Skid Steer Door for Forestry Mulching: What to Run
SSD
Skid Steer Doors of North America
JULY 2026
Forestry mulching throws wood at your face all day. The right skid steer door for forestry mulching is a heavy-duty polycarbonate (Lexan) door, not tempered glass. Polycarbonate flexes and absorbs hits that shatter glass into your lap. Add side window panels so debris cannot come in around you. Our CNC-cut doors ship as a complete kit with all hardware included and carry a limited lifetime warranty against door failure or breakage. Here is the honest breakdown of what to run and why.
What mulching actually does to a cab door
A mulching head is a drum full of steel teeth spinning inches off the ground. Those teeth grab wood and spit it back out. A lot of that material comes straight at the machine, right at the height of your face.
It is not just chips. You get fist-sized chunks of hardwood, rocks the drum picks up, fence wire hiding in the brush, and saplings that whip back when the head bends them over. Once in a while a tooth or a piece of one lets go. Everything the head throws forward has one big opening to find: the front of your cab.
Tempered glass is not built for that. Glass takes one hard hit, then it is gone, all at once. Now you have glass in the cab, a shut-down job, and an OEM glass bill. Some operators respond by pulling the door off entirely and running open. For mulching, that trades a broken door for a broken face. Neither one is a plan.
The spec to run: heavy-duty polycarbonate
Polycarbonate handles impact in a completely different way than glass. Instead of shattering, it flexes, spreads the hit across the sheet, and springs back. That is why it is the standard material for machine guarding and riot shields, and it is why we build every door from heavy-duty polycarbonate (Lexan). We were first to market with the shatterproof polycarbonate skid steer door, and mulching is exactly the work it was built for.
You do not have to take our word for it. Our owner Leighton put our 1/2 inch thick CAT D Series door on camera and hit it with a hammer, full swing, no edits. The door took it. You can see the footage and the full story in our hammer test guide. A wood chunk off a mulching drum is a serious hit, but it is not a hammer swung flat into the sheet from two feet away.
Fit matters as much as material. A door that rattles in the opening or leaves gaps is a door that lets debris through. Every door we build is CNC-cut for your exact make and model and seals against a weather gasket. Mounting varies by model: some kits use existing factory points, while others require drilling and bolting where the included instructions direct.
Two honest notes, because this is an honest breakdown. First, polycarbonate is softer than glass, so it can scratch if you wipe it dry with grit on it. Rinse it first and it stays clear for years. Second, no door makes mulching risk-free. Keep your machine’s factory protective structures and guarding in place. The door adds protection at the biggest opening in the cab. It works with your machine’s protection, not instead of it.
Glass vs. soft covers vs. polycarbonate
Here is how the three options compare on a mulching job:
| Tempered glass (OEM) | Vinyl / soft cover | Heavy-duty polycarbonate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct hit from thrown wood | Shatters into the cab | Tears or caves in | Flexes and absorbs the hit |
| Debris at face height | Protection until first break | Little to none | Superior protection |
| Life on a mulching job | One bad hit | One season, often less | Years of daily work |
| After it takes damage | Buy new glass, wait for it | Buy another cover | Limited lifetime warranty, one free replacement for the original owner |
| Visibility | Clear | Wavy, fogs, yellows fast | Clear |
| Cab sealing | Good | Poor, flaps and leaks | Good, gasket sealed |
Big-box accessory stores will sell you the soft cover, and OEM dealers will sell you the glass again after every break. We build the third column.
Do not forget the sides
Mulching debris does not politely arrive from the front. Material ricochets off standing trees, off the boom, off the ground. Wire and chips come in flat and sideways. If your cab has open sides, you have two more holes at head height.
Side window panels close those holes. Same story as the door: polycarbonate panels, cut to fit your machine, bolted in place. With the door and side panels in, you have a sealed cab. That does more than stop debris. It keeps mulch dust out of your eyes and lungs, cuts the noise, and lets a heater or the fan actually hold cab temperature. On a July brush job in Georgia or a February clearing job in Michigan, a sealed cab is the difference between working a full day and quitting early.
Install is a bolt-in job. See our side window panel install guide for tools and time.
What’s in the box
Every door ships complete. You get:
- The CNC-cut heavy-duty polycarbonate door, shaped for your exact make and model
- Handle with locking latch and keys
- Hinges
- Weather seal gasket
- All nuts, bolts, and washers
The supplied hardware and printed instructions are in the box. Installation tools, mounting steps, and timing vary by exact model: some kits bolt straight on and others require drilling and bolting. Shipping is UPS 3 Day Air, $150 flat, typically 3 business days (not guaranteed), so you are not waiting on an open-ended dealer backorder.
Doors for the machines that do this work
Mulching is hard on a certain kind of machine: CAT D series, Kubota SVL, Takeuchi TL, ASV Posi-Track, Bobcat T series, and their cousins. We build precision-fit doors for ASV, Bobcat, CAT, Case, Gehl, John Deere, Kubota, Mustang, Manitou, New Holland, Takeuchi, and Terex. If you are clearing brush with a Kubota SVL or a CAT 299, we have the exact door for it.
Running an older machine? We build doors nobody else builds, including enclosures for machines like the Case 1840 and 1845C. Plenty of brush work gets done with paid-off iron, and those operators deserve a door too.
Doors run $1,395 to $1,795 USD depending on make and model. Compare that with the market price of your face, your eyes, and your downtime, and the math is short. For a deeper look at the material itself, read our polycarbonate vs. tempered glass guide.
The bottom line for mulching operators
Run a heavy-duty polycarbonate door, sized and cut for your exact machine. Close the sides with polycarbonate panels. Keep your factory guarding in place. That setup takes the daily beating a mulcher hands out, keeps the dust off you, and comes with a limited lifetime warranty against door failure or breakage: one free replacement for life for the original owner, under normal conditions.
Glass cannot make that promise. A vinyl cover cannot even pretend to.
Find your door in 30 seconds. Pick your machine’s make and model and see the exact door built for it: [Find Your Door]. Questions? Call or text (800) 781-8000, Mon–Fri 7am–4pm CST.