Below is a link from a Treebuzz thread and it seems to be a very on-target answer to the OP here.
This guy was either humble- bragging or simply has a very nice business growth story, and he lends more detailed info re chippers vs grapples/not chipping
"OK here it is...First a disclaimer, I am not as experienced or nearly as big of an operator as some on here. We are a one crew operation, and instead of expanding to multiple crews as we grew, we focused on honing our skills and being more efficient. That led to trying different equipment, and trying different things.
As a side note - when something is working for us, we tend to close our minds to how we could better ourselves and what the options are outside of our point of view.
So we started with a 12" chipper, and hand fed everything. When we purchased a mini it was quite a gamechanger. Then we upgraded our chipper so we had hydraulic down pressure, and that was a huge help. After climbing for 9 years, we purchased our first lift...a Nifty SD64. My expectations were low, because we were working a lake market and most of our competition were primarily climbers. After using it, I realized that the profit margins were much better, and we did not need all of the jobs we were bidding to make a good living. We just needed to get the jobs we had the equipment for! That was a major shift in our operation, and from then on we focused primarily on lift work and crane jobs.
I realized that with the additional output of a lift we were going to run into capacity issues, so we decided to try JMAC's truck setup...A rear-mount grapple truck that has a U frame that you can chip into, and it also dumps. At this point I was still convinced that chipping was the best way to get rid of brush.
After a couple of months of chipping brush, and using the grapple to load logs on top, our chipper broke down for a week. My guys figured out that they could get nearly as much in the truck by stomping down the brush with the grapple as chipping, and then when they put the logs that crushed it down even more! So the chipper got left behind more and more, and finally they just quit using it. I will add that it would be overkill if we were just trimming most of the time, and where it shines is crane jobs and multiple removals.
Also where I live the land is a bit cheaper, and although I do get a permit to burn the burning regulations are less. But based on our experience, if I couldn't burn, I still think I would rather put the 50K it would take to buy a big chipper and spend it on land, and hire someone to come in with a tub grinder rather than chipping onsite.
Plus you add the additional value of taking all the wood out in log lengths, it can really make a difference! I actually just started a sawmill with all the logs I have accumulated over the last year, and although I don't expect to be able to fully supply it, it will definitely cut down on how many we will have to purchase."
