Cutter required west of Edinburgh

[Big J]

We are looking for a self employed cutter for ongoing hardwood thinnings with the estate that we do the bulk of our forestry work on.

 

There will be in the region of 2-4 days work a week ongoing for the indefinite future. Presently we are in a nice stand of 40 year old beech and sycamore. Each tree is typically about a quarter to a third of a tonne, at about 60ft height.

 

Rates are on tonnage, and experience of commercial forestry is an absolute must.

 

Own kit is required but insurance and fuel is supplied.

 

Drop me a message if you are interested!

 

Jonathan

[Stu]

Shame its so far away sounds like a good jobs!! whats the price per ton?

[Brushcutter]

Jon

 

I'm off to Finland so not in a position to help. Do you ever need help with the extraction/forwarding side. I'm hoping to go big into this when i get back.

[Big J]

Hi Stu - rates at £11.50 a tonne. You can pretty comfortably average 10 tonne a day, with 8 tonne in the tougher branchy beech, and 12-13 tonne in the sycamore. I did put that fuel is provided, but I was mistaken as it's not!

 

Hi Brushcutter - I saw that you are heading over there for forwarder training in another thread - it's certainly exciting stuff! We are looking into options for sorting our own extraction, but have reasonable access to an Alstor at present. Anything much bigger would be unsuitable for the stands.

 

Jonathan

[David Goss]

I could be interested for sure. Whats the crack? fell, sned, cut to length and stack?

[Big J]

Yep, though much of it is too big to be realistically expected to stack. You are talking about 40 odd trees a day (in this stand). What kind of forestry experience do you have Dave?

[David Goss]

Not a huge amount to be honest but i have done a lot of cut to waste thinning, a few clear fells (not production but for development) although the timber was taken for paper mills etc and plenty plots and tariffs.

[Big J]

The forestry management company managing the estate are pretty keen to have quite experienced folk on the ground as it's all self select thinning we do. It's one of those daft situations where we need experienced cutters, but how the hell are you meant to get experience without someone taking you on!?

[David Goss]

well i have 20 years experience with a chainsaw in my hands so i aint no spring chicken, as you know production felling nowadays for a cutter is rare so finding someone with clear fell experience will be difficult. But you want thinnings so where is the problem? Do you want some references to ask if my work is good or not?

[Big J]

well i have 20 years experience with a chainsaw in my hands so i aint no spring chicken, as you know production felling nowadays for a cutter is rare so finding someone with clear fell experience will be difficult. But you want thinnings so where is the problem? Do you want some references to ask if my work is good or not?

 

Dave - apologies if I was implying you were inexperienced in any way! We've not had any shortage of folk with a whole lot more experience than myself, for instance. It's just getting guys with self select experience that I'm happy to leave more or less unsupervised whilst I do my own cutting!

 

Thanks for the references by the way.

 

Had lots of interest in this so far, so for the time being I'll need to sort through everyone's details and make a few decisions.