Down sizing chippers.....good idea?

[emr]

So we are looking at getting a new chipper but we are thinking about down sizing. Our first chipper was a 12 in Vermeer 1250. We then bought a 16" cnd Chipmore. It was at that point that we realized how big and heavy the 1250 really was. I am not sure that the Vermeer really outperforms the Chipmore for the kind of work that we do.
Getting back to the new chipper.... we were looking at getting the Bandit 95 XP but that won't happen. So we basicly decided on a Vermeer 1000XL. Now Vermeer came out with a 9"chipper called the 900. We are going to demo it on Monday. I guess I was wondering if anyone ever downsized chippers and if they did, was it a good decision or one you regretted?

 

[MasterBlaster]

A 9" Brush Bandit can work miracles and be towed SO easily.

 

[SouthSoundTree]

What size wood do you chip typically?
Do you have junk wood that you need to get rid of?
Do people come and pick up firewood from the curb if you need to get rid of it?
Do you sell firewood at all, or give it away?
What truck are you pulling it with, typically?
Do you ever pull it with a small truck for chip on-site jobs?
Are you selling mulch by the truckload direct from the job?
Are you keeping just one chipper, or would you have a small one for most jobs, and the big one for big removals/ back-up during servicing and breakdown? Sometimes I wish I had a small chipper for little pruning jobs and small removals, and a big one for big eating.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Crikey, that's worse than a job interview!

 

[emr]

All of our debris is given away. No market for chips or wood here. We have plenty of sources to get rid of our chips and wood. 99% of work done out of our Topkick mancab. Our work is pretty even between removals and pruning. Our average removal is only about $300 so mostly small trees. And we will keep the Chipmore because it was cheap, it's paid for, and it's not worth anything.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

We'll always have a small chipper here. Everyone thinks firewood is gold so we only chip 3" minus for the most part. We burn a lot of slash as well. It really depends on your local and market. I sold 2.5 yards of chips right pout of the back of the truck today. I also do a lot of minimal access trees. Tight spaces and places. Small chipper works for me. Eventually I will have a larger one, but not much larger.

 

[pantheraba]

Crikey, that's worse than a job interview!

hahaha...that got my attention, too. Sean, how much coffee have you had? You can generate questions like nobody's business.

(excellent questions, BTW)

 

[Cobleskill]

With heating oil over $4 I am surprised you don't have a market for wood.

 

[SouthSoundTree]

How do you anticipate downsizing helping you most? Reduced purchase price? Reduced fuel costs? Reduced towing weight? Something else? Would chipping larger wood mean less hand loading of wood into the high chip bed, as you just need to get it to tray height, and the chipper does the rest of the lifting to dump bed height?

 

[SouthSoundTree]

With heating oil over $4 I am surprised you don't have a market for wood.

Funny how in some hardwood areas many people don't heat with wood, then in other areas with lots of softwood, more people heat with wood. I heard something to the effect of La Pine, OR having about $175 dollar cords of, ya you guessed it, pine.

In Lake Tahoe, we burned pine from permits for cutting dead, standing in the NF.

I'll burn some doug-fir, like most people around here, but have my hardwood hording of madrone, plum, cherry, holly and this year some dogwood, which seems quite dense.

 

[stig]

My last and the one I currently have only take about 6½".
Since you can't start a chainsaw around here without having people queue up for free firewood ( heating oil prices at almost $10/gallon will do that!) it almost only get to chip full diameter when we chip thorny stuff that we don't want to handle more than necessary.
It is only 4,5 foot wide and weights 1500 pds so the ATV cam easily pull it around yards and gardens.

If we have a big chipping job, we either hire in a bigger chipper or if the pile is really huge, get one of the companies that do energy chipping to buy it from us.

 

[Al Smith]

Well this is hardwood country and the people do burn it but they are selective unless they have an outside burner .Stuff like soft maple ,linden ,cotton wood ,tulip poplar gets hauled to the land fill or almost given away .

There's a local landscape ,mulch type place with a big tub grinder that can shred 3 foot logs slick as a whistle .They'll take all the grindings ,junk wood etc as the trimmers can haul them ,freebie dump site .

 

[SkwerI]

The BC1000 will chip as much as the old 1250 without having to fight it as much. You won't regret it.

 

[vharrison]

Go big or go home! HA

 

[emr]

All of you who are talking about heating with wood..... are you in rural areas or in urban areas? We do almost all of our work in the urban setting and not too many people heat with wood. The ones who do seem to be very picky and don't want the type of wood we make.

I am thinking about downsizing to reduce weight and bulk. I am thinking down the road to downsizing our truck as well. We just don't need such a big, heavy truck and chipper. If we do have to haul any wood, we just bring a pickup with the dump trailer. If we bring that, we figure that we might as well dump the wood instead of chip it so smaller wood gets hauled.

 

[Cobleskill]

Urbanites probably have natural gas piped down the street. Hard to beat the price of that these days. I don't know what propane is going for these days. Used to be higher than oil when you figured apples to apples.

 

[FJR]

I live in suburbia, and firewood is a big deal. Eric, do you guys not do many large removals?

 

[emr]

We do our share of big removals, but we normally can't compete with the removal guys around here. This last summer we did one job for a customer were we removed 4 100ft cottonwood that were each 30"+ DBH. Those are big trees for around here but it's more common for us to remove 12-18" Ash or Maples.

 

[PCTREE]

Every chipper I have got has been bigger than the last one. We focus on big high volume jobs so bigger is better for me. Our current chipper is a monster. Our new war cry at work as we cram huge tops in is "Conehead don't give a shit" and it just eats it all up. Next week I have a job taking down 100 plus scrub pines all about 60' tall. 2 days I'm figuring of sitting on the wheel loader listeng to tunes....

 

[FJR]

Everyone has a different niche and different market, but I am with Paul. I am always looking to improve efficiency, and the fewer cuts the better. It seems like going to a smaller machine would lower your productivity and efficiency for even the 18" dbh removals Eric. There is money in high end pruning for clients with deep pockets, but generally the money is in removals.... and phc.

 

[treesandsurf]

Sean raises some good points. Other factors to consider, I realized my F550 had the lower gearing ratio I believe 4.88?? so my fuel mileage isn't outrageously different towing or not towing, when I've calculated mileage at the pump. Having the large bandit 1590 makes chipping actually pleasant, and definitely not the focus of our jobs. We can process an incredible amount in very little time with minimal effort. In hawaii there is no market for firewood except kiawe (mesquite) which I don't mess with too often. Having a bigger chipper that can turn material into something in demand (wood chips) saves money.

On the mainland I think a smaller chipper would make more sense but I don't work there so not sure.

jp

 

[Altissimus]

...different strokes I guess, rented lots before I purchased, the Bandit nine inch disc was mine many times by the day .... I live in firewwod country and outdoor boilers are getting poular for getting rid of softwood, Poplar, and such .... for me the purchase of my brand new Morbark seven inch was probably the best money I ever spent .... machine is over fifteen years old runs like a top (originally special order like alot of my gear). Small is beautiful on many jobs, it was the Morbark sixteen inch rental that sold me on the brand

 

[flushcut]

I have thought about getting a smaller chipper as well but in the end I just can't pull the trigger. A guy I have worked with has a beat to snot bandit 250 and I hated it. I need a 15" chipper and at times I wish I had a 20".

 

[rangerdanger]

Bigger is better man. We have a Model 17 Morbark, 17" capacity. Not the beast a 18" machine today is, but it does its job very well. I can feed it with the loader, hand feeds real easy. Just eats tops and limbs all day long. I've worked with a crew who ran a 20" Bandit with a grapple arm loader and man, that was a dream, it just ate everything in site. They had two bobcats bringing loads of brush for it to eat, amazing chipper. Also worked with a 20" Woodsman, thing is a beast. I'd love to own one of those.

I've also worked with a few companies who ran BC100's, 1400's, 200XP's, etc. Not a big fan, its just such a pain feeding brush into those once you're used to a bigger machine. I helped Nick in Ohio a few weeks back, he runs a BC1000, he was doing 60 something Ash tree removals, majority 12-20", and it was a big pain sometimes feeding limbs and crotches into that chipper and all I could think about was how fast it'd fly by if we had our big Morbark or something similar there, with more crushing and pulling power so there would be less fighting and cutting going on.

 

[rangerdanger]

If we ever do replace the chipper I'll definitely be going bigger, like to look into a bigger Woodsman. Guess their owned by Terex now, but either a nice Woodsman or Morbark.