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for our customers. We used Pierce Pacific under- carriages, and made sticks and booms and cab risers and cab guards. That’s what dealers did for decades. When Caterpillar finally made their own forestry-specific log loader, it was a very big deal. Halton was very involved in the product validation of the first ones before they came out on the mar- ket ...the first 320s, 325s and 330s.”
When Mike Coiner came to Peterson after the Papé acquisition, he spent a lot of time in the woods talking to customers. “The big complaint back in 2004 was that Cat’s 330C didn’t have enough swing torque. So I worked with Peterson’s engineer out of San Leandro and we came up with a high swing torque fix2. We did a half-dozen of them, and then magically, Cat came out with their own system.” When Peterson acquired the Halton territory in 2010, Halton was in the middle of val- idating the first Cat 568 Log Loader, which was based off the 330D LL. The 568 debuted at the Oregon Logging Conference in Eugene in 2011 and was a big hit. It was Cat’s answer to the slug- gish swing torque of the 330C, including smooth- er hydraulics and better fuel economy. With its dual swing torque circuits, the 568 was capable of swinging huge logs uphill to the landing without losing speed.
In late 2020, Peterson worked with customer D&S Logging to field test Cat’s new 538 NGH, pow- ered by a Tier 4 final engine.3, 4 “Before Cat, we had a 3754 John Deere shovel but I wasn’t happy with it,” says Don Arndt, owner of the Sweet Home, Oregon-based company. “It didn’t have the swing torque we needed and the hydraulics ran hot. By the time word was out that the Cat 568 was king, we already had a good relationship with Caterpil- lar. And I had heard from other loggers that no- body was disappointed in the 568. So we bought
PACIFIC LOGGING CONGRESS
The Pacific Logging Congress is focused on education and sustainability. It is not a static trade show at
a fairground. Every four years, members from the Pacific Northwest put on a live logging show out in the woods. Over the three-day event, they bus in thousands of kids and walk them through the forest and teach them all about forestry. The other three years, members hold smaller conferences focused on education. Duane Doyle Jr. joined the group back in 2014 and has worked his way through the rotation of responsibilities necessary to the organization. In 2025, he will be president of the group—making him one of the youngest members to lead the organiza- tion. The PLC is the oldest such association in North America, dating back to 1909. Their purpose is to ed- ucate politicians, teachers, students and the general public on the need for sound, responsible forestry to supply global demand for wood fiber.
  2 Peterson’s high swing torque machine was a single drive that produced as much swing torque as the dual swing system Caterpillar developed for their late model 330D LL. The early 330D’s still had the single swing circuits of the 330C.
3 NGH stands for Next Generation HEX (hydraulic excavator).
4 D&S Logging field test of the 538 NGH log loader is targeted for completion by year-end 2021.
568 log loader at work in the woods
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