Dollar value of forwarding

[Rick Alger]

I’m hoping to get a ballpark figure of how much horseloggers would be likely to pay to have wood forwarded and stacked on a landing. I know there are all sorts of variables, so let’s say it’s a quarter mile turn, a reasonable trail, and the wood is small saw logs worth $250/mbf on the landing. You are paying $100/mbf stumpage.

Would it matter if it was tractor forwarded?

Would you want the trucking done as well?

[mitchmaine]

hey rick, are you paying stumpage on the logs? if you are, and it runs about $100. you and your yarder are then working for $125. if you pay him more than half, then you are working for him. if he trucks it as well as yards it, then you are working for him still. a deal is only a good one when each guy thinks he’s skinning the other. i’d pay $40. would you yard my logs for $40.?

[Rick Alger]

Hey Mitch,
Thanks for the reply. I forget to include stumpage, but that is fixed now.

We can’t dicker yet because I’m hoping for other replies. My guess is you’ve done a little skinning in your time!

Take care.

[Carl Russell]

Rick, my basic formula for small wood on a quarter mile turn, would be $200/mbf for logging, so I wouldn’t be able to pay more than $50/mbf for stumpage. By the way I can pretty easily get out 1mbf/ day at 1/4 mile without a forwarder.

That being said we have been using a forwarder at $80/hour, and on a turn like that it can move about 1mbf in an hour, or $80/mbf cost. That would mean chopping, twitching, and heading for $120/mbf, and if that means I can increase production by 2x then that’s pretty good.

Based on your numbers, I’d have to agree with Mitch, I couldn’t afford to pay much more than $30-40/mbf.

I never figure logging cost based on stumpage, always the other way around. If the logging is to deliver a product, residual stand, then it has to be cost effective. I don’t know anybody who does good work who wants to work for less than it costs them.

I was just looking at a 190 acre piece today, doing a cruise to update the plan, and thinking about having a few teams working individually in different sections so that we could perhaps keep the forwarder going all day, possibly reducing the per hour cost.

I was thinking about letting each teamster cut and sell their own wood, paying the forwarding cost out of each operation, but in this way sharing the whole lot, working together in a way, and making the operation take less time. Also we could all be involved in providing a consistent product.

Carl

[mitchmaine]

good idea carl, a crew working together putting out wood, each cutting separately scaling and making their own wage by what they pile up (or how hard they work). sounds fair. some kind of community thing there, too that might be helpful. LIF up in unity is doing something along that line, all the wood goes in the same pile, and it seems to be working well. there is something about the crew working together that increases output. two men cut more than twice what one can. some math thing like that. we should explore this one a little more. mitch

[Rick Alger]

Yes. My point exactly.

Had a good discussion recently with John Plowden about forwarders. He participates in LIF and has used forwarders. We got to talking about a concept that Simon raised a while back of a forwarder serving multiple crews.

Because of the distances between horseloggers today, I threw in the idea of trucking by the forwarder guy as well. Automatic “back haul” and save on loading time/yard space.

I agree with Carl that in my example you could probably double production, and I agree with Mitch that $40/mbf is the low end of a reasonable ballpark figure. $80/mbf is way too high for my situation.

Dreaming out loud, if four jobs were involved for the logging season, and the trails would be kept open in the winter, I’m thinking a trucking/forwarder guy could cycle weekly between four jobs and move a respectable amount of wood at a reasonable cost – especially if all four were relatively close.

Anyway thanks for the input. I’ve got to do something, and I would be all for a collaborative effort.

[Scott G]

Here is a link to the cost calculation worksheet I was referring to earlier. If you don’t have an accurate knowledge of your costs or in this case, your sub’s costs, you are asking for trouble. Unfortunately most loggers run by the seat of their pants with numbers in their head. Relying on experience and constant knowledge of your resources and markets that usually works, for some folks. More often than not loggers run on what they think the numbers are (or should be) and get their ass burned in the process. This comes from a past of moving a lot of volume from my former mechanical show, friends. I had a really good handle on what my costs were (or thought I did), but often would go back with a sharp pencil and discover the ugly truth. This spreadsheet is invaluable for that.

I am currently working on a version that can integrate a horse component. That should be ready to go earlier rather than later.

To make this spreadsheet work, you need to know the operator prevailing wage for the area and the type and vintage of machine they are dealing with, as well as fuel costs, etc. There is a big difference if they are running an old Iron Mule vs. a brand new TimberJack, both in efficiency, payload, and cost.

Take it for what it is worth. My suggestion would be to pre-bunch your entire job trailside, if you could stand financially, first. With volume comes economy of scale, and when it comes to equipment operational costs, that is what makes all of the difference.

My standard has usually been to pay hourly. That scenario is only put into play when I know the operator personally and have either dealt with them in the past, or know someone credible who has. If you can get enough trailside, you can go the volume route for payment. If you have minimal volume though, the chances are that you are going to lose your shorts in the deal. Mobilization costs decrease the greater volume you can spread those costs over.

If you are going to consistently be forwarding material, I would follow the example Simon and others have, get a horse-drawn forwarder. It is analogous to paying rent vs. purchase. The money you are spending on Joe the forwarder guy you could be spending acquiring an asset. This scenario only plays out if you are moving enough volume and have enough wood in front of you, however. Otherwise, it becomes a liability. When I ramp up post & pole operations in the not so distant future I will be going this route.

Forwarding is the only way to move enough volume of small wood to make it economically feasible, IMO, if you have significant turn distance involved.

Here is the link http://sites.google.com/site/draftanimalpoweredforestry/home/machinerate-xls

[near horse]

At the risk of sounding stupid, is the main reason to use a forwarder to reduce the amount of time/distance spent on long turns?

[Carl Russell]

near horse;16946 wrote:

At the risk of sounding stupid, is the main reason to use a forwarder to reduce the amount of time/distance spent on long turns?

To increase volume per trip, to increase efficiency by hauling pre-cut (defects out) logs, and to reduce impact of dragging logs on the ground. The power hydraulic boom and grapple for handling material is also a big component of increased efficiency.

Carl

[Does’ Leap]

I have been following this thread with interest as I have 100 acres of woodland that I have been managing and will continue to manage with horses. I have been considering hiring a forwarder to reduce the skid distance in the most remote area of my property. I am a farmer who does some logging (on the order of 20 mbf / winter + 25 chords of firewood). As such, I could use an education on some logging terms. From Carl’s post:

Chopping: same as felling?
Twitching: I use this term synonymously with skidding. Correct?
Heading: ?

My vision with the forwarder was to skid as many logs (and tops) as possible (12 mbf or more?) to my main skid road before things got to congested, and then hire the fowarder to move it to where I can get a log truck. Scott, is this what you mean by “pre-bunching the entire job trailside”?

George

[Rick Alger]

George,

I’m not Carl, but I’ll try to answer your questions. Chopping -yes. Twitching -yes. Heading – pre-bunching at skid trail heads.

Scott,

Thanks for the info. The chainsaw cost surprised me.

All,

I played around with Scott’s formulas to figure the cost of the Payeur forwarder. I had to make a lot of assumptions, and the figure I got is in no way truly accurate. Just something to further discussion.

Figuring 1000 productive hours per year over five years with 50% salvage value, paying North Country wages to the operator ( $12.50/hr plus $7.50 for wc fica etc), paying $ 4.00/hr for the team and $4.50/hr to own and run the machine, the Hourly cost comes out to $28.50 give or take.

If I remember correctly a discussion with Mike Miller a while back, this machine is capable of averaging around 500 feet an hour, so the guestimated cost to forward a thousand feet is $57.00.

That figure is about half way between what Carl is paying on a real job and what Mitch is willing to pay on our next one.

Any thoughts?

[Carl Russell]

George,
Chopping is felling, de-limbing, bucking, and clearing the logs. This would include swamping (clearing brush) skid trails.

Twitching is skidding, but typically short distances, and small quick loads.

Heading is bunching, but in a semi organized way, on a header, which to many is just a landing, but to me is a staging area. I cannot just skid and un-hitch from a log. Even if I am going to have the logs hauled by a forwarder, I know what it is like to work with limited space, and if the forwarder can’t make it for some reason, then I want my material organized. Also if for some reason I need to move the logs my self with a sled or wagon, and handle them by hand, I don’t want to untangle a mess.

I don’t see the forwarder as anything other than another conveyance to make the long haul. It does not replace for me the need to be neat and orderly. One of my pet peeves about equipment is that a lot of people want to use technology to replace the time consuming aspects of working with horses. However, I feel that it is when I take that time that I become truly invested in my work, and attention to detail ripples through the entire operation.

That is why it isn’t as simple for me to just say that the forwarder is the only way to go. I know that wood can be moved long distances with horses at a cost effective rate. I have a good friend who owns a tractor drawn forwarder, so we have been using it. Since it is how he wants to log, and since he needs to pay for it, it is on the job and being put to use.

As I said before I can see something like this working on a large piece of land with several operators, but in reality we could do the same thing with a couple of extra teams drawing sleds or log wagons. For the cost of that forwarder we could easily afford to buy 4 teams of good horses and the sleds and wagons. Four teamsters just pulling pre-bunched wood from a header could make a forwarder look silly.

I know, I know… just dreams, especially in this day when we are so far apart from each other, it’s hard enough to find 3 or 4 teams that are close enough to even think about working together, let alone 3-4 more. But that is where my sights are set.

I would love to have several choppers working on jobs for me, and I would just move my horses from job to job every couple of days and clean up their wood by sled to the main landing.

I degress…

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I spoke with Ben last night and he said that on the job this winter he could load, moved, and unload 1MBF of pine uphill 1000′ in about a half an hour. He figures his hourly rate for equipment and operator to be $80/hour, so in this instance it probably did cost about $40/MBF. This is in a 70 HP tractor with a Payeur forwarder wagon.

He also said he averaged about 2MBF per day cutting and bunching at $190/MBF = $380/day – $80(Forwarding 2MBF) = $300 / 2MBF = $150/MBF to cut and bunch.

Sounds about right,

Carl

[Rick Alger]

Carl,

Thanks, That’s useful information.

Anyone else have any figures or thoughts?

[Gabe Ayers]

Great stuff guys. This is what we have done many times by hiring the mechanized forwarder after bunching along side the old haul road. We divided the tract into units and each horse logging crew managed their own, cutting marked trees and color coding small ends at the landing to be hauled by the sawmill that purchased the wood. Worked out great, moved allot of wood and everyone made money, including the forwarder guy who rented his services at $500.00 per eight hour day. Stumpage and pro rated costs similar here.

If the wood were small enough or the horse drawn forwarder stout enough it could be done like Simon does and the investment in your own assets makes good sense.

Other story-

Just returned from ten days with Simon in the U.K. He is the real deal folks.

Our quest to find a good colt is complete and wouldn’t have been possible in such a thorough way with our native guide. Thanks Simon.

Attended the fetcu meeting, another bunch of real folks…. hard to give a speech that is being translated into three languages one sentence at a time. Showed the Chronicles DVD, the visual brings us all to the same language. Awesome event.

Off to the manure mines here and getting the spring work underway. Still plenty of logging to be done, but have to take care of the ground in a timely way.

~

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