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| Stories from the Job Site |
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Grading the Crown of Fire
Magellan sat starboard off the Argentine coast contemplating the dead arctic air before him. Suddenly, flickers of light danced in the distance until a coastline of fire arose from the icy surf. “Whoa,” said the seagoing Spaniard, “it’s like a crown of fire, a ‘tierra del fuego!’” But it was only the native Yamana tribe warming their loincloths around shoreline campfires. They were burning a rare and beautiful hardwood called lenga that grows exclusively at this enchanted South American longitude. It’s tough to harvest, but our customer has built a lenga logging camp that even the Yamanas could dig.
In Tierra del Fuego, most everything is fashioned out of lenga — a wood that’s as beautiful as cedar and as hard as ash. No one, it would seem, could go far wrong logging and milling this wood for sale to locals and exotic wood lovers worldwide. But there are obstacles like Argentine government restrictions that are tougher than a $2 steak. But Roberto Fernandez had a plan. Fortunately for Deere, it involves a 670D Motor Grader.
He’s a lumberjack and he’s okay
In 2001 a nationwide recession hit the area hard, and Roberto had the brilliant idea of building a sawmill deep in a lenga forest. By eliminating the costly step of moving felled trees to a distant mill, a very efficient; business model was born. Roberto put his dream to work building a home, employee cottages, and state-of-the-art sawmill smack-dab in the middle of a cold nowhere. By treating his employees well with a full-time cook, great living facilities, and a check each week, he built a successful business on 50,000 acres (20,234 hectares) that churns out 12,000 cubic feet (340 cubic meters) daily of furniture- and construction-grade lumber and the most beautiful hardwood flooring going.
You can get there from here
Before we carry on too much about the yellowish wood, we should cut to the yellowish iron that helps make all this possible. “Sí, it’s one of my toys,” says Roberto of his new 670D. “We bought it to grade our logging roads back into shape after the hauling trucks tear them up. This must be a completely self-sufficient mill for our plan to work, so I went to a dealer I could trust — Palmero, my John Deere dealer.”
Environment
The Argentine government allows Roberto to log 245 acres (100 hectares) per year, and the lenga must be cut in 197-foot (60-meter) diameter circles so as to encourage reforestation. And many protected species of critter and plant — migratory birds, moss, worm, and even pesky mosquitoes — are also under the watchful eye of the Secretaria de Resources Naturales. But Roberto doesn’t complain and, in fact, takes great pride in protecting the natural balance of nature.
Smooth operator
Great grader operators are born, not made, they say. But the new 670 is the first; one Luis Astudillio has operated, and he’s working that blade like a samurai. What gives? “I took to the 670D right away after auditioning a few others. I talked to other grader men who recommended Deere, but we demo'ed Cat and Champion graders just to be sure. I found the competing machines’ controls to be stiff, but the 670’s were very smooth. So far (550 hours), we’ve experienced 100-percent uptime and plenty of productivity. One thing I really appreciate is the clear view of the blade.”
Happy trails
We checked in with Roberto before hitting the (nicely graded) road. He regaled us with a story about his grandfather emigrating from Spain to Tierra del Fuego in 1908 when it was a penal colony and the population of 800 was predominantly criminal. But despite the hardscrabble environment, he was always able to put food on the family table. Nearly 100 years later, his innovative grandson is putting food on many families’ tables.
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