Glen Morton – Town & Country Wood Supplies

At one stage we had about five workers working for us just cutting trees down and doing firewood. We’d only ever use a 12 ton digger that’s all we ever used. Then it got to the stage it was getting a bit hard on the workers you know. We thought there’s got to be easier ways of making money, so that’s when we thought well we’ve got to find an easy route forward because we were getting busier and busier with our firewood market so we thought well how do we do more firewood with less men?

The only way to do it was by having a processor and Hakki Pilke at the time just had it had good machines out there. When we first got our first Hakki Pilke we didn’t really put too much plantation wood through it where we’re still putting like branch wood out of big ugly trees and they were bent and buckled and and we but we persevered it was still quicker doing it that way and then we started getting a bit of plantation logs and firewood logs and that made a big difference. We doubled our production pretty quick there because we had the right trees for the light right logs for the right machine.

That was 10 odd years ago and that’s we’re still stuck with them and that’s why today we’re still running Hakki Pilke’s. So our the fifth machine easy was a big jump from the 47 and then after we went to the 50 and then we went to the Hakki Pilke 43 Pro, which was a big jump and then we got a 50 pro as well. So the Hakki Pilke 50 Pro is a good machine takes that bigger wood which is great for that wood up to 50 centimeters. It handles it not a problem. With Hakki Pilke and with John at ForestQuip, you actually get a good value you get a good trade-in price so which is very inviting to keep your machinery updated.

– Safety Standards
The thing I like about Hakki Pilke these days is they’re idiot-proof. Real good safety features if you’re not sure what you’re doing, you open the lid everything stops. They’ve got good safety devices stop switches in the right spot. Everything just seems to be covered up nicely. Especially with uh with our standards for work safety these days, we can’t afford to have accidents anymore because we’re sort of in the in one of the sort of worst industries for accidents with the forestry. It’s just the nature of the game, so so with Hakke Pilke, the safety standards – they’re the top of line safety devices on them which is very good because when you’ve got a new operator on them you don’t have to explain too much because it’s self-explanatory. They can just jump on and you know that you have to watch them 12 hours a day. They know as soon as the lid comes up, they can’t touch the knife nothing works.

So the thing about the machine they enjoy working them so which is a great thing because they’re not scared of it, they don’t get bored on it and it’s just increases their production more and more every year so that’s the good thing about Hakki Pilke. They’re looking at ways of actually increasing people’s production and increasing the safety issues as well so good on your Hakki Pilke you’ve done very well.

– ForestQuip parts & maintenance
With John from ForestQuip he’s understands that you’ve got to be working to make money, so he’s sort of he helps it helps a lot there with different ideas and bits and pieces which is good. And the product is is a top of line product so to purchase something is simple when something breaks down he’s got a very good backup service. Normally it’s just a phone call, and he normally answers straight away and a lot of the time he can talk me through something to fix on the phone.

But now we’re up to about number four of the Hakki Pilke we’ve had in the past so i’m sort of i’ve got a good idea of when something’s wrong how to fix it unless it’s something serious like if something goes wrong John will either jump into shoot and come straight down and fix it for us. In the past we done hydraulic pump on a big job we’re done and there’s one phone call he was down and six hours later with another pump pumping it and we’re up and operating again. So the backup service is a 100%.

With the Hakki Pilke’s they are quite easily fixed as well for you know, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know how they work. If you take your time into it and look into it they’ve got a real good manual on fixing things in parts and and how they operate. In the past we’ve never had no big major issues between John and myself and an electrical sparky, we can get everything fixed pretty good and pretty quick.