When we stayed in Argyll in the late 80s my dad (self-employed in forestry) had a forwarder to remove the felled logs/bings of pulp (softwood) down to the road for the wood lorries to collect, for my 12th birthday i got a 24cc chainsaw to help with brashing and thinning out which for a kid was quite a **** cool present really and needless to say i’d been brought up wi machinery and so-called dangerous equipment of all sorts from a very young age so have a healthy regard for safety and my limbs, From my birthday onwards he taught me to drive the forwarder bit by bit so by the time i was 13 or thereabouts i had free reign of the beast and loved going to work wi him at weekends and when i bunked off school as i got to drive about the hillside and tried to avoid setting off the tilt alarms but sometimes you just had to go by judgement and a sharp intake of breath – bloody good fun thinking back on it now and i had my own logo’d up boilersuit and everything – right down to my mini logging boots – made very good money for my labour which as a teenage kid bought me all sorts of stuff from old mk2 escorts to motocross bikes to canoes etc…etc, all ragged rotten up in the desolate Argyll singletrack roads and forest roads along wi paddling about Loch Awe with my early muddy fox mtb in the front of the canoe – halcyon childhood days indeed 😀
Dunno if i’d want to be driving one of those things for living these days though, admittingly the money is very good (a mate drives one of the Largest John Deere harvesters) but he basically lives in his mobile home/campervan in a forest for weeks at a time on his tod, rarely seeing a soul from day to day and when he does get time off he tends to get a bit hedonistic wi drink etc, but i guess it depends on your personality. I know he earns 7 times my current salary, but i get to go home every night and ride my bike when i want (i’m trying to convince myself i have the better deal).