The world’s biggest harvester on eight wheels

The world premieres are coming thick and fast at this year’s Elmia Wood. And more than one world record is being broken. Two days before the fair Tigercat unloaded the world’s biggest wheeled harvester at the Port of Gothenburg.

The harvester is the Tigercat 1185 and is a prototype direct from the factory in Canada. It is probably the biggest wheeled harvester in the world to date.

“We’ve developed it in response to customer demands in North America,” explains Tigercat’s product manager Jon Cooper. “They want to switch to the CTL method but they want bigger and more robust machines than the ones available on the market.”

The machine has eight wheels for low ground pressure and maximum accessibility. It is driven by a diesel engine with 308 horsepower and weighs 34 tonnes. It was developed 100 percent by Tigercat, including the engine, transmission, crane etc.

“It’s an extremely robust machine suited to difficult conditions with steep terrain and large-diameter stems,” Cooper adds. “It has separate hydraulic systems for the crane, harvesting head etc. so it can deliver maximum performance in every situation.”

The crane has a unique design, partly to give a perfect line of sight in all directions, and partly to give high performance even when the boom is very extended. At 8.9 metres of boom length, the harvesting head can handle up to 2.5 tonnes, and at the maximum length of 11 metres the limit is 1.8 tonnes. This in turn creates the capacity for felling large-diameter stems and makes the CTL method more competitive even in stands of such trees.

The harvester features many innovations. One is being the first such machine to meet a new regulation in Canada’s province of British Columbia. The windshield must be able to withstand a saw chain that comes loose and is thrown against the operator’s cab. This is the first curved windshield that can handle such a blow.

Tigercat also exhibited other new machines: the LH822D tracked harvester and the 1085C forwarder. With the latter Tigercat has created a new size class with a load capacity of 25 tonnes.

The machines exhibited by Tigercat at Elmia Wood are primarily designed for markets dominated by large-diameter trees and the whole-stem method. In such conditions, large and stable machines are necessary to make the CTL method convincing. But there is also an interest in such machines in the Nordic markets.

“We have customers here in Sweden, among other places, who appreciate extra stable machines,” Jon Cooper says.