“In spring 2021, I hired a machinist and a welder, and in two weeks we had fabricated a three-plate coupling system, which positions heads ten inches out from the engineered position. We had a Tigercat technician come and wire the electronics and controls for the dual head application.”

Over the five years they have used the system, they have switched heads an average of two times per week. “Depending on stand type, the buncher can lay down a lot of wood, and if we did not have the option to switch it to processing, with the LogMax 6000B head, we would see wood drying to the extent that the mass scale would be lower, and consequently our revenue. It’s very important to minimize the time from felling to delivering to the mill.

“Troy Webb has been my buncher/processor operator for four years,” Doherty added. “He came with a lot of experience and is a great operator with the Tigercat 822 leveler. If required, he is also comfortable to quick-attach the LogMax head, or jump in the second 822 processor, when that operator, Justin McKay, fills in on the forwarder.”

Doherty gives credit to Troy’s bunching talents, pointing out good bunching skills help make the entire operation run smoothly and efficiently.

“Since Troy moves between bunching trees and then processing the bunches he lays down, he understands that good bunching skills make for productive processing. He is careful with positioning bunches, sorting species and ensuring the tops of bunches do not tangle.

“When in the processor, he can’t very well complain about the quality of work the buncher guy has provided. The same goes for Justin, and his switching between processing and forwarding. Good processing, sorting and piling techniques make for fluid and productive forwarding. No operator wants to struggle more than necessary to get their respective tasks completed.”

Justin McKay began working for Larry some 15 years ago. At the time, Justin’s father, Freeman, was Doherty’s dedicated log trucker. Doherty suggested that Justin should try out on their forwarder.

“I spent about an hour with him in the forwarder cab, and then he went to work by himself, and became a very good forwarder operator,” says Doherty. “Once he accomplished the forwarder, I set him in the harvester and he became a competent operator and mechanic. He can comfortably transition between processing and forwarding, which helps make our operation fluid and productive.”

The TH570 harvest/process head is equipped with processor delimbing arms, which allows either operator to easily select individual stems from the bunched trees. The head has excellent delimbing traction and power attributes, with very little ‘back up and push through again’, to get tough limbs.

McKay explained that he had no experience with top saws prior to working with the TH570 head. “As I became familiar with the head, I began utilizing the top saw some, and now it has become second nature and it increases productivity—it is especially handy to cut gnarly hardwood limbs and crotches.”

Doherty notes that the TH570 head features a large measuring wheel with aggressive teeth, which allows it to follow contours of stems extremely well.

Doherty says that when he is busy on road building or other tasks and they have three machines on site, and they get a lot of bunched wood on the ground, he will shut down the buncher, and have Webb operate the processor and McKay moves into the forwarder.

“I am pretty happy with the performance of Tigercat’s FPT Tier 4 engines, and fuel economy,” he says. “One fuel economy strategy we have adopted is to operate the buncher and processor at 1750 to 1800 RPM when working in average stand conditions, which gives us a substantial fuel saving compared to operating at maximum power. When the operators face a dose of big poplar or hardwoods, they can up the RPM and get the power that they need to handle that big stuff. Then, when back to average running, you’re back to fuel saving power range.”

The harvesting operators work ten-hour shifts, getting up early in the summer to minimize hot afternoons. For the cold seasons, the Tigercats have engine heaters timed to have things warmed up when operator climbs in. “On those very cold and nasty winter days, it’s great to jump in start up and enjoy instant heat and comfort,” commented McKay.

Securing consistent trucking capacity has been a concern for Doherty, pointing out that he purchased a new Kenworth and trailer (forty-eight-foot, five-tier BWS) and hired a driver. The trailer was upgraded with the addition of a Kesla 2212ZT loader, which features a climate controlled cab. With the single truck, the operation still required additional trucking capacity to move the production. When contract trucking service again became a challenge, he bought a second Kenworth matched to a Manac forty-eight-foot, five-tier trailer. Drivers Keith Savoie and Chris Forgraves typically choose to work nights, to mitigate traffic and congestion issues.

Doherty’s operation includes a Cat D6D bulldozer for road maintenance, pushing trucks in mud or ice conditions and as an insurance factor in case of fire.

L. Doherty Chipping has continued a positive business relationship with Woodland Pulp, and currently delivers hardwood pulpwood logs to the mill. Poplar logs are supplied to the Louisiana-Pacific board mill in Houlton, Maine. Wood directed to U.S. mills is brokered by H.C. Haynes Ltd.

Currently, spruce and fir logs are supplied to J.D. Irving mills in Sussex and Chipman, New Brunswick. Spruce and fir pulpwood is delivered to the JDI Sussex pulp chipping operation.

Over his career, Doherty has shipped saw and stud logs to mills in Nova Scotia, and has shipped softwood pulpwood to mills in Nova Scotia and Riviere du Loupe, Quebec.

Doherty currently contracts private woodlot stumpage in a 30-mile radius of Sussex.

“We have lots of people reaching out for harvesting services,” he says, and Doherty and his top notch team and equipment are ready to meet their needs. “I’m very well satisfied with the performance of my harvesting and trucking equipment and I am well satisfied and appreciative of the talents and commitment of all my operators. It takes a committed team to have a successful business in the forestry sector.”

That top notch talent extends to his family. A significant contribution to the L. Doherty Chipping operation comes from Larry’s mother, Joan, who at eighty-seven years of age, still does most of the day to day bookkeeping tasks.