If you ever wondered what Bugs Bunny's Tasmanian Devil would look like as a piece of forestry equipment, we found out. It's the Kershaw Klearway 500 brush cutter.

This is a big industrial clear cutter and stump grinder with giant tractor tires, so it can handle almost any terrain. Imagine a shark's mouth placed on a 108" wide rotary cylinder and spinning on the front of a tractor, cutting down and grinding up small trees, leaving a mulch trail in its wake.

Rows and rows of metal teeth make short work of all vegetation in its path, making it ideal for clearing out entire right-of-ways or even forests. It can handle trees up to 20 feet high and several inches thick.

They can cut down large trees by grinding away at the trunk several feet off the ground, and then pushing it over, before using the grinding wheel to buzz the remaining stump down to ground level. Then, the Klearway grinder cylinder can grind up the tree, virtually disintegrating it, leaving an 8 foot wide mulch path as the only evidence that the tree ever existed.

There's a YouTube video of the Kershaw Klearway that will, frankly, haunt my sleep for weeks.



The Kershaw line of equipment is now owned by Progress Rail, which is part of the Caterpillar family, but there are other manufacturers of similar equipment, like Geo-Boy.

Townsend Tree Service has 10 of these clear cutting mowers around our various service areas. Equipment manager, Jason Swoveland, keeps the company’s fleet of specialty vehicles moving around to wherever our customers need them, in close coordination with our field managers.

Just know that wherever a right-of-way needs to be cut, paths need to be cleared, and unwanted saplings need to be cleared quickly and efficiently, the Kershaw Klearway can make short work of anything in its path.