How many are left?

[donk]

my father and i are hand cutting and skidding timber

[elfinwood saws]

Hi logrover, what are cutters paid a ton, cutting softwood? and how much do you think would be a fair rate a ton?

[Stephen Blair]

my father and i are hand cutting and skidding timber

 

I don't need a gun, I got a Donk!

Any pics of you guys in action with your kit in the woods?

[Logrover]

depends on the site, we have worked for £12 a ton in bigger stuff making £85 a day and in utter crap with various prices, chip £16, post/strainers £18/logs £20 and made £40-60 a day as it was all tiny chip.

All depends on the site, the rubbish gets a rate that seems good until you cut and realise you just cant get the tonnage down and the bigger stuff the lower the rate so you have to do 10 ton plus a day to make a half decent wage but its not THAT good enough stuff, ie really hairy. All good straight stuff goes to harvesters.

Currently cutting for £17 a ton in big pine but its all edge kind of trees, really big gharly stuff so takes ages but can make money in it but its hard on the saws.

But we spend more time in the rubbish than anything, this summer has been awful each job promising to be better..........

 

the given rates are fair for nice straight timber or pine as its heavy stuff but we do bent hairy horrible stuff! I think to get decent wages on these sites would mean no profit in the job overall so they would be left although an extra couple of quid would nt hurt here and there!

[gensetsteve]

Its easier to find a different use for your skills while you still have some wool on your back. The last generator I built from my business unit was in 1999 just before the mellenium bug. Could not compete with the susidised irish manufacturer or the Italians. Now the Itialians cant compete with China and the Irish manufacturer has lost its subsidies and gone to China. Point I am making is the world is constantly reinventing itself and your time may come round again just not now. Large harvesters may become too expensive to run and build and not pc. I diversified in 99 and am still here.

[santacruz]

I used to cut in the forest for wire rope extraction. The only way to make it pay was to just cream the big trees in a thinning, or take nice trees from beyond the C marks in a clear fell. Make the job look like a goodun from roadside then beyond the view from the road batter the piece. The FC always take the cheapest price on all DP contracts and then wonder why they get a crap job. They dont discriminate against contractors who put in cheap prices and do crap jobs. I even took live Larch on quite a big thinning piece in winter and just left dead ones, the FC auditors wouldnt notice until spring, just to make a decent wage. The rock bottom prices lead to dangerous practices. Felling uphill onto the road, no banksman no view of the road, my attitude was I pay PL insurance not to stop and look or really care if there is a vehicle there or not, its just fell fell fell to earn enough money. Its all the FCs fault. Anyway rant over I dont do Forestry anymore.

[face cord]

I did abit of felling as a national trust volunteer/trainee rural estate worker

 

Thinning a conifer platation to make glades & to increase biodiversity. All wood was logged up & left in stacks for "the bugs".

[JimM]

Was clear felling last week ready for pheasant shoots. About 20 ton of poplar and birch in some awkward and boggy spots. Hot work even when it was minus 2 or the weeks perpetual drizzle. But satisfying.

I set the daily rate for the estate that contracts me in. Not great money but certainly better than some of the other posters.

Back to climbing next week.

[Big J]

I've been doing regular part time work for the estate I live on for 2 and a half years now doing self select hardwood thinning. Mostly 30-40 year old stock, sycamore, beech, oak and ash with elm, birch, willow, lime and cherry in minority.

 

It's been pretty good fun on the whole, but we're starting to change tack slightly. The aims of the estate initially seemed to be more financially driven and we would cut on tonnage more frequently, on doing what was needed to make the job pay. These days, they are much keener on a complete job, so we only work on hourly rates and spend more time on pruning and general tidying. Just recently, I've expressed my feelings that I enjoy working in very young stands (less than 10 years - formative pruning and singling out/removing sycamore clumps, willow and birch). I get the impression the forester finds this unusual, so we might spend a whole lot more time in wee trees!

 

The difficulty I have has always been finding good, reliable cutters. I've got a couple of guys who are able to do odd days, but finding guys who are local, can cut well unsupervised and who can deal with the payment timescale of traditional estates is tricky. I think that I pay pretty well (£13/hr) and I make very little from the work - main reason I do it is that I live here and like to improve my home and it's surroundings.

 

I don't envy folk doing the plantation hand cutting, I really don't. I do take my hat off to you though!

[Charlieh]

I try and price forestry jobs to give the hand cutters I use a decent day rate. I won't work on tonnage as a lot of what we do is either utter rubbish or on SSSI type sites so the quality of job is as important as prices in some cases although its not profit driven it cant be a loss maker (unless the extraction costs make it a fell to waste job).

 

I have done my fair share of felling but recently have been trying to get a couple of local lads trained up so I can concentrate on chasing more work, I have hammered into them that we can make as bigger saving with forwarding and extraction if timber is well presented, and well i think the pictures speak for themselves If a decent price isnt paid there is no incentive to strive for quality of work (as has been mentioned already). By paying a fair day rate they can afford to invest in equipment and actually up productivity these lads will graft and those logs at the back of the larch photo are 3.7's dragged into heaps for the forwarder I think these type of lads are going to become more and more valuable as difficult sites come into a productive phase and harvesters cant get on the ground for extraction. I a recent talk with a harvesting manager for FC Wales their biggest issue over the next 5 years is going to be a lack of decent handcutters and specialist extraction equipment for working steep terrain.