Haulotte 55XA opinions please and chipper on front of trailer idea.

[Lumberjack]

Look at the chart for the 55XA, it drops pretty quick when you get off sides. 12’ of side reach is almost nothing in a lift, that only just barely gets you past the outriggers, and that’s a little close for comfort dropping things unless you’re rigging everything. You can set up half a dozen times to move around the tree if necessary, but that wastes a lot of time, and defeats the point of using a lift.

12’ of side reach 70’ up on a 70’ lift is appreciable, double the reach of a 72’ spider at the same height, and 5’ past the outriggers’ outline. Drop to 60’ height and you’ve got 30’ of side reach... granted this is on a SD64, I agree outreach is more important the less you have.

Everyone loves pictures. Here’s an 80-85’ pine from last week. First picture shows ~70’.

 

[Reach]

12’ of side reach 70’ up on a 70’ lift is appreciable, double the reach of a 72’ spider at the same height, and 5’ past the outriggers’ outline. Drop to 60’ height and you’ve got 30’ of side reach... granted this is on a SD64, I agree outreach is more important the less you have.

Everyone loves pictures. Here’s an 80-85’ pine from last week. First picture shows ~70’.

View attachment 68052View attachment 68053View attachment 68054

That is pretty good reach at a reasonable height, 30’ at 60 is definitely plenty. I am not terribly familiar with the sd64, I only had the opportunity to play with one once. I know the 55XA well enough though to know that while it is a great machine, it is quite limited in tree work, at least around here where 60’ trees are fairly small.

 

[Lumberjack]

Looking at the 55XA, it does look to be in the middle of the SD50 and the SD64, with the boom style of the SD50 vs the SD64. The SD50 is a hard sale for me to most customers, given its limitations to the SD64... stands to reason the 55XA is going to be similar, with the added computer/electric issues.

 

[Nathanael]

here is a picture of our morbark 13 on the front of our trailer that I mentioned earlier. We can cary our material handler and a stump grinder behind the chipper. We have a hydraulic cylinder powered by the chipper hydraulics to pivot the chipper out for when we are chipping, and back in for transport. We need to switch out the shoot on the chipper to make it more adjustable, but other than that we are really liking this rig.

 

[wisconsintreeguy]

Our office out of butler regularily has .5hr dump runs one way that cost to dump. Sometimes even chips. There has to be grapple trucks that run loads in your area? Ive seen trailer set ups to haul a dingo and load material that gets winched off. Might make more sense in your propert management operations too?

Where do you guys dump if you dont mind me asking?

 

[TCtreeswinger]

I'd have to ask the manager out there. It's a nursey/landscaping place if I recall correctly

 

[DupreeLLT]

i havent used a 55xa but i have used a 45xa and its junk compared to pretty much anything with live hydraulics like an sd50 or 18.90pro. definitely try some other stuff out before you buy.