We have been investigating a new production system for forest biomass, the "integrated wood logging system," in which the wood logs are forwarded without being cut into butt logs and stem butts of logging residues (e.g., stump logs) during the bucking process. This results in the integrated wood logs being longer than the conventional wood logs. Therefore, we developed a new forwarder for the integrated wood logging system. First, we designed a prototype forwarder with an extended loading platform at the back and then developed a forwarder with a lateral loading platform. In this study, we evaluated the performance of the loading work using these machines.
