The recent purchase of my machine and near future purchase of the supporting splitter will be for reasons not directly related to economics. I went over my target budget purchasing the JD 110TLB. However, at time of purchase, it was the most loaded 110 TLB in the northeast. It has front and rear auxiliary hydraulics, quick release backhoe bucket with thumb, heated cab, 72" digging bucket, 88" snow bucket and formal quick attach adjustable 48" forks. The cab protects controls and gauges for outside storage. It's a big enough machine that I can move and lift nearly anything short of whole vehicles.
My latest handling of firewood is on pallets. I take sturdy full-size whole pallets, add vertical 2x lumber and cross brace across top. I stack cut and split wood on these, shy of half a cord, but still a lot. At any time, I can grab these with the machine and forks, move a lot of wood quickly and it stays stacked the whole time.
Running the future splitter of the front auxiliaries may not be utopia but I see it as follows. I can hang splitter in/on bucket. I can set split height to nearly wherever I want. All split wood falls directly into bucket. Once bucket it full, I can bring wood to wherever and either dump or stack and not remove splitter, repeat process.
I burn less than four cord a year. I'm not too concerned about running up hours on machine and use of the machine is very intermittent. To fire it up to run the splitter occasionally would be good to keep the lubricants flowing.
Operation and purchase of either machine or splitter may not be most cost effective, especially in regard to rental. However, my time and convenience get worth more and more to me every day. The ability to fire up machine with or without splitter, any time, any day, for fifteen minutes or a whole day carries tremendous value to me.
