big wheels n pl Also big-wheel rig chiefly Nth hist
= timber wheels n pl.
1877 Cincinnati Daily Gaz. (OH) 9 May 3/5, A great casting, weighing ten tons, was in progress from Swift’s mills . . when the large wheels broke down. Adam Wagner, who was moving it, went to Cincinnati for a stronger pair of “big wheels,” and succeeded in getting the load swung under the wheels. 1897 Frank Leslie’s Pop. Mth. 44.165 nWI, Some of these [=paths] are widened into roads, over which the logs are hauled subsequently by the “big wheels.” This piece of apparatus consists of a pair of wheels, ten or twelve feet in diameter, with six-inch tires. They are connected by a large, square axle, having the arms on which the wheels revolve on one side of the square. Chains and a tongue are attached to the axle. When the tongue is turned over backward the chains attached to the top of the axle are lowered and passed around a number of logs, hauled together for that purpose, when the tongue is brought over forward it lifts the logs from the ground, and in this way they are hauled to the landing on the bank of a lake. 1897 Overland Mth. (2d ser) 29.216 nCA, The land on which the timber stands being level, the company uses big wheels for hauling the logs to their railroad. 1903 Albuquerque Morning Jrl. (NM) 17 Nov 6/2, [Advt:] Wanted—Loggers and teams. . . We have a few log trucks and big wheels. 1914 Ludington Daily News (MI) 7 Feb 4/6, “Skidders” next take the logs and with horses skid them to the wheel roads, there they are loaded on the big wheels and hauled to the railroad. 1932 Rhinelander Daily News (WI) 7 Apr 2/2, A set of “big wheels” such as were used in logging camps of the north woods before the days of tractors and modern equipment, have been donated by the Sawyer-Goodman Lumber company. 1939 Escanaba Daily Press (MI) 8 Sept 7/4, The Sheldon Lumber company, operating north of Emerson has finally given up the use of the old-fashioned big logging wheels. . . The big wheels which are more or less a relic of the old pine logging days, have been used by the Sheldon company to take out hard-wood logs until recently. 1941 Writers’ Program Guide Washington 73, A high-wheeled carriage or “big-wheel rig” was chained to a log and rolled away—the whole looking like an underslung siege gun. 1967 DARE Tape MI47, Big wheels was about twelve feet high, and they had a crooked axle. . . They used bunching teams and they’d bunch up, say, five, six, seven logs in the woods. Then they’d drive straddle of these logs with the big wheels. 1970 DARE FW Addit MI121, Big wheels. . . Used for hauling logs out of the forest in summer.