This package assumes a softwood clearfell with sustained volume, road access adequate for log trucks, and a contract that underwrites most of the year. It is the highest-output configuration in the guide and the least forgiving of imbalance: every machine in the chain depends on the one before it, so the fleet produces at the rate of its slowest element and pays for all of them regardless.
Two systems can deliver it. The full-tree chain — feller buncher, two skidders, processor and loader — moves whole stems to a landing and processes there, which suits larger or irregular stems and concentrates the processing decision in one machine. The cut-to-length pair — harvester and forwarder — processes at the stump and suits uniform stems, product sorting in the forest, and terrain where a landing is hard to establish. The mill's product specification and the coupe's terrain choose between them; the machines do not.
What distinguishes contractors who make money here is not machine selection but chain balance and availability. A fleet with 10% more felling capacity than it can extract has bought cost, not tonnes. A fleet with no plan for a processor failure has bought a single point at which everything stops.
Every fleet produces at the rate of its slowest element and pays for all of them. This is where that element usually sits in this package.
Each one has an answer specific to your sites. A default taken from someone else's operation is where imbalance starts.
Enough to clear the buncher's sustained output at the coupe's longest snig distance, not its average. Two is the common answer because extraction cycle time scales with distance while felling does not, so the ratio that works at 200 metres fails at 600. Measure the actual haul before assuming the default.
Enough to process the stems the skidders deliver, with margin, because the processor sits between extraction and the truck and stalls both when it falls behind. Under-sizing here is particularly costly since the machines either side are already paid for.
Enough that the loader is never waiting and the landing never fills. Truck cycle time is a function of haul distance and mill turnaround, both of which are outside your control, so truck supply should be confirmed with the haulage contractor before the fleet is sized rather than after.
Full-tree where stems are large or irregular, a landing can be established, and the mill accepts landing-processed product. Cut-to-length where stems are uniform, products need sorting in the forest, or terrain and residue management favour processing at the stump. The comparison page on cut-to-length versus full-tree sets out the full trade-off.
The package above assumes a typical case. These are the departures that change the configuration rather than just the rate.
Very few contractors start at the full configuration, and the ones who do are usually carrying more capital than their contracted work supports.
Phase 1
One machine — commonly a forwarder or skidder — working within another contractor's system.
Phase 2
Harvester and forwarder sized to each other, service vehicle, on-site critical spares.
Phase 3
Feller buncher, skidders, processor and loader, or a second cut-to-length crew.
The saving is visible and the cost is not: the feller buncher waits, and the fleet's most expensive machine works part-time. Where haul distances are long, the second skidder often pays for itself in recovered felling hours alone.
Critical wear items held on the landing cost a few thousand dollars. A chain stopped for two days waiting on the same parts costs a great deal more, because every machine in it is still being financed.
In an interdependent chain, parts availability and technician access are production inputs. The difference between same-day and next-week support is measured in production days, and it belongs in the purchase comparison.
An inadequate landing limits truck access, sorting space and processor positioning, and it constrains the whole chain for the life of the coupe. It is cheap to fix before the first stem arrives and expensive afterwards.
Highest-throughput felling in the full-tree system — cut, accumulate, bunch, repeat.
Drags stems to the landing — the workhorse of full-tree and tree-length systems.
A machine in its own right — and the single most important specification decision in CTL.
Carries cut-to-length logs completely off the ground — payload × trips per hour is the whole economic model.
The cut-to-length machine — fell, delimb, measure, buck and sort in one cycle.