Financial viability of small forwarders/tractor trailer

[Malus]

I've been thinking about buying a small forwarding trailer to go behind my little ford 1710 26hp tractor. Would be something with a capacity of 2-3 tons. 

I've also got a skidding winch for it which I've used for personal use, but not done any extraction for anyone else. I know a few people on here do small scale timber extraction - I'm interested to know how you charge and how much. I.e. do you charge per ton/day/hour. Or do you buy standing timber and market it yourself? 

 

I take it a lot of the work for small scale machines is removing first thinnings and can't imagine there's much if any return for the land owner. How do you overcome this and get them to pay you a fair rate? 

 

I've got a portable bandsaw mill and have been toying with the idea of offering a service from tree to boards targeting smallholders and farmers who have woodlands that aren't necessarily commercially viable. This might be a non-starter though, it's very much a niche and I'm not sure there would be all that much work out there. 

 

It's a relatively small financial outlay (in machinery terms) to buy a trailer. I think about £7-8k +vat should get a decent trailer, already have the tractor but if it's working out would look to upgrade in the future, but keeping it small enough to transport behind a 4x4. 

 

I'm thinking it can't be worth doing for much less than £35/hr but keen to hear what other people are charging, I might be way off the mark. 

 

[Malus]

Here's a picture of the tractor and winch because everyone like a photo

 

 

[MattyF]

Realistically only you will know what you need to earn to keep it viable but what ever that is I would stick £10 an hour or more on top too cover the cost of break downs. 
I would try and stick to a day rate although you can make good tonnage on the right stuff and ground , most of the time you won’t be. 
Also does your tractor have good hydraulic flow , I run an AGT 835 and it can be unreliable, if you can try and go pto powered crane with its own hydraulic tank as it will make it more reliable and improve performance. 
are they worth it? Well you could hand load a trailer but not all day every day with out getting tired. 

[Malus]

Thanks Matty. Looks like a good setup you've got there. 

 

I'm certainly more comfortable working for a day/hourly rate and I think it can be fair for both parties. Well ideally I think it would be more like £40/hr I just think a lot of farmers would think that's taking the p1ss, and if it's extracting low value first thinnings then it might not happen. 

 

That's a good point about hydraulic flow. I've looked up the specs and apparently it has 29.5lpm so not exactly high. It runs the loader fine but I've not used it for any power hungry hydraulic attachments. I think I heard something about the oil getting hot on those agt 835s? 

 

Do you manage to get much work for the tractor and trailer combo? 

[gdh]

I think your best bet is teaming up with a firewood seller so you've got a guaranteed sale at the end then going around farms and offering them a standing price for the timber. Average extraction price to roadside is £35 a ton so you could work back from that.

 

Your could go out on a day rate but selling directly at £65-70 a ton roadside could be more profitable.

[MattyF]

7 minutes ago, gdh said:

I think your best bet is teaming up with a firewood seller so you've got a guaranteed sale at the end then going around farms and offering them a standing price for the timber. Average extraction price to roadside is £35 a ton so you could work back from that.

 

Your could go out on a day rate but selling directly at £65-70 a ton roadside could be more profitable.

Good call… you maybe would be better looking at a second hand 8t trailer and tractor around 70-100hp and using the smaller tractor and winch to get stuff to the ride and for felling whilst using the bigger rig to forward timber to keep it productive in second /third thinnings where the tonnage is easier to make up… but a lot of the time it’s easier to fell to waste in first thinnings anyway as no one wants to pay the cost of extraction … thing is it’s an endless rabbit hole with no tool being perfect for every job, the smaller stuff is great for low impact though when it’s needed. 
In regards to use malus, the tractor gets used for topping , winching and some extraction with the trailer , the trailer work is not huge anymore  … the most It did last year was the job in the first photo that was about 20 t and then about 60 large 14-20ft Christmas trees.. to be honest I don’t push for work for it as I’m far to busy doing arb works these days and we don’t have the staff to put in the woods as much anymore to make it viable. 
I would not sell it though as we have 30 acres of Norway spruce at home that’s on very boggy ground that I plan to thin and maintain and it’s ideal for messing about with using that set up. 

[Malus]

16 hours ago, gdh said:

Average extraction price to roadside is £35 a ton so you could work back from that.

 

Your could go out on a day rate but selling directly at £65-70 a ton roadside could be more profitable.

That's a good point. To be honest I was under the impression that extraction price was a lot less than that, I guess it varies a lot from site to site. I winched out some wind blown Douglas fir and spruce with a friend, and the woodland owner said we would have to get in there before the main contractor arrived and that he was charging £10/ton to extract. There wasn't a huge amount, I think we had about 4-6t each.

 

16 hours ago, MattyF said:

 

 

[MattyF]

If you did want to find work for such a rig I would recommend asking around land agents, most of that sort of work is done with grants and they are making the applications for land owners.

The woodland trust have a lot of woodland thats young or needs low impact stuff in .. there is a lot of folk also buying small parcels of woodland these days that want thinning and softwoods removed and don’t want great big machines in.

I think you would be wasting your time with farmers though as they won’t do anything unless they have a grant for it so unless you know them personally and you have a  deal I would not rely on it to keep you in work. 
Also worth looking in too if your serious about low scale low impact stuff is looking at a purpose built forwarder.. although the one on my alpine is ok for bank work it would probably be a disaster unless completely dry which it never is when you need it. 

/assets/static/govuk-opengraph-image-dade2dad5775023b0568381c4c074b86318194edb36d3d68df721eea7deeac4b.png

Farming Equipment and Technology Fund: Round 1 manual - Annex 3 – Eligible Items – specification and grant amount - Guidance - GOV.UK

WWW.GOV.UK

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This annex details the required Specification and Grant amount of eligible items.

worth looking at as there’s a £2500 grant for small scale trailer like what you want and a 24k one for purpose built small forwarder. 

[Malus]

16 hours ago, MattyF said:

Good call… you maybe would be better looking at a second hand 8t trailer and tractor around 70-100hp and using the smaller tractor and winch to get stuff to the ride 

 

If only money was no object. I have deliberated buying a tractor about that size but just can't see I would get a decent return on the investment, I'd have to borrow the money etc etc also seeing how cheap some agri contractors are is a bit of an eye opener. 

[Malus]

Yeah good point, hadn't though of getting in touch with land agents. 

 

Ha yeah I can't think of any farmers around my way that like to splash the cash without either a nice shiny new tractor or a big return. Would have to be fairly certain of making money for a farmer to get someone in to fell and process a small area of woodland.  Yeah that's exactly the kind of niche markets I've been thinking about.

 

Thanks for the heads up on those Granta. I saw them recently but they don't apply to Wales. I'm up in Scotland at the moment and saw a little alstor forwarder, looked like a brilliant machine and easy enough to transport.