Cut and extract rates £££££££££ ???

Here's the scenario and I'm not wanting folks to do my quoting for me, rather just wondering if my figures are about right (based on harvester)

Softwood clearfell, typical 50' high stand; total volume 8000 m3.

Full price I reckon at £11-12 per m3 to roadside; £5/m3 forwarding which in this case is flat ground, 60 run to landing.

Some other figures 8m3 or 16m3 per forwarder load depending on tractor and trailer vs purpose built. 1 hour per "load".

Timber lengths tba

Harvester - 100 m3/day.

How different are the rates per m3 if hand cut?

Cheers.

I'd say a good harvester operator in a softwood stand would be putting out more than 100m3 a day. 150 more likely. £5 a m3 for is a good start for forwarding but with rising fuel prices 7 maybe closer to the mark.

If you are looking at a clearfell than your price seems way off the mark to me..

Average price here for thinnings is £11-£12 per ton

Average price for clear fell £6 - £8 per ton

I know of a contractor currently cutting and extracting to roadside for £4.50 per ton!!!!

Now I know this is not viable, and his machine is paid off but remember that it is a cut-throat market and people with big finance to pay off will undercut to ensure they get the work.

If you can get £11 a ton for clearfell then bite thier hands off!

for 8000m3 you shouldn't even consider a tractor, stick the biggest forwarder you can find into it and reap the benefits!

TCD i dont know if this is the job you mentioned to me the other day, but I am glad i said i wouldnt know where to start.....the posts so far are all double dutch to me!!

Harvester output is greatly affected by heavily branched trees, how many sizes you are cutting ( the fewer the better ), how much small stuff needs chopping up, suckers/doubles, how dense the stand is. In nice big clean thinned pine down south, a good driver cutting say 2 or 3 log lengths, pallet and chip should easy be blasting 200m3 a day on a decent machine.

Sorry TCD - in regard to hand cutting, very dependent on size of timber..

As an average I would suggest roughly £17.50 per ton for hand cutting in pulp wood to roadside dependent on ground conditions, length of extraction etc.

One of our recent jobs was £14.50 per ton but the trees we were cutting were 0.9m3 per stem, good clean stems and only one size to cut the whole lot to!

Another job we did before christmas was closer to £20 per ton as we were cutting fence posts

This is very helpful chaps - very appreciated. I'll take some pics tommorow and post...

Sorry no pics yet... will do.

What would you charge for just motormanual cut and stack then?