Find the package that matches the work you can win
Not the work you would like to do. The package should follow contracted or highly probable volume, because every configuration here assumes utilisation that has to come from somewhere.
High-production pine clearfell
The highest-volume softwood configuration, and the one with the greatest exposure to bottleneck mismatch. Either a full-tree chain or a cut-to-length pair, depending on terrain, mill requirements and contamination tolerance.
Pine thinning
Thinning rewards manoeuvrability and restraint. The corridors are narrow, the residual crop has real future value, and the largest machine on the market is usually the wrong answer.
Eucalyptus plantation
Australian hardwood plantation work places very different demands on a head from radiata pine. Feed force, debarking and durability dominate the specification.
Commercial land clearing
A deliberately flexible attachment-based system. Instead of owning six specialised purpose-built forestry machines, the same base excavator generates revenue across civil earthworks, demolition, vegetation clearing, log handling, tree removal, stump removal, road construction and drainage.
Utility vegetation management
Work for electricity networks, rail operators, road authorities, councils, mining companies, pipeline operators and renewable-energy developers. Precision and transportability matter more than raw production.
Bushfire fuel reduction
Fuel-reduction work is sold against a treatment standard, not against tree diameter. The commercial risk is quoting hectares without measuring vegetation density.
Plantation re-establishment
A sequence rather than a machine: stump treatment, then slash treatment, then tillage, scarification or mounding, then planting. Measured in hectares and planting spots, not cubic metres.
Biomass and wood-waste contractor
The one package where the offtake agreement must precede the fleet decision. Chip specification, moisture limits and contamination tolerance determine whether the correct machine is a chipper or a grinder.
A fleet produces at the rate of its slowest element, and pays for all of them
Machinery is compared one machine at a time and bought in systems. That mismatch is where most of the avoidable loss in this industry sits. A feller buncher with 10% more capacity than the skidders can clear has not added 10% of production; it has added capital, fuel and depreciation to a chain that still produces at the rate of its extraction. The stems simply accumulate somewhere until the landing fills and felling stops anyway.
The same logic runs through every package here. A chipper rated far above what its loader can feed is idle capital with a fuel bill. A harvester head that cannot debark to the mill specification produces stems that are discounted regardless of how fast it cut them. A mulcher on a hydraulic circuit that cannot sustain it overheats rather than simply working a little slower.
Each package below therefore names its bottleneck explicitly, sets out the questions that size each element against it, and states what changes when the site departs from the assumed case. That is a more useful starting point than a specification comparison, because the specification comparison only becomes meaningful once you know which element it should be run on.
Eight packages, eight different definitions of production
The KPI in the right-hand column is not a preference. It is how the client pays, and it determines which specification differences are worth arguing about.
Four steps, in this order
Identify the bottleneck before comparing machines
Each package names the element that sets its production. Specification differences at that element change your output; specification differences elsewhere mostly change your invoice.
Adjust for how your sites actually differ
Every package lists the departures — terrain, haul distance, soil, material specification — that change the configuration rather than just the rate. Work through them before pricing.
Stage the capital
Each package sets out a path from a single machine to the full configuration. Very few contractors should start at the end of it, and the ones who do are usually carrying more capital than their contracted work supports.
Where to go next
Buyer types
Which group your business belongs to, and what constraint binds it.
Production systems
Cut-to-length and full-tree, and why the silviculture chooses between them.
Machine cost calculator
Model the hourly rate for a specific configuration and utilisation.
Total cost of ownership
The worked models behind depreciation and cost per hectare or cubic metre.
Machine classes
The commercial case and the limitations of every class in these packages.
Inspection checklists
What to ask and look at before committing to a specific machine.