“It’s not just muscle power,” says logger Henry Gundlach about working in the woods. Gundlach, the owner of the South Norfolk Lumber Company in northwest Connecticut, is skilled at the demanding work of cutting trees down with a chainsaw. But these days machines do more of the work. That makes logging more efficient, safer, and more comfortable for people working in the woods: the newest machines now have heated/air-conditioned cabs complete with WiFi!

For example, when Gundlach has to move logs out of the woods, he relies on this machine, a 1995 Tree Farmer Forwarder. Carrying logs out of the woods in the forwarder rather than dragging them out reduces damage to the soil and to the logs themselves. But the forwarder is big machine and “takes a lot of patience,” he says. It weighs 12 tons and holds about 4 cords of wood. It also takes a lot of maintenance, he added, noting that a new one would cost about $300,000.