Costs and pricing

What forestry equipment and forestry work cost in Australia

Most cost questions in this industry have the same answer: it depends on production, and production depends on the site. These pages show the arithmetic that governs each type of work, so you can build a number instead of guessing at one.

4 cost guides

Start here

The one equation behind every cost question

Whether the unit is a cubic metre, a tonne, a hectare or a stump, the structure is identical.

total cost per hour÷units produced per hour=cost per unit

Contractors spend most of their energy on the numerator and most of their money on the denominator. Hourly cost can be calculated precisely from known inputs. Production has to be measured on a site like yours — and it moves far more. A machine at $350 per hour produces $466.67 per hectare at 0.75 ha/h and $1,000 per hectare at 0.35 ha/h, without the hourly cost changing at all.

By type of work

Cost guides

Forestry mulching costs

Forestry mulching is priced per hectare and costed per hour, and the gap between those two is where the money is made or lost. Cost per hectare is set by vegetation density, not by area.

6 questions answered

Harvesting costs per cubic metre

Harvesting is sold per cubic metre or per tonne, and the rate has to carry a chain of machines rather than one. Cost per cubic metre is total system cost per hour divided by system production per hour — and the system produces only as fast as its slowest stage.

6 questions answered

Land clearing costs

Land clearing has no single rate per hectare because it is not a single job. The price is driven by what has to happen to the vegetation, whether the root mass has to come out, what happens to the material, and what the site must look like afterwards.

6 questions answered

Stump removal costs

Stump removal cannot be priced from visible diameter, which is exactly how most of it is quoted. The real cost is driven by stump diameter multiplied through root flare, required depth, species hardness, access difficulty, soil contamination and cleanup requirement.

6 questions answered

Capital

What the machines themselves cost

New-machine pricing in forestry is quoted rather than published, and configuration moves it enormously — the head, guarding, tracks, fire suppression and hydraulic package can together rival the base machine. What can be shown honestly is the used market, where individual advertised prices illustrate how far condition and hours move value.

Individual advertised asking prices observed in Australian and regional used listings

Machine	Hours	Advertised price
2018 Tigercat L822D feller buncher	—	~$375,000 excl. government charges
2021 Tigercat 875E	—	~$850,000
2018 Tigercat 1075C forwarder (Victoria)	~11,100	~$240,000 plus GST
2015 Komatsu XT460L-3 harvester	~11,580	~$395,000
2016 Ponsse Elephant King forwarder	22,000+	~$99,000 incl. GST

These are individual asking prices, not valuations or market averages. The spread between the last two rows is the point: hours and condition move value further than model year does, which is why inspection discipline matters more than the odometer.

Work it yourself

Build the number from your own inputs

Machine cost calculator

Depreciation per productive hour, total hourly cost and cost per m³, tonne, hectare or stump — with utilisation and production sensitivity.

Buy versus hire

Annual cost of ownership against hire rates at your utilisation, and the break-even hours where owning starts to win.

The four units

Every forestry job is sold in one of four units

Knowing which one your work is measured in tells you which variable to control.

Units of sale, and what actually governs each

Unit	Typical work	What governs the cost	Where it goes wrong
Per cubic metre or tonne	Harvesting, processing, haulage	System production per hour across the whole machine chain	Rate built on machine capability instead of system throughput
Per hectare	Mulching, tilling, establishment, fuel reduction	Vegetation density and number of passes	Quoted from imagery without a density assessment
Per stump	Stump grinding, shearing, conversion	Root flare, depth, species hardness and soil contamination	Priced from visible diameter over the phone
Per hour or day	Hire, variable sites, unknown conditions	Utilisation and idle time between work fronts	Client resists uncapped cost, so risk shifts back to the contractor

Where margin disappears

The five costs contractors most often leave out

None of these are exotic. All of them are routinely missing from rates that looked workable at tender.

1
Downtime, costed as lost contribution
Not the repair bill — the contribution the machine did not earn. On a machine earning $4,000 gross contribution per productive day, a ten-day imported part instead of a one-day dealer repair is $36,000 on a single failure, which frequently exceeds the price difference between the machines being compared.
2
The gap between engine hours and productive hours
Machines routinely record 15-30 per cent more engine hours than productive hours. A rate built on engine hours understates cost per unit by the same margin, and the error compounds across the whole contract.
3
Consumables, carried per unit rather than per month
Teeth, chain, bar, rollers, knives, hammers and tips are production costs, not maintenance overheads. In abrasive Australian soils a high-utilisation mulcher's tooth bill can rival its finance cost.
4
Mobilisation, counted per move
A fixed cost that recurs on every relocation. On scattered small jobs it can exceed the productive time on site, which is why a machine that transports easily often out-earns a more productive one.
5
Second passes and rework
A specification that cannot be met in one pass doubles the cost base without doubling the rate. Establish single-pass achievability at site inspection, and price the second pass explicitly if it is required.

If you are receiving quotes

How to compare forestry quotes that look far apart

Quotes 40 per cent apart usually reflect different assumptions about the same site, not different margins.

Give every contractor the same written scope — the end state, not the activity
Ask what production rate each price assumes, and on what evidence
Ask whether mobilisation is included, and how many mobilisations are assumed
Ask what happens if conditions differ from the assumption, and who carries that
Ask for the density, diameter or depth band the rate is valid within
Treat a quote issued without a site visit as an estimate, not a price
Confirm insurance, competency requirements and who holds any approvals

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

Why won't anyone give me a price per hectare over the phone?

Because the honest answer depends on things that cannot be seen from a desk. Vegetation density, stem size, rock content, access and the required finish can move the cost of the same machine on the same day by a factor of two or more. A contractor who quotes firmly without inspecting is either carrying unpriced risk or has built enough contingency into the number that you are paying for their uncertainty.

What does forestry machinery cost to buy in Australia?

New pricing is quoted rather than published, and configuration moves it enormously — head, guarding, tracks, fire suppression and hydraulic package can together rival the base machine. The used market is more visible: observed Australian listings have ranged from approximately $99,000 for a 22,000-hour forwarder to approximately $850,000 for a recent feller buncher. Those are individual asking prices, and hours and condition move value further than model year does.

How do I work out my own hourly machine cost?

Take purchase price less expected resale, divided by the ownership period, for annual depreciation. Add other annual fixed costs — finance, insurance, registration, telematics, administration — and divide the total by productive hours per year. Then add fuel, operator, service, repairs and consumables per hour. The machine cost calculator on this site does the arithmetic and shows how far the answer moves with utilisation.

Is it cheaper to hire or buy forestry equipment?

It depends entirely on utilisation, and the break-even is calculable. Owning spreads a large fixed cost across whatever hours you actually work; hiring converts that to a variable cost and hands residual-value risk back. A strong middle position for medium contractors is to own the carrier and the high-utilisation attachments, and hire the rare-use ones.

Why is utilisation such a big deal in these calculations?

Because fixed cost does not care how much you produce. A machine carrying $100,000 in annual depreciation costs $40 per productive hour at 2,500 hours and $80 at 1,250 — same machine, same purchase price, double the cost. No specification advantage recovers a utilisation shortfall of that size, which is why contracted hours matter more than discount negotiation.

Do these figures apply across all Australian states?

The arithmetic does; the inputs do not. Fuel, labour, freight, parts lead times and competitive intensity all vary by region, and remoteness in particular raises both mobilisation and downtime exposure. Build the model with your own regional inputs rather than adopting figures from another state.