Caleb Stroud, Firewood & handling writer

My guides cover everything around the cylinder: how a round gets onto the beam, how the machine gets to the woodpile, and what you do with a cord of split wood afterwards. Buyers think about those parts least, and owner reviews complain about them most.

A lot of my time goes into the dull pages of the manual. Beam height in horizontal and in vertical position. Hitch ball size, and whether road towing is allowed at all, and at what speed. Tire size, whether the stand folds, what the thing weighs empty. I line those numbers up across models, because the listings rarely put them in the same place.

Then come the reviews. I look for the stories that repeat: a vertical mode nobody uses because the lever sits too low, a towing tongue that bent on a gravel drive, a splitter too heavy for one person to roll off a trailer.

I don't haul these machines around for the site, and I won't pretend otherwise. I read carefully, compare honestly and tell you what to measure in your own yard before you order.