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?

[Big J]

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.

[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. 

[Big J]

7 minutes ago, Svts said:

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. 

 

I left the UK 2.5 months ago and I'm still working through my roadside timber. It's selling, but slowly.

 

The issue is that the timber industry in the UK is too small and too varied. Too many species on too broad a variety of sites with an insufficient number of niche businesses to utilise the broad spectrum of products. But on the flipside, the niche industries can't survive due to the low forest cover not providing sufficient supply. 

 

Then add to that the obsession with health and safety tick-boxing instead of proper training, general lack of productivity and a climate which is great for growing fairly poor quality timber quickly, but is also awful for harvesting (mud, mud and more mud) and you've got an industry that's only ever going to swing from boom to bust.

 

Here in Sweden, forestry is relatively boring. It's pine, spruce and birch, with a smattering of other forestry species. One site isn't so different to another, but there is a niche for every product. With 70% forest cover, and slow grown, mechanically harvestable timber, it's easy to manage for the long term, knowing that you'll have the products you need at an economic rate for the foreseeable future. 

 

There is a lot of market manipulation in the UK by the big players too, pushing the price up and down artificially. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that roadside spruce this summer was worth almost £50/t less than last summer. No one can adequately plan for that. It puts people under. 

 

I will enjoy my boring Scandinavian forestry work. I only brought a small battery chainsaw with me from the UK and I'm quite happy that that is all I need