Wood Chippers Renting vs Buying

[Haoleguy]

Wesdor - Good suggestion on catching a used turnover unit from a reputable rental company. I will have a chance to try the Vermeer in 2 weeks time. Your experience corroborates previous experience with the Vermeer. The cost of owning ag/industrial equipment is shockingly expensive to me. Repetitive sticker shock is beginning to dull my financial senses. Thanks again.

 

[Haoleguy]

Deerlope - The Bearcat is sold locally here by the Kubota dealer. Appears to be a solid unit. I take it from your post that a little more PTO hp would handle the 5" hardwood.... is that correct? Thank you.

 

[Deerlope]

38 HP is plenty of power but I really think that a 4 cyl would hang in there better , have just a little more staying power because of the 4th cyl. Before I bought I compared item to item on 6 different chippers and price not being one of them. The Bearcat won hands down. It is a well made machine and ways above a Salsco.

 

[Haoleguy]

Deerlope - Thank you for the additional information. The 4 knives on the bearcat seems to be an advantage over 3. How's the access to the knives? I assume the hydraulics are self contained is that correct? How long ago did you purchase? The local price is $6300. Thank you.

 

[MadDog]

Haoleguy: You might also want to consider the WoodPro AVP chipper/shredder. Made or distributed by Vandermolen in New Jersey. A search will turn up a my post last summer with pics. Mine cost about $4700 and has been well worth it. Very well designed and built, with a 2 disk 30" diam cutting wheel (disks about 4" apart with flail knives in between to do the shredding). Specs say it can handle 5-6" wood but that size I use for firewood. I have used it on up to 4" which it handles very easily.

It doesn't have power feed but the hopper is mounted at about a 45deg angle so that I just toss material in and it pretty much feeds itself as fast as I get material into it. I also think that the hopper arrangement makes it safer since it is pretty well impossible to get yourself anywhere near the chipping knives unless you climb up on the 3ph and jump in the hopper. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif (ech)

 

[Deerlope]

Access to the knives are just one 9/16 " nut and the blower pipe hinges over to the ground, Also the knives are reversible, when one edge gets dull just turn them over. Hyd's are selfcontained with an hyd oil filter. I have had mine about 2 years. I don't like to burn in my woods, so I chip. If I were clear cutting then I might consider burning. I know that owning one is a big expense but you will never regret it. Its there when you need it.

 

[froggy]

Wish I had trees on my property so I would have this problem.

 

[Jagmandave]

I rented a Vermier chipper from Hertz Equipment rental, since they're a commercial outfit and those guys don't work weekends, I rented it on Friday afternoon and took it back Mon am - they only charged me for one day! I rented the biggest, baddest chipper they had , Perkins 4 cyl diesel, hydraulic metered feed etc - handled 12" trunks! We cut 'em down as low as we could, drug 'em over to the chipper and once we got the trunk end into it, 30 seconds later it was mulch! You have to be a bit careful, cause the branches will knock you around if you don't get out of the way quickly enough, it pulls it in so fast! $185 for the weekend. It weighs about 5 or 6,000 lbs, so be sure you've got the truck to haul it, my F-150 was struggling a bit, and I had a mountain of mulch when I was done.........

Git 'er done!

 

[Tim_in_IA]

Haoleguy,

I got the Jimma earlier this spring and it is a great performer for the price. Mine was $1500 and the power feed works great! If you are looking for an economical alternative to renting the Jinmas really work. I was putting small trees right in and it ate them right up. I wouln't go all the way to 6". but I know I was getting up to around 5" and it was handling them no problem.

Check out my JINMA in action here:

Link

MikePA: Cleaned up long URL. Please review your message before posting it. It's simple not to do this. Just insert a descriptive word or two between the {url=http://whatever}<font color="red">Enter words here</font>{/url} instead of the entire URL. Replace parentheses with brackets in previous example.

 

[johnday]

Scozz, or anyone else; I'm in need of a chipper myself. Tried to pull up Jinma on the internet and all I got was "page cannot be displayed". Is there a website for Jinma? This chipper for $1500 sounds interesting. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif