Forest harvesters were developed mainly in Sweden and Finland and today do almost all commercial cutting in these countries. The first fully mobile lumber "harvester", PIKA model 75, was introduced in 1973

by Finnish systems engineer Sakari Pinomäki and his company PIKA Forest Machines. The first single-clutch combine header was launched by the Swedish company SP Maskiner in the early 1980s. Its use has become widespread in the rest of Northern Europe, especially in the harvesting of plantation forests.

Before modern combine harvesters were developed in Finland and Sweden, two Texas inventors developed a raw crawler unit in the US called The Mammoth Tree Shears, which cut trees at the base up to 0.76 meters (30 inches) in diameter. After cutting the tree, he can use the operator controls to cause the tree to fall to the right or left. Unlike a harvester, he could not drill the tree after he saw it.

Harvesters are effectively used on flat to moderately steep terrains to cut open-cut areas of the forest. For very steep hills or to lift individual trees, people who still work with chainsaws are preferred in some countries. Small and maneuverable combine harvesters in northern Europe are used for thinning operations, manual cutting is typically used only in extreme conditions where the tree size exceeds the capacity of the combine head or by owners of small woodlands.

The intended principle of mechanized logging is "no feet on the forest floor" and the harvester and transmitter allow this to be achieved. Keeping people inside the machine's cab provides a safer and more comfortable working environment for industrial scale logging.