Early skidders were pulled by a team of oxen, horses or mules. The driver would straddle the cart over felled logs, where dangling tongs would be positioned to raise the end of the log off the ground. The team pulled the tongue forward, allowing the log to "skid" along between the rolling wheels. These were known as "slip-tongue wheels" Starting in the early 1920s, animals were gradually replaced by gasoline-powered crawlers, although some small operations continue to use horses. In other places, steel "arches" were used behind the crawlers. Similar in function to the slip-tongue wheels, arches were used to reduce friction by raising up one end of the load, which was dangled from a cable which in turn ran down the back of the arch, & was raised or lowered by the crawler's winch. Another piece similar to the arch was the "bummer", which was simply a small trailer to be towed behind a crawler, on top of which one end of the log load would rest.

The early mechanical skidders were steam powered. They traveled on railroads, known as "dummylines" and the felled trees were dragged or "skidded" to the railroad where they were later loaded onto rail cars. Some were just steam donkeys, others were more complicated. One popular brand was the Clyde Skidder, built by Clyde Ironworks in Duluth, Minnesota. The Clyde skidder illustrated was photographed at the Marathon Lumber Company logging operations near Newton, Mississippi in the early 1920s. Although these machines appear to be large and cumbersome, they were true workhorses of their day. The Clyde was capable of retrieving logs from four different points at the same time. Each cable, or lead, was approximately 1,000 feet (300 m) in length. Once the logs were attached and a clearance signal was sent for retrieval, they could be skidded at a speed of 1,000 feet per minute (18 km/h) feet per minute. Working conditions around these machines were very dangerous. The largest of these was the Lidgerwood skidder, which not only brought logs to the landing from the cutting site, but loaded them onto railroad cars as well, making it both a skidder & loader. In New Zealand cables were run five miles.