are the manufacturers killing us?

[jonseredbred]

I hope this creates some discussion, both pro and con.

I have thought for quite a while now that these big chippers that the manufacturers are producing are literally killing us. I know market to market it is different, but who needs to chip 18" material? I may be old school but I outfit my crews with the old basic drum chipper, I do not need to chip large material, we have a firewood market and honestly it is harder for us to dispose of chips than even softwood (evolving market due to outside boilers). When you go to the local dumps there is mounds of chips and no firewood, the scavengers take firewood but the chip piles grow and grow.

All too often I see other tree companies towing a $45,000 chipper behind a $1,000 4 CY chip truck, they honestly chip for 10 minutes then have to go dump. I didn't get it until the local salesman made it to our shop one day. The sales pitch was basically 'everyone else uses them, so to stay competitive...." its all hog wash. I dont ever remember hearing about as many deaths resulting from a chipperas there is now. Sure the chuck n ducks are brutal but they always bred respect. Maybe scrapes and bruises and an occasional broken bone, but I have never heard of a body going all the way thru.

Remember when you could buy a new asplundh for $3,800.00? we were grossing $1,400.00 a day on a 3 man crew then. Now, a basic chipper is $30,000.00 and we are still fighting for that same daily gross.

Every death and major injury costs all of us in workers comp and insurance, for what? to pay the manufacturers and finance companies huge money on equipment that is killing us? Post your thoughts.

 

[beowulf343]

Sure the chuck n ducks are brutal but they always bred respect. Maybe scrapes and bruises and an occasional broken bone, but I have never heard of a body going all the way thru.

No bodies but I've lost alot of gloves to these chippers. Why the money my crew saves by not having to buy new gloves every week more than covers the cost of a $45,000 chipper.:hmm3grin2orange:

What outfit in wny do you work for? My first job out of school was with a tree outfit in south dayton for a few months.

 

[squisher]

I've always thought that the big fancy machines are more for impressing the customers than anything else.

Wayne 12" chuck and duck. Anything it won't eat I keep or sell. I've developed a real love hate relationship with that machine. Love the simplicity but hate the pain it inflicts sometimes.

 

[jonseredbred]

I may be old school but anything over a 4 man crew is overkill. I learned the old way, If a 20" piece of wood even hits the ground your losing time. 9 times out of ten on a removal we either rope wood into a truck or drop it right in. to me chipping 20" is too labor intensive.

 

[BostonBull]

I disagree.....but just in our area.

We sell all our chips to the power plants nearby, or if we have to dump at a place we dont own(i.e. our shop or one of our yards), EVERYONE else that owns a yard around us takes chips for free. Anything that is considered a good sized removal we use one of our cranes for. So why send a log truck out to pick up wood when you can take the extra 20 minutes and chip it? Plus were making decent money off hauling the chips.

Maybe in a different area where the fees to dump chips are outrageous I can see making all the wood into firewood for resale. But our chips make us money, like your firewood.

I believe they should build more cellulose driven power plants and put all these chips that are rotting away into loom to a good National use.

 

[TimberJack_7]

Those big chippers sure are nice when you have junk wood to get rid of. Me personally, I keep anything over 9" in diameter unless it is junk.

Several years ago I worked with a large outfit that had one of the chippers w/ the 18 in. feed. We would generally blow two to three big jobs out a day. We had a crane, a log truck, a bucket truck and two big mack chip trucks (CDL required) and that big brush bandit chipper. If you were on the ground that day instead of riding the crane up to the top of the tree, you generally did not even touch what was coming out of the trees. The crane would set an entire section of the tree next to the log truck that would then feed the the chipper with that handy Prentice boom.

The name of the game was making $$$$. The more jobs you got done in a day, the more $$$$$ was made. Having that big chipper made it happen, firewood be damned. If you wanted firewood, you had to speak up quick with that crew.

So, no I don't think the big chippers are killing us. It is just one more way business gets done. The only ones dying are the stupid or careless ones. The stupid ones always find a way to die no matter what industry they work in.

 

[Stumper]

One of the big advantages of the huge infeed capacity chippers is that they obviate the need to cut down wide crotches and corkscrewed branches. They also make it easier for a human body to go through the chipper. Personally if it is over 6inches in diameter I find it easier to make firewood out of the stuff....but if my chipper would take one whole tree or large leader with no trimming I can see how extra time hauling chips would beat sawing and chipping.

 

[maxburton]

I know a fellow who sells chippers, and he told me that right around the time the disc chippers came out, some folks in the industry were predicting higher fatalities, and they were right. Someone back there said that the chuck-and-duck chippers breed respect. The statistics back that up. I've read at least one report of a person being killed by an Whisper chipper, but I've read far more about people being killed by hydraulically fed chippers. That said, I do run a Bandit 90. I would LOVE to have a bigger machine and just chip everything. I hate throwing wood.

 

[jazak]

You all got it wrong. Its so that you can through bigger logs through it so its less wood you have to take. I have a friend who bought Discone's 21" model he take very little if no wood with him and he just bought a new International 4300 with 14' chip dump 7' high. He dumps one day or less depending on how many jobs.

 

[lawmart]

as some one said early it all depends on your market. I chip ever last piece of wood that i can. Chips are free to dump at my local dump they layer it with the other waste.
If the job warrants it and i can bring a crane the logs are lifted in to a firewood guys truck and flat bed. and he takes it for free. i just want to get rid of the stuff. or the smaller stuff if the wood hounds on the street take it ,we can usually get a bottle of funny pop, coffee or lunch or some thing.
but mostly we just chip it so we can move on to the next job.
i have mobark #13

Lawmart
Play safe

 

[Ekka]

For the semi tropic areas like here ... what firewood business?

Forget it.

Save yourself having a log truck and chip everything, bigger is better, 18" is pretty handy but 20" is awesome, no logs to take anywhere. The 20" Vermeer has a pretty big opening, much bigger than 20" anyway.

You can hook the winch on a pull a whole tree or palm in.

Downside is finding work for it cos it does cost more, the truck to pull it has to be bigger, you might want a loader or bobcat to feed it etc.

Anyway, I hire chippers in, and personally, I always try to get the 18" due to speed.

 

[trevmcrev]

I used to have a Bandit 6" and there are some days and some jobs (and some fuel bills) that make me wish i still had it. But my Vermeer 18" gobbles up anything you put near it so easily its almost fun feeding the hungry bugger:biggrinbounce2:

Today i quoted a chipping job for a homeowner we had done chipping for a few years back with the 6". Having seen how it worked last time he thought he'd save some time/money so he's gone and cut every thing up into small pieces and trimmed all the forks and cut up small bits of wood:bang:
Job will take about 3 times longer to chip now, we could have put every tree he cut in whole instead of playing pick up sticks.

Trev

 

[Ekka]

That's why you need a kanga mate.

 

[9th year rookie]

Slippery slope.

Great thread for me. I'm only a few years in the biz and slowly growing. I just sold my old small chipper and currently looking for new. I don't mind spending more for a big machine but I decided to limit size at a 12" machine. (I have low production and don't think I would benefit with anything more than 12)

I think I see where Jonredbred is heading. Look at the auto industry. In the 1970's, relatively new cars were what?10k maybe $15k each. I'm looking out my window at my neighbors driveway and see 2 SUV's together worth about $80-90 new. That seems like more than inflation. My neighbors are not loaded, but somehow that seems to be accepted today - not by me. I don't work for my car, my car works for me. I'd rather have money in a home that appreciates than a car that depreciates.

Chipper is different. It's not status, its bottom line. Seems like many of you agree..if a 20" machine pays more at the end of the day (even after giant cost of big machine) buy it, use it, make more $. I'm looking for a 12 (or 13) due to size of my operation.

 

[jazak]

Great thread for me. I'm only a few years in the biz and slowly growing. I just sold my old small chipper and currently looking for new. I don't mind spending more for a big machine but I decided to limit size at a 12" machine. (I have low production and don't think I would benefit with anything more than 12)

I think I see where Jonredbred is heading. Look at the auto industry. In the 1970's, relatively new cars were what?10k maybe $15k each. I'm looking out my window at my neighbors driveway and see 2 SUV's together worth about $80-90 new. That seems like more than inflation. My neighbors are not loaded, but somehow that seems to be accepted today - not by me. I don't work for my car, my car works for me. I'd rather have money in a home that appreciates than a car that depreciates.

Chipper is different. It's not status, its bottom line. Seems like many of you agree..if a 20" machine pays more at the end of the day (even after giant cost of big machine) buy it, use it, make more $. I'm looking for a 12 (or 13) due to size of my operation.

A good chipper for you is MORBARK's 13 now called 15. It chips up to 15" but is still about the same as a 12" and cost the same.
NEW 12" $30K+/-
NEW Morbark 15 $35K+/-

 

[ajfish]

I work for a local government and a few of our agencies buy or rent 18-20" chippers. The main use as been chipping massive quantities of brush (mainly mesquite branches) at somewhat remote sites. They claim that despite the small diameter of the average piece of wood, the larger infeed makes it easier and quicker to chip up larger "brushier" pieces of wood. Of course, these are a large agencies and so they have fleets of commercial vehicles to haul stuff away. Up until recently they would use state inmates to hack, slash, and feed the chipper. Recently they started using temp agency labor. At any rate, they had the labor to feed the things, too.

Surprisingly, despite the relatively low skill and training level of the laborers, they haven't had anyone get pulled through the chipper. Then again, if they were actual county workers, then it would be a miracle that none of them had been pulled through. In fact, the most common injury that I heard of when I shared a building with one of these agencies was inmates getting struck by rattlesnakes.

Given the travel times and remote locations, they like to get as much done per trip as possible and claim that these big machines make it possible. I suppose that for agencies that have 9,000 square mile jurisdiction, these big machines can make sense.

Most tree care companies around here get away with 12" or smaller. 9" seems to be relatively common. I suppose, ultimately, it really depends on the size of your company and the amount of work you're doing in a day.

I agree with those that have said a lot of the sales seem to have more to do with marketing rather than need.

 

[rebelman]

I'm a little off topic here but erosion is a huge problem. Chips are needed everywhere a bulldozer has been. Every constuction site or development should have a perimeter of thick chips to contain at least some of the storm runoff. Every raw clay ditch should have a coat of thick chips to allow some root growth and stabilization. Wood chips are drastically under utilized by governments, utilitities, individuals. Are we going to let everyone tell us that wood chips are useless? Or are we going to tell them they better get on the list.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Here, if you don't sell the firewood then a bigger chipper is better.

One problem is that with brush you reduce volume, but with wood you expand it. You end up needing a bigger truck.

Last Friday I worked with a client who ownes a 20in vermeer with grapple. We had a huge clump basswood where one stem was wind-thrown due to rootrot.

they had most of the downed stem and brush chipped by the time I rigged up to remove the other 3 stems. We had it all down to the big (+20 inch) wood in 4 hours with over 2 Asplund topkick sized boxes of chip filled to the gills.

Counting the owner there were 3 guys dragging brush and alternating on the ropes under me.

 

[John464]

not killing us at all. They are making our jobs easier and also making equipment more fuel efficient. The more choices we have the better, manufacturer competition drives prices lower. There is equipment to fit the scale of the small tree company to the large company. The argument of equipment being too expensive is hard for some to swallow, but those with liscensed businesses that need the write-off enjoy buying bigger, better, and more efficient equipment to make our jobs easier. Dont know about you guys but I LOVE playing with all the tree toys.

 

[ASD]

look at my sig. nuff said