Timberjack is a manufacturer of forestry machinery for both cut-to-length and whole tree logging, and was a subsidiary of

John Deere Deere & Company, Trade name, doing business as John Deere (), is an American corporation that manufactures agricultural machinery, heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, Transmission (mechanical device), transmi ...

from 2000 to 2006.

History

Timberjack was founded in

Woodstock, Ontario Woodstock is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The city has a population of 46,705 according to the Canada 2021 Census, 2021 Canadian census. Woodstock is the seat of Oxford County, Ontario, Oxford County, at the head of the Thames River, On ...

, in the 1950s by Wes Magill and Robert Simmons, who designed an articulated four-wheel drive

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a Trailer (vehicle), trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or constructio ...

with a winch at the back. They produced a prototype and production took off from there. There were affiliations with King Trailer ind. and with Timberland Ellicott Corp. before Eaton Corporation purchased Timberjack and named it the Forestry Equipment Division. The traditional color of all Timberjack products was a reddish orange. In 1992, the color was changed to green with black and yellow trim. John Deere purchased Timberjack and continued the green, black and yellow paint scheme. Timberjack was owned by the

Eaton Corporation Eaton Corporation plc is an American-Irish-domiciled multinational power management company, with a primary administrative center in Beachwood, Ohio. Eaton has more than 85,000 employees and sells products to customers in more than 175 countr ...

in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984 Timberjack made a

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is the acquisition of a company using a significant proportion of borrowed money (Leverage (finance), leverage) to fund the acquisition with the remainder of the purchase price funded with private equity. The assets of t ...

from Eaton to become an independent company. Timberjack was acquired by FMG (ForestMachineGroup), owned by Finnish

Rauma-Repola Metso Corporation (natively ) was a Finnish industrial machinery company focusing on providing technology and services for mining, and aggregates industries. On 30 June 2020, Metso's partial demerger and combination of Metso Minerals business ...

. After a short period carrying the double-name FMG-Timberjack, in 1993 Timberjack became the brandname for the group. Other well known forest machine brands, which have been incorporated into FMG-Timberjack were Swedish Kockums, ÖSA and Bruun System as well as Finnish LOKOMO. In December 2000 John Deere bought Timberjack from Metso Corporation (formerly Rauma-Repola) for $570 million which also included the purchase of a separate company, Waratah, a leading manufacturer of heavy-duty harvester heads. As of June, 2006, at the forestry fair "Florence Wood", the Timberjack product line was discontinued, and John Deere, its parent company, became the largest single brand of forestry equipment. Its global market share for both cut-to-length and full tree equipment was very strong shortly after the acquisition.

References

External links

{{John Deere John Deere vehicles Log transport