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What’s Your Job?

Chris McMillan’s feature covers roles, responsibilities and contributions of various Tigercat team members. This time around we look at the career of veteran Tigercat designer, Jon Cooper.

“Success comes from timing, hard work, and luck,” says Jon Cooper, Vice President, Engineering. “And when I look back on my career, it has been very much that way.” In June 1987, straight out of college, Jon Cooper started working at MacDonald Steel as a production planner. At the time, the fabrication company was supplying components to many well-known mobile equipment manufacturers. Jon held different roles and worked on various projects at MacDonald Steel until owner Ken MacDonald hired Tony Iarocci with the aim of starting a new company to produce forestry equipment.

At that point Jon became the second official employee of Tigercat. As Ken and Tony were doing market research, Jon was creating layout drawings to help visualize and document their ideas. “I drew many machines that we were considering like forwarders, feller forwarders, wheel harvesters, skidders, three-wheel and four-wheel feller bunchers.” Nearly 35 years later, Jon still has printed copies of these drawings.

In early December 1991, Ken decided that the first Tigercat machine would be a drive-to-tree feller buncher. Tony, Jon and industry pioneer John Kurelek worked on designing the 726. In April 1992, the prototype machine debuted at a logging exposition in Tifton, Georgia.
Jon Cooper and John Kurelek check out an early 726 feller buncher.
Jon Cooper and John Kurelek check out an early 726 feller buncher.
Jon’s roles would soon expand and multiply as the Tigercat 726 gained popularity and dealer representation throughout the southern US. Aside from working on the design side, Jon also took care of other job functions until additional people were hired. Jon recalls, “When machines started shipping to dealers, I was travelling extensively teaching service technicians how to set up and troubleshoot the machines, basically service training. When I was doing service training I had a card for service manager, and then when I would go to talk to people in the parts department, I was parts manager. I would also talk to suppliers, so I had a card that said engineering on it. I did that until we hired people for those positions.”

Jon eventually became product manager for the wheel feller buncher group where he would work on designing and releasing the smaller 720 buncher. When it was decided that Tigercat would enter the skidder market, Jon led the engineering team that developed the original 630, released in 1996. The 620, 635, and 640 clambunk models would soon follow.

Cut-to-length

In 2000, Tigercat purchased the assets of Hemek, a Swedish company that manufactured a line of forwarders and wheel harvesters. This would mark the entrance of Tigercat into the cut-to-length market. Along with the skidder product manager role, Jon took on the integration and development of the forwarder product line. Wheel harvesters were added to his list of responsibilities soon after.

The company and product offering continued to grow at a brisk pace and Jon handed off the skidder product group to Shawn Pette. Jon focused on developing CTL products and later, for several years, managed the Tigercat AB cut-to-length sales team located in Hede, Sweden. Gradually the Hemek designed machines were replaced with Tigercat machines like the 1018 and 1014 forwarders, and the 1135 harvester.
Man inside harvester cab
Jon checks the controls on an 1185 harvester.
In July 2015, Jon transitioned into his current position as Vice President, Engineering for cut-to-length (CTL) systems. Engineering VPs manage Tigercat engineering teams to create and support the product lines, from the initial concept stage through design, development and testing, and then ongoing support throughout the product’s life cycle. Jon’s area of responsibility includes all forwarder, harvester, and related harvesting head models, and assisting the sales managers with market and dealer development for CTL products.

Along with Ben Blackman, VP Engineering, full tree systems, Jon oversees the many engineering technical groups. These specialized groups work across product lines to create engineering standards and best practices in such areas as electrical, hydraulics, fluid conveyance, product compliance, welding development, finite element analysis, control systems, and design systems.
Man reading engineering drawings.
Jon Cooper looks at the original 1991 concept drawings he created of what would be Tigercat’s first machine.
When asked to sum up his time at Tigercat, Jon replies, “I have had an extraordinary experience working here. It started with a strong foundation in manufacturing, which led to an incredible career of product development. Ken’s choice to develop forestry machines, Tony’s decision to join in the endeavour, then having the opportunity to learn from Tony and John Kurelek was truly a combination of good timing and good fortune. With Tony and John’s extensive experience in forestry machine development, I received a highly condensed education in how to engineer premium forestry machines. Just being part of the growth of Tigercat from nothing to what it is today has been an extremely unique experience that not many people get to be part of. It has kept me highly engaged for a very long time and has been a tremendous opportunity that I truly appreciate.”

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