MECHANICSVILLE, Virginia¬—Hanneman Forest Products has shifted gears somewhat in recent years, putting one segment of its business on the back burner, ramping up another, and even expanding in a new direction. The company is operating the first Tigercat 6500 track chipper in North America.
Hanneman Forest Products is a family business based in Hanover County, outside of Richmond, Virginia. It has 10-12 employees, men working at the two wood yards, in the field, and truck drivers. The figure also includes founder John E. Hanneman, CEO, and his wife, Donna, who work in their home office. The couple also have a maintenance shop on the property that contains their home. John, 69, guides the business and is the strategic planner; Donna handles all invoicing and billing.
Their two sons, John-Scott and Evan, work in the business, too. John-Scott, who talked to TimberLine for this article, operates equipment; Evan is the company’s full-time mechanic.
Hanneman Forest Products near Richmond, Virginia, is operating the first Tigercat 6500 track chipper in North America.
The company’s primary products are chips and mulch. It has annual revenues in the range of $3-3.5 million, depending on sales and quotas. About 60 percent of revenues come from sales of biomass and about 40 percent from sales of mulch.
All clean wood material is chipped to produce biomass. The rest goes into a grinder to be made into mulch or a natural dyed mulch product. The company also generates revenue from land-clearing operations, merchandising wood from those jobs, and sales of topsoil. The company’s main market for biomass is a power plant about 32 miles away.
Hanneman Forest Products has been featured in TimberLine in the past. The previous article focused on the company’s firewood operations.
However, they exited the firewood business several years ago. “It got to be a little more of a headache,” said John-Scott, 32. Labor was an issue. At the same time, the company was experiencing an uptick in markets for biomass. Chipping became more profitable and easier, he explained, than dealing with numerous phone calls and emails for a single load of firewood. “We put it on the back burner and changed the business up a little bit.”
The Tigercat 6500 chipper has side walls like a horizontal grinder so it also can accommodate very crooked logs as well as block and chunk material.
About 60-70 percent of the raw material for the company’s operations comes from tree service businesses and contractors who are charged a tipping fee to dispose of wood. The company also buys about another 10 percent from loggers and land-clearing contractors. The remainder comes from the company’s own land-clearing work.
The company had a chipper but decided to replace it as demand for chips increased. The previous machine was geared more for chipping logs and tops – stem wood, explained John-Scott. The Tigercat 6500 can easily handle that type of wood, but it has side walls like a horizontal grinder, so it also can accommodate very crooked logs as well as block and chunk material typically delivered by tree service contractors.
The Hannemans considered another brand but went with Tigercat. It is the first production machine Tigercat delivered in North America. (A prototype machine was delivered into South America.) The company obtained the machine from Forest Pro, which represents Tigercat in Virginia, in the fall of 2022.
“Tigercat engineers seemed confident in their product and its production,” said John-Scott. “Tigercat is king of the woods. We were confident they would supply a machine that would stand up.”
“It performs great,” added John-Scott. “It’s a very high production machine.” The Tigercat can produce 500-600 cubic yards of chips per hour, he indicated. Chipping pulpwood and tops, it can produce a 100-yard load as fast as 10-12 minutes.
The company has two Diamond Z 1463-B tub grinders for its wood grinding operations; the machines are powered by a Cat 1,200 hp engine.
The Tigercat 6500 is a high-capacity, down-swing chipper designed and built for consistent quality chip production. Powered by a Caterpillar® C27 Tier 4f 1,050 hp engine, it is a heavy-duty drum chipper designed for high throughput and reduced knife wear. The machine is extremely versatile with the ability to be configured as a chipper or grinder. Applications include processing material from forest management to demolition debris.
Two rotor options available: a four-pocket rotor producing chips 1/2 to 7/8-inch and a three-pocket rotor for chips measuring 1-3/16 to 1-9/16-inch.
The adjustable infeed angle allows easy and productive feeding of both long and short material. A simple remote-control drive system provides easy mobility onsite. It is equipped with an easy-to-use touchscreen for machine monitoring and function adjustment. Heavy-duty pivoting track frames eliminate the need for folding discharge for transport.
Maintenance is simple with convenient service access; a split hog box design opens for full and complete access to the rotor and screens. Screens are hydraulically retractable for easy maintenance. Anvils are protected with smart shear pins to monitor for microfractures to immediately recognize a compromised pin.
(For more information, visit www.tigercat.com.)
LEMAC shear attachment being used to cut a log. ‘We also use their buckets and hydraulic thumbs on our excavators,’ says John-Scott Hanneman.
Forest Pro operates three dealer locations in Virginia. In addition to Tigercat, the company represents several other manufacturers of equipment for loggers, including Develon, CSI, Rotobec, Quadco and Pro Pac.
The company has received excellent support both from Forest Pro and Tigercat, said John-Scott. “The factory support has been great. The dealer support has been fantastic as well. Both of them are very quick on the phone, quick to respond if we have a small issue. They’re Johnny-on-the-spot. The factory and dealer have been absolutely phenomenal.”
Hanneman Forest Products operates two wood yards, about 30 minutes apart. One, closer to Richmond, the Mechanicsville yard, is seven acres and is actually two sites almost adjacent to each other. The other site is 2.5 acres in Rockville, a rural area, about 30 minutes west, and most mulch coloring operations are performed there.
The company has two Diamond Z 1463-B tub grinders for its wood grinding operations. The machines are powered by a Cat 1,200 hp engine. One tub grinder is stationed at each yard. They were purchased in used condition in 2021 and 2022 with only about 2,000-2,500 hours. Both machines, supported by Commonwealth Equipment, are used for grinding wood material to produce mulch.
It’s convenient to have two identical machines, noted John-Scott. The company stocks identical filters and parts for the machines. In a pinch they could swap out parts if necessary.
One Diamond Z is stationed most of the time at the Rockville yard. The second machine splits time at the other yard grinding for mulch, grinding clean material for boiler fuel, and on-site grinding at land-clearing jobs.
John-Scott has been pleased with the machines. They average 500-700 yards per hour, he said. “They’re very simple, very productive, very durable – fantastic machines.”
Commonwealth Equipment, based in Ashley, Pennsylvania, represents manufacturers of equipment for processing stone and aggregate material as well as wood. For processing wood material, it offers Diamond Z grinders and Eggersman shredders, and it represents several manufacturers for blending and batching and screening wood material. The company has been in business since 1999 and offers sales of new and used equipment, parts, rentals, parts and service.
Hanneman Forest Products, which is a member of the Virginia Loggers Association, did occasional land-clearing jobs over the years but in recent years has focused more on the business and geared up and staffed up for it. The company clears land for any kind of project: new roads or widening roads, house lots and subdivisions, pastureland, and so on. “We go wherever the job takes us,” said John-Scottt. The average land-learing job is 2-20 acres. “We’ll do bigger if need be.”
For land-clearing jobs, the company uses Tapscott Brothers Logging for felling and skidding trees to a landing. Hanneman Forest Products is equipped with a trailer-mounted Prentice 384 knuckleboom loader with a pull-through delimber and CSI ground saw for processing the trees. Wood that does not make a good saw log and slash are hauled to one of the company’s yards.
The company is equipped with four Komatsu excavators and two John Deere models. After the trees are felled and skidded off the site, a couple of excavators with LEMAC stump shears are used to extract and break up stumps. The company also has a couple excavators with root rakes and a Cat dozer with a root rake to gather the woody debris.
For operations in the company’s wood yards it also has a pair of Doppstadt trommels – one at each yard – and a fleet of Komatsu wheel loaders. It has five tractor-trailers – four Kenworths and one Peterbilt – for hauling.
Doppstadt trommel screening wood material to remove oversize pieces. Hanneman Forest Products has two, one in each yard.
The Dopopstadt trommels are used to separate material that will be marketed for biomass and larger material that will be processed further into mulch by grinding. The trommels have an interchangeable drum that is used for the mulch coloring process and can be easily switched out in 30-40 minutes. The company offers mulch in two colors beside natural mulch: black and brown. Coloring is accomplished with Colobiotics mulch colorant.
The majority of mulch sales are wholesale to landscape contractors who buy a truckload at a time, either delivered or picking it up with their own truck. Homeowners also are welcome.
In his free time John-Scott enjoys bird hunting. “Doves, ducks, snow geese, crows – you name it, we’ll chase it.”
The Hannemans have no immediate plans for altering the course of the business. “We’re pretty steady at the moment,” said John-Scott. “Just looking to maximize our men and equipment. We’ve got the foundation laid for high production.”
