DCHP-1 Online

skidder Lumbering

• 1 n. a logger employed in building and piling a skidway (def. 2a).

  See also: skid ((n.)) (def. 1a)  skidway (def. 2a)  

  • 1910  Further on the skidders were at work. They roll the logs up a spiked incline by means of canthooks.
  • 1961  Each gang working together in the woods--­logmakers, road cutters, teamsters and skidder--took a lunch in a cotton bag.

• 2 n. Hist. a logger who built or maintained the skidroad (def. 1).

  See also: skidroad ((n.))  (def. 1)  

  • 1956  These were . . . the skidders who cut short hemlock logs and embedded them crosswise [to make skidroads]. . . .

• 3a n. a teamster or driver employed in hauling logs from a cutting area.

  • 1957  The work goes on the year round and men work in teams of two--a cutter, with his power saw and axe, and a skidder, who bundles the logs and skids them to the road with his horse.

• 3b n. See 1942 quote. [See picture at skyline.]

  See also: skidding (def. 2)  skidding line  

  • 1919  [There were] two Ledgerwood [sic] skidders, one yarder, one swing, one ground swing and one roader, and not very high ball.
  • 1942  _SKIDDER. A yarding machine with a tight sky line, and for this reason able to haul from greater distances than the ordinary yarder with its endless slack sky line.

• 3c n. a powerful vehicle used for drawing or hauling logs from a cutting area.

  See also: skitter  

  • 1965  Then it [the "harvester"] lays the denuded trunk on the ground and another machine, called a "skidder," takes it to a landing area where it is cut into pulpwood lengths.
  • 1966  [Advert.] The wheeled skidder has proven its reliability. . . .