by Jon M. Casey

For the people who attended the Fall 2013 Morbark Demo Days at the home office in Winn, MI, their two-day event, October 10 and 11 was a huge success. With ample opportunity to tour the massive manufacturing facility on Thursday and field demonstrations of the company’s leading products on Friday, those who needed a close-up look at how Morbark does things, did not go away disappointed. By the end of the second day, with the Boxer Rodeo highlighting Morbark’s new lineup of compact utility loaders ending the events, attendees who had traveled from across the US and from around the globe, were sure to have seen a product that might one day, help them in their wood or timber businesses.

Following a morning plant tour, where groups of six to ten were hosted by company employees, the afternoon seminar/round table discussion featured Aaron Cozart from Cummins Bridgeway, Steve Kimbell of Superior Diesel, Inc. (John Deere), and Shane Patzer of Michigan CAT, speaking on the upcoming Tier 4 Final engine standards. With all the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the new standards and how they will affect the various sizes of equipment produced by Morbark, the ensuing discussions helped give clarity to what equipment owners might come to expect in the coming years. Overall, equipment users were assured by engine representatives, that the new engines would be able to withstand the extreme demands that they have come to expect from heavy equipment of this kind. More importantly, the problematic results that they might have seen from earlier changes in engine designs that went into equipment in the trucking industry have been remedied.

Equipment demonstrations at Morbark’s performance testing area offered visitors the ability to watch as workers ran various units at production rates and then followed their demos with downtime for interested watchers to get a closer look at the machine or its product material. For customers in the paper pulp industry, the 2755 Flail Chiparvestor was especially impressive. It demonstrated how it could turn entire trees into bark-free chips that are ready to go to the pulp plants in one pass. It was amazing to watch trees going in complete with bark, limbs and leaves, and come out with one pile of unwanted material in one place, and a mountain of clean chips in another. With the ever-increasing demand for clean wood chips direct from the forest, the flail created plenty of interest.

Other demonstrations included the 50/48 NCL whole tree drum chipper, the Beever® M20R Forestry Chipper, the 40/36 Micro-chipper, a new unit this year, the 3200 Wood Hog, also a new model for 2013, the 6600 Track Wood Hog, and the 1600 Tub Grinder as the grand finale. For more information on Morbark’s line of equipment, visit their website at www.morbark.com.