A SPECIALIZED SKIN PATHOLOGIST IN IDAHO FINDS OPERATING A BOBCAT COMPACT TRACK LOADER AT HIS SAWMILL TO BE A REWARDING EXPERIENCE. WORK ONCE DONE WITH MANUAL LABOR IS SIMPLIFIED THANKS TO HIS BOBCAT T650 AND SEVERAL ATTACHMENTS.
For 43-year-old Dr. Ryan Cole, woodworking has been a hobby since he was in the eighth grade. He grew his toolbox little by little, and today he has a very remarkable machine that enables him to run a small custom sawmill outside of Boise, Idaho. That machine is a Bobcat®
T650 compact track loader.
Cole is a skin pathologist who trained at Mayo Clinic. He describes himself and his responsibilities as a cancer diagnostician. “I’m a cancer-answer man,” he says. “Day in and day out, I’m looking through a microscope. I probably look at about two million cells each day. So I see between 100 and 200 patients a day through the microscope. I’m the one who renders the diagnosis. I sub- specialize in skin cancer.”
After spending as many as 10 hours a day at work, Dr. Cole enjoys coming home to his 10-acre property and working in his sawmill. “I take local backyard trees, urban timber, and turn them back into something useful, instead of having them go to the landfi ll,” Cole says. “There’s a ton of beautiful wood here. Boise is known as the City of Trees. A lot of trees have been planted here in the past 100 years, so now there’s a lot
30 WorkSaver | SUMMER 2012
of good hardwood, maple, walnut, oak, cherry and ash in people’s backyards.
“As the trees mature, people want them removed. I work with a couple of local tree trimmers, and they tell me when they’ve got a beautiful English walnut or a black walnut. They will cut it down and I will drive my Bobcat loader to pick it up. I’ll put it on my trailer or on my truck and bring it here to the sawmill. Then I’ll turn it into slabs. I create slab tabletops or furniture from the wood. You have to know how to mill them, to be able to read the log and make a custom cut right through it. I can make good gun stocks from the black walnut.” Cole even makes guitars from some of the wood, another hobby of his.
Cole purchased the M-Series Bobcat compact track loader from H & E Equipment in Boise. It was the fi rst piece of equipment that he owned and operated at his sawmill. “Prior to the Bobcat loader, I used a lot of back muscle,” he says. “It was a couple of guys lifting logs, moving logs and dragging things with chains, winches and trucks. With the Bobcat loader, I can move a lot more wood to create more slabs.”
According to Cole the Bobcat loader doesn’t have a problem lifting logs onto the saw mill. “The Bobcat loader works like a charm,” he says. “It’s smooth, it’s strong and it’s heavy-duty. I like the joystick controls because they’re very intuitive.”