Portable Winch Worth the Purchase?

[27RMT0N]

@27RMT0N Thanks for the epic breakdown and video. Confirming my concerns the winch does get the job done but is damn slow going! Especially coupled with setup time. If you don’t mind a may PM you to pick your brain a bit further. It appears you’ve spent some time behind the unit and have a solid understanding of what it’s capable of.

Happy to help, feel free to PM me with additional questions.

 

[ajblease1]

I’m fortunate enough to be able to borrow a portable winch like the one you are looking at, when I need it. It is a huge labor and back saver. Yes, sometimes it can be done by hand quicker, but I would rather save my body.
I’m just using it when working by myself, or in a team of two when doing side work. If I was running full time I would buy a Ditch Witch mini skid. However, the winch would still have some utility that the skid would not.

 

[Z'sTrees]

I've used one quite a bit, they're really handy in certain applications. Good bang for the buck. They're pretty hard on ropes though, so use an old beater.
I've got a winch on the chipper, it's faster and stronger. With 200ft of line and a redirect or two it does pretty much anything I could with the PW. Now that we got the dingo we use the winch less, but still fairly often. Alot of steep ground around here a mini skid just isn't going anywhere on, some sort of winch is invaluable.

 

[Jehinten]

What mini would you suggest for a first purchase? I need it to be light enough to not destroy everything but have some solid lifting power. There’s a used boxer 320 in my area for 9500 with 900 hours. But sounds like a pretty small machine ?

I'm not familiar with the boxer line up to tell you how big that one is, but I bought a Vermeer S600 used at 927hrs for about $6,000. That and my sena has been the best purchases that I've made. The Vermeer is not the largest unit, I'd say it's a mid size, but I'm not 100% sure on their line up either. Being that size and a wheeled machine it is pretty gentle on lawns, depending on how its driven and can move some pretty good weights. If you can't move the weight you either cut it smaller or use the arbor trolley in conjunction with it.

You'll find that there are tricks to loading bigger pieces that just take a little creativity. I have loaded a couple of pecan logs that were roughly 20" diameter and 16 foot long into a 48" deck height with my machine.

 

[Serf Life]

You'll find that there are tricks to loading bigger pieces that just take a little creativity. I have loaded a couple of pecan logs that were roughly 20" diameter and 16 foot long into a 48" deck height with my machine.

Calculated the weight of a chunky red oak saw log I finagled out of the woods with a demo mini to just over 3k lbs. Had to use some rollers and push it uphill but that sold me on buying one.

 

[erwin]

owned a Warn wrench powered by a 34 cc echo saw head. as the previous poster stated, it's one of my secret weapons, pulled heavy leaning 30+ inch trees nothing else can get to. Loved it. But now, with the new Vermeer ctx100 on most of my job site I rarely use it anymore. Good tool. Mine pulled only 1700 single line.