Forestry chainsaw operator

[Pete Mctree]

The pay/reward system in the UK is so screwed. I know of appallingly poor climbers and cutters getting paid £250 per day on HS2 and local companies offering good ones £12.00 per hour.

 

I pay a minimum of £150 per day to my cutters when I need them - I pay them more if I can. £150 will hardly keep a roof over there heads in most places - I will break that down a bit;

£20 fuel to and from work

£20 to fill a combican

£5 towards chain, bar sprocket

£3  towards ppe 

£3 towards saw

£5 food and drink

- that comes to £56 and there are plenty of things omitted. 

 

Even at those figures I am only paying a qualified s/employed cutter £11.30ish an hour? 

 

This bullshit economic system we have sure knowns how to punish those who want to work for a living

[IronMike]

17 hours ago, Svts said:

Out of interest, what sort of meterage do you get from a new person on £120 a day? And is the £160 rate for fully experienced cutters, with windblown etc? I find that new cutters generally struggle to cover a oner a day. Which usually means they aren't viable, as they think they should be worth at least £140/£150 a day. Usually because thats what the bloke that trained them said. 

 

I couldn't tell you meterage unfortunately. We just work on day rate, regardless of site or spec. The top end of the pay is for my experienced cutters, who I know will produce day in day out. They're as fast and efficient as possible on the sites we have. The lower end is for the newer starters who haven't got that speed and efficiency yet.

Edited October 15, 2022 by IronMike

[slack ma girdle]

Every one likes a low stump, but it isn't always possible. Big spruce can take a tank of fuel just to trim the knees off, and you are still 18" of the ground. This site is going to be difficult to extract because of the stumps and the size of the timber. Trees are averaging 4m3, and the big ones 6m3

The other thorn in the ointment is about a third of the wood blow down in storm Eunice.

[Svts]

14 hours ago, IronMike said:

I couldn't tell you meterage unfortunately. We just work on day rate, regardless of site or spec. The top end of the pay is for my experienced cutters, who I know will produce day in day out. They're as fast and efficient as possible on the sites we have. The lower end is for the newer starters who haven't got that speed and efficiency yet.

Ah fair enough. Dayrate work seems very limited around here. Its a roadside piece rate or nothing usually. So keeping tabs on daily volume averages is vital. Aside from the odd roadside winching job or awkward bits and bobs with little merchantable timber. 

Even the various conservation trusts seem to favour mech harvesting now. The lure of a better return and fisa led pressure to kick handcutters out wherever possible, seems to trump the low impact approach. 

You are doing well to get experienced cutters for £160 a day. £180/£200 a day around here now , if you can find anyone at all. 

[Mike Hill]

On 15/10/2022 at 08:49, slack ma girdle said:

Every one likes a low stump, but it isn't always possible. Big spruce can take a tank of fuel just to trim the knees off, and you are still 18" of the ground. This site is going to be difficult to extract because of the stumps and the size of the timber. Trees are averaging 4m3, and the big ones 6m3

The other thorn in the ointment is about a third of the wood blow down in storm Eunice.

 

Felling medium Spruce like that over here in Western Norway would pay around £500 per day plus 25% Vat.

 

Faller would be expected to get to the site and provide saws and kit.

 

There would be work 9 months of the year or more if you were prepared to travel.

[JLA1990]

1 hour ago, Mike Hill said:

 

Felling medium Spruce like that over here in Western Norway would pay around £500 per day plus 25% Vat.

 

Faller would be expected to get to the site and provide saws and kit.

 

There would be work 9 months of the year or more if you were prepared to travel.

I worked in Norway for a year, tripled my rate overnight and was a fantastic experience. Returned to the uk telling everyone I could how great it was, including how great the money was…. To

no avail. In my experience people don’t want to move to better themselves, they would rather complain and do nothing about it. 

[Mike Hill]

10 minutes ago, JLA1990 said:

I worked in Norway for a year, tripled my rate overnight and was a fantastic experience. Returned to the uk telling everyone I could how great it was, including how great the money was…. To

no avail. In my experience people don’t want to move to better themselves, they would rather complain and do nothing about it. 

And thats the thing.

 

If 20% of the cutters up and left the UK, the remainder should get higher rates. But instead they continue to live in the 1950s.

 

Hand stacking ffs?

[Svts]

15 minutes ago, Big J said:

I've had a quite a lot of experience running cutters and started out as a hardwood cutter myself. 

It's a minefield, truly. I much prefer working with harvesters as with one exception the only reliable, decent, flexible cutters I knew were in Northumberland and Morayshire, which isn't exactly useful for Devon.

 

Make no mistake, 90% of chainsaw operatives are not going to make the grade. They are either talented and lazy, or talentless and enthusiastic, or worst of all, talentless and lazy. The very good ones normally end up progressing of the saws to run their own teams and very good quality, experienced cutters are left over once the shite is filtered out.

 

The contrast between the best and worst is as stark as to say that you can lose a lot of money on a bad cutter at £80/day and make a lot off a good cutter paying them £250 a day. Production rates can vary 5 fold within the same block, depending on who's cutting.

 

My recommendation is try to find a way of price controlling. Production rate work is difficult to get with hand cutters now, as they are so scarce. So try to use harvesters instead. 

 

Another issue I feel is that there are too many tree surgeons and not enough forestry cutters. Tree surgeons generally don't transition well into forestry as it's a completely different job, requiring much higher production, effort and far more accurate felling. You're felling the timber to sell the product, a fact sometimes lost on those recently having made that transition.

 

For me, I generally always paid £200 a day to my cutters. Most of the guys I used were great and were well worth it. Some took the piss and I never used them again.

 

Either way, I am very glad that I never have to work on hand felled sites again. I'll only be working behind small harvesters, which is a much, much more pleasant gig.

That's pretty much the nub of it. Mech harvesting is wheres it at end of story. I looked at buying into it earlier this year. But looking at the wider UK timber industry I can't see a lot of longterm joy in it. Yes there is a stack of work atm. But once the Adb bonanza is finished in a few years, it'll be a different story. I might get the finance paid off before it's over but its a big might.

The local softwood mill shut this year as it was a money pit. There's softwood sawlog been sitting roadside since the summer near me. And that is after the contractor took a £25 a ton hit on it as suddenly the other big buyer had a no competition. Its just not a sustainable business model. 

There's no way I'm taking on a load of finance at my age just to keep working. And I can stick a few days machine work but anymore than that gets dull and repetitive for me. 

So I'll try and keep going as I am, but the writing is on the wall as far as I'm concerned. 

[Spruce Pirate]

Rates for woodcutters is a very difficult subject.  I'd agree with a lot of what's been said here before about difficult to get cutters and even more difficult to get good cutters.  Part of the problem is that cutters are self-employed and providing A LOT of kit, saws - probably small, medium and large, wedges, hammers, jacks, first aid kit, PPE, tapes, breaking bars, fuel, oil, bars, chains, chainsaw training, refresher training, log books, first aid training, vehicle to and from work - often miles up rough forest roads which eat vehicles.  Then they're expected to put plenty of timber on the ground, presented well for either the harvester or the forwarder, realistically low stumps, properly sned, cleanly cut to the right lengths.  Start comparing this to other industries and I'd say there's no way a decent cutter should be on any less than £300 a day.

 

The trouble is the industry won't stand it.  Too many people saying £150 a day is all they'll pay and putting up with folk who can't really do the job where if they'd pay more they'd get more done.  Too many "cutters" turning up on site with several things on my list above missing and without the skills to do the job thinking they're worth mega-bucks, which leads to contractors thinking cutters aren't worth the money.  Too many contractors think a cutter just costs them money, seemingly blind to the fact that the cutter is putting timber on the deck which earns money.  Too many jobs costed where the cutting element isn't properly costed, if the industry can stand the fact that an unproductive welfare unit is going to cost a certain amount per ton, or per week or whatever then we should start to think that maybe the cutting element might start to cost as well and enable decent rates to be paid.  Sometimes the timber just isn't there too allow a cutter to produce properly, I did a job in the summer where I was lucky to be getting 60m3 on the deck in a day, small trees, all leaning the wrong way and just a ball ache to fell and be anywhere near productive.  There's more jobs going to have to fall into this category if rates are going to improve.

 

Sawlogs were over £100 a ton a short while ago and cutters and contractors saw basically nothing in return, yet as soon as rates drop we're too expensive.  There needs to be a more equal share of the pie.

 

We also need to get some realistic system of bringing on people who want to do the work, be it young ones entering the industry or tree surgeons looking to diversify.  Again, the costs of these people being un-productive needs to be covered somehow, simply moaning that someone is useless and can't get the job done is very unlikely to get them to progress.  None of us were born knowing how to do everything but the current system, touched on by others in earlier posts breeds cutters who have tickets but not full skills and think they're worth what is currently top-end money.  I think they should be paid that money, but while they're being mentored to become properly skilled cutters and earn proper money for doing so.  Then again, I quite like living in Fantasy-Land..........

[Jig]

On 11/10/2022 at 11:23, spuddog0507 said:

Not been much help on here so far for you, there is a awful lot to be considered here, first what do you call fully certificated ? CS 30,31 ? and what other tickets after them ?, how long you been doing it ? are you fresh out of collage as many a young lad thinks he is the Bs n Es once he has a chainsaw ticket, i have employed young lads fresh out of collage and they are just 1 step up from useless but want £100 £120 a day using my saws n fuel and they cant cut enough timber to pay there wage and thats not good for me, can you use a tape measure and cut to spec as this is one issue with me that i see the younger lads struggling with, from a employers view you need to be cutting a value of timber that is more than your day rate espeicially on a clear fell, i have one lad who is shit hot as he will put 20-25 tonne on the floor in the day on a clear fell, the other lad working 100mts away might do half that, Thinings is different it can be straight forward at times or it can be a pain in the arse, i went and looked at job recently and soon as i walked in to the woodland i just thought i dont want this job, planted in the early 60s at 4ft quite a few dead stems and very poor timber with not much over 12" in dia, told him to clear fell it and start again as thining it would be a night mare as it should of been done 30 yrs ago, where abouts are you located,, 

Thank you for reply. Like you said, not much help so far. I have a solid 6 years of full time forestry chainsaw work, yet the last 2 years my Forestry work has been more relaxed with less chainsaw work, and on the books for a well known forestry organisation. I'm wanting to get back into full time felling work as my current job isn't giving me enough excitement or paying enough. Qualifications, 30&31 plus medium and larger tree. I can use hand winches and have worked alongs side harvesters and forwarders. I can comfortably cut to spec, done everything from small thinnings all the way up to clear fell and worked on hourly, day rate, piece work and tonnage. If the timber allows, I can easily fell, dress out, cross cut and stack 15 - 25 ton a day. And if it's huge mature trees then God knows how many times that would be!  Unfortunately, who I have worked for in the past has never wanted to pay more than £100 a day! And when on tonnage, it's very easy for forwarder loads to go walkies, if you know what I mean!? So I have never, ever made the money I should have, even though working my bollocks off! This is why I will only work for a day rate! Also, the day rate has to help cover all my out goings, PPE, new chainsaws, fuel, holidays, public liability etc.... It seems I am asking for a reasonable price, it's nice to get confirmation from other like minded people. Just putting the feelers out so I can be confident to charge this amount when asking around for work.

 

Cheers 👍🏼