Defs going to need a few pics. And maybe an approx distance for the brush drag to the nearest accessible location if you go with a commercial company option.
Another consideration is if you’re willing to have the resulting chips dumped somewhere onsite. Saves time and ultimately, most tree outfits just have a standard hourly rate for a two man or a three man crew.
I don't want them dragged or chipped just chopped into smaller like quartered logs. I'll send pics when the sun is up.
Pics, these are some of the biggest. Probably 6 trees with 5ft diameter, 6 with 4 ft d, 6 with 3ft d
Wow these are gnarly. You may even want to take a multi year approach depending on your goals for the space(s) and your budget.
I’d see if you can hire a local three man arb crew to take them down chip the branches, buck the wood into 16” pieces for use by others, and dump the chips onsite for use as landscape mulch or compost. That way you are minimizing chip disposal and wood handling time for the crew and having them focus most on the things you can’t do yourself or don’t have time for.
Some considerations for order of removals:
- threats to buildings, parking spaces, recreational spaces and utilities
- brush drag distance for chipping
- intended use of the space in the trees’ absence
I can’t see the height or the volume of material in the crowns from the pics, but based on the trunk diameters and tree count, I’d say each tree will be 2-4 crew hours of processing. Plus daily travel to and from the site for the nearest competent tree company.
This time estimate depends on proximity to hazards, brush drag distance, and the ability of the individual trunks to be simply felled versus taken down with climbing and rigging.
This is a big job if there are 18 such specimens and you are looking to erase them including stumps.
A three man crew with a chip truck and a chipper and saws will be about $215USD/hr shop to shop daily. Plus whatever you want done with the stumps. That’s a different crew and machinery for those.
Based on the pics and lack of knowledge of the site layout and distance for the contractor, it gives a pretty wide range of pricing for the whole project. But even if the company is really close, you can count on a couple hours for daily travel and fueling/saw maintenance. At the low end, 24 crew hours. At the high end, a five day week of 10 hour shifts.
I can narrow this down with more pics of the upper crowns.
For individual targeted stump grinding with a Bobcat stump grinder attachment you can likely count on .75 to 1.25 hours per stump at $153USD/hr plus trucking of the machine at $114/hr. Where each stump is located you would expect to have an 8 to 10 inch depression in the ground mounded up with several bushels of wood chips and dirt that can be removed lor distributed in the immediate area.
Another approach depending on the site layout and nearby hazards may be to employ a large CMI300 forestry mulcher to push over and mulch the trees “in place” and disregard the stumps and surface roots. If the trees are situated in such a way that the machine can simply push them over and mulch them, leaving a 12 to 18 inch mattress of wood mulch where they stand, you could likely mulch all of them in a day for $2500-3000 including trucking. You would still be left with the top ends of the stumps and the root systems of the trees just beneath the topsoil.
It all comes down to machine hours, man hours and materials for these jobs. If you’d like to send me some more intel about the challenges of getting the trees down safely given what is around them, I might be able to narrow these hours down. But these look like “working trees” from the couple of pics.
There is a vast difference in time required to get a large tree down that is standing alone versus one growing over top of someone’s glass greenhouse.
Other considerations:
- overhead hazards
- underground utilities
- private vs public land
- permits
- what to do with the wood ie mechanical vs manual relocation
- saleability of the wood if salvaged in millable lengths
I hope this info is of help. But it is a doozer of a job from the looks of it.
Thanks man. Only one is in a hazard space, otherwise they're just scattered on my 27 acres. I already had the perimeter forestry mulched so I could put in a new fence, I'm just trying to open up the canopy. Not gunna grind stumps even because that will cost me a fortune. Just gunna let these rot in place (which I know will take forever because it's Osage But low time preference and I can let the sheep eat their leave and copice them whenever.
As for chipping, I already have so many piles because I cut down 150 trees right before I broke my back on my four wheeler hauling water. So truly I'm not gunna do that cuz I'm just gunna have nice windbreaks until the drought ends and I can have a fire every day or two and make biochar with all the tops.
Osage doesnt typically get milled, usually it's fence posts or bows and I'm just keeping whatever is straight for fence posts and burn them in a year if they don't sell. No permits needed, no water or utilities, just the one near my fence which I know I'm gunna have to pay out the ass because of where it is.
Probably my best bet will be to get a guy to quote me how long he thinks it'll take besides the one on the fence and then if he thinks it's multiple days I'll ask for a discount and just do 1 day if he won't budge and then just have them straight up fell as many as they can that day. If they fall horizontal and don't get hung up on other trees I can deal with the tops myself and then I will just have the massive trunks to take care of, which I'm fine with.
I know a dozer would be ideal, but I'm trying to use my property as a demonstration site for minimal machinery rehab. Then I can go to all the other neglected farmland near me, show them what I can do and tell them that I will pay them to do that to their property (for the right lease length of course). So none of these areas were walkable until just recently after running pigs and sheep on them for 2 years and my labor.
