Tracked whole tree chipper?

[ShearHeadMS]

hey guys, i was wondering where a Whole tree chipper would come into play in the land clearing bisness. i ran a big old Morbark for a while but never did anything more than chip for the mill, but i saw one guy this week clearing 26 acres and he had a some type of Bandit tracked chipper out there, he had one guy runing what looked like a Fecon FTX 330 and a trackhoe with a thumb working together, and feller he was using to cut down some pretty impressive pine, seems like he would drop a whole pile of trees and have the Fecon work on the stumps and uder brush he left. After the Fecon made a good size opening he would bring in the Chipper and trackhoe, the chipper would take care of the stuff to big for the mulcher to handle and the trackhoe just kinda sorted through everything and got the big butt cuts out. do you guys think this is a good way to handle tracts with alot of timber on them, i know the Bron 475 we just got is a beast, but i dont think it could handle 12 inch logs repetively and stil make good production. what im really wanting to know is how is this cost effective and how would you charge to run a machine like this, been busy priceing the machines that do this, cant say ill get one anytime soon, yall give me what yall think!

 

[tonyoz]

Must be the most expensive way of clearing I have heard of. Why not use an excavator/trackhoe to drop the trees then with a horizontal grinder grind the lot up stumps and all, just 2 machines to do the job.

 

[DIRTROAD]

Personally I would haul any marketable timber to the mill first. That way you eliminate the need for a massive whole tree chipper and get paid for the trees instead of just chipping them. Then just use the fecon to cleanup. This would cut his equipment costs by more than half.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

yeah, i went back today and he was already done, funny thing was is that the large pile of chips had vanished! guess he hauled them off. but man that machine was very cool, and i priced a few and they seem to be cheaper than a horizontal grinder, plus i guess you get a moveable machine with a grapple on it. oh and the land he was clearing was for a private land owner, met the guys son and he said he only charged 180 for the fecon and 260 for the grinder, plus he said the feller was only 89 an hour. but for 529 an hour and the fact he was only spent maybe 50-55 hours on it i guess thats pretty good. plus the land looked better than just mulching it! it looked extremely clean, but i doubt my crew will ever get something like that. we get pretty good bis with just the climaf at 120 an hour and 195 for the bron (220 if its a small job). and we stay to busy!

 

[cat 297c]

Shear head im just wondering how u make any money with the bron at 195 I know that things got to suck down $600 plus in fuel a day not to mention other expenses. If u got a secret I'd love to know it.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

Well we dont suck down $600 a day, but we do burn about $500. the main way we can get away with it is that we paid for the machine in full, no notes and no monthly bind. 195 is a little low ill admit, but with the work we have been getting it breaks pretty even at the end of the day, we get fuel pretty cheap around my area. i just bought 3k worth today for the mulchers, plan on re-filling in about 3 or 4 weeks. i spend more on he Dozers than i do the mulchers. plus i do all my mechanic work and it pisses off the dealers pretty good (im not paying 185 an hour for mechanic work). all in all we have so much machinery tied up that we can be a little cheap and still do good work, used some of the money off that 1200 acre job to pay for the Bron up front, its only a 300, plus its got 2500 hours on it. I put some money in the undercarrage and the head was already rebuilt. but how much do you cahrge to do what ya do?

 

[GreensForestryMulching]

Yeah $195hr for a big Bron like that seems outrageously low! If your just breaking even at the end of the day how do you pay bills outside of work or feed yourself? Depending on terrain and type/thickness of vegetation I charge $125-$225hr for my skidsteer mulcher....

 

[ShearHeadMS]

well you guys make great points, and i make pretty good outside of the mulching, do alot of dozer and mineing work. i just charge low for the bron on decent size jobs and decent terrain, now ill charge high if its a crappy job that i know im gona hate. but at the end of the day Half goes to fuel and the rest to the machine, we get paid flat salerys, no over time or anything. but i guess ill start bumping it up to maybe 250 or so, iv just been to afraid to make it to high and make people scared.

 

[fishfactor]

Even if you don't have a loan payment on the machine, you still charge the same so you can save for a new machine. If not, what happens when you need to replace it? I think $250 is still low for the Bron. We run our 240hp gyro trac for $300. The hourly rate scares some people, but after they watch it for 5 minutes all fears are gone. On smaller jobs, we just charge flat rates so the hourly rate is never a concern.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

made it final today, 300-350 for the bron, suprised we still get good work with it, doing a small logging clean up job and the land owner is amazed at how good it looks vs the dozer work we did on his other section, man if i didnt have good people like yall to take advice from my boss would still be burning money! thanks guys!

 

[yellowdogsvc]

I don't have a tracked chipper but I have a vermeer BC 2000 with loader on it. I use it for whole trees that i chip. Some of the trees max out the chipper but most are in the 12-15" range or I just mulch them. It will do fairly hard wood like Pine but it is slow on large oak (over 15" dead or dry). At 200 hp, it has plenty of power for most of what I've come across but the trees we are cutting (cedars), aren't as big as many pines. It'll chew through big hackberry, pine, green oak, and straight, dry logs of various species. It just doesn't like our Live Oak when it's dry and hard as a rock.. then again not much can chew that up efficiently.

Though it's not tracked, I can use a skid steer with hitch attachment or tractor to move it around. It has flotation type tires and only weighs about 12,600 lbs. Realistically, the big whole tree chippers are in a completely different class but so is the price tag. A used one like mine can be picked up for just over $40k with the grapple loader. The big tracked chippers are still pretty high dollar if the undercarriage and chipper body are in good operating condition.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

yeah the tracked chipper i priced was 158k with 2600 hours, hours dont bother me because me and a few other guys are pretty good mechanics (CAT dealership wants us back bad). but im more worried about what to do with the chips from the chipper, the mills down here dont really like mixed and dirty chips, plus we would have to buy another truck and chip tralier to haul it, the guys from Site Pro just spread it back out, but they make so much they probably dont want to fool with it, and its probably to hard to get the chips out, but i still cant believe that guy was chargeing 250 to run that thing, said he only used it for 25 hours, but thats still to cheap!

 

[yellowdogsvc]

Why not mulch or till the chips into the soil? We charge $150/hr and up for a 20" capacity chipper with loader. $250/hr on a chipper might not be too bad if it's efficient. I don't see the maintenance costs the way I do with the mulcher other than replacing hoses and blades. I can go longer between oil/hydraulic changes and I'm not replacing $90 teeth all the time.

 

[lumberjack1986]

Find the right piece of steel with a drum chipper and maintenance costs will explode.

I prefer a drum chipper, but a disc is more robust by virtue of the design.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

i showed my boss a TimberPro with a Fecon RTC22 kit on it, he almost killed over he was so impressed. Iv got him thinking about it now, he likes the idea of haveing the mulcher doing the small/big stuff, and haveing a chipper knock out alot of the big stuff too, still not sure on how i feel about this

 

[ShearHeadMS]

I know this thread is old, but I wanted to do a follow up.. Never bought a tracked chipper, talked to a few guys in the ROW buisness and they said every type of track fed or tired self fed chipper are boat anchors. And I talked to big timers!! They said a trackhoe and horizontal grinder are the way to go. We sold the bron about 3 months ago and left the mulching buisness permenately. We made alot of money mulching but it seems these days shearing and rakeing are the way to go with private land owners. We tried a few other machines but they didn't add up to much. I salute you guys for what you do and make a living with it, iv saved money and I'm fixing to go back were I belong in the forestry sector. Worked with some ROW crews and found the work easy as long as the machines stay running!!!!

 

[notrees]

hey guys, i was wondering where a Whole tree chipper would come into play in the land clearing bisness. i ran a big old Morbark for a while but never did anything more than chip for the mill, but i saw one guy this week clearing 26 acres and he had a some type of Bandit tracked chipper out there, he had one guy runing what looked like a Fecon FTX 330 and a trackhoe with a thumb working together, and feller he was using to cut down some pretty impressive pine, seems like he would drop a whole pile of trees and have the Fecon work on the stumps and uder brush he left. After the Fecon made a good size opening he would bring in the Chipper and trackhoe, the chipper would take care of the stuff to big for the mulcher to handle and the trackhoe just kinda sorted through everything and got the big butt cuts out. do you guys think this is a good way to handle tracts with alot of timber on them, i know the Bron 475 we just got is a beast, but i dont think it could handle 12 inch logs repetively and stil make good production. what im really wanting to know is how is this cost effective and how would you charge to run a machine like this, been busy priceing the machines that do this, cant say ill get one anytime soon, yall give me what yall think!

Ive owned and operated several Bandit large diameter drum chippers up to 250hp and they are impressive to say the least. The biggest advantage to his operation is that his mulcher is probably not stressing and banging on material that is on the upper end of his range of comfort. The big tracked chippers chip large wood as big as 20" with ease, and with autofeed to keep the tedious work to a minimum. His mulcher will likely last much longer and have much less down time because the chipper is taking a substantial part of the the stress off of the mulcher imo. With sharp knives and proper anvil setting the drum chippers produce a really nice chip. He is also greatly reducing his dump fees or burn time depending on where he is working. Fuel consumption on those chippers would be comparable if not a little better than the same sized powered mulcher. Ive never used the tracked chippers due to our vast amount of residential work, but can definitely see the advantage in a clearing operation.

 

[ShearHeadMS]

It really just depends on what you "KNOW" your going to be doing, if I was going to be just strictly cutting nice softwood timber, a chipper would be the way hands down! If I was going to be grubbing and grinding everything in sight a horizontal grinder would be the way. If I knew I was going to be doing 5-20 acre lots a mulcher would do great. But with my limited time in this buisness iv come to one conclusion. You don't need to do R&D for other companies, 9/10 if you ask and have the rep behind you they will send you the "best" machine they have. This also means you will find out what they want to know in the feild. Not what you want!!

 

[notrees]

Finding out what you need in a forum like this from people who do it everyday is much better than asking a rep. Good point there. After 20 yrs i guess i "know" what i need most of the time. For everything else i come ask here to weed out the lesser effective options.