super small chipper/ homeowner sized chipper for small jobs.

[flushcut]

How about some wood sides for your pick up? No chipper to maintain or buy and you can easily fit a few fruit trees worth of clippings if chopped up.

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

My pick-up has a contractor's canopy with a homemade bed slide. About every inch has something (saws, rigging, climbing, Arbor Trolley, pole tools, yada yada. Mostly overkill for the winter, but you never know what the neighbor has. One day it might be a pruning job, the next a 100' fir removal, possibly put on ground only/ no processing, and the next a full day with clean-up where I'll pull the chipper with the chip truck.

Then I'm still pulling a 4400# chipper with a half-ton truck with hills, and no trailer brakes, for 200-300 pounds of brush. Currently, I use a trailer for these small, isolated jobs. I can leave the trailer at the job, as needed to run for bids. My smallest trailer can be wheeled by hand on flat lawn, if not too saturated. I do that at one job to save all the trips in and out to the front yard from the driveway. Better with two people.

I'd rather not have a trailer load of brush to then take a 20 mile round trip dump run out of my way. Currently, I don't have a drive up dump spot to burn at home, and try to avoid it, as its technically illegal (offsite brush being burned at home), and I don't want to bother my neighbors. I try to avoid cutting much at home, as the saws are loud. The chipper, not so much. The splitter/ mini, are pretty quiet, too, in relation to the distance to the neighbors' houses. I'd guess 300' to the one neighbor, 400' to the other.

If I have a little chipper, I figure I might be able to chip two fruit trees in the same time as going on a dump run, without the time or expense of the dump run, plus be able to leave mulch, and possibly avoid a trailer, if I can use a hitch platform, which I bought this year. Might not be heavy duty enough. A small trailer with the chipper in it, with a little ramp would be compact, able to be left at the job with an employee while I'm doing other things. The wood recyclers are soupy, muddy messes where at best, I'll have a dirty truck, and worst, I'll get stuck and have to hope someone is around with a machine to pull me out. I've been close to stuck before.

 

[Raj]

Pretty much the only time I have billable hours on my 3" MTD is chipping branches from fruit tree prunes or take downs. 99% of the time the HO is Italian and wants to keep the chips for smoke houses or cookers. I have a catch bag attachment, makes things easier. In my area HO's are very cheap, and want to do as much as the clean up themselves as possible. I usually suggest getting one of those waste bag companies to come and pick up the filled bag full of brush or chips if they rented a small chipper themselves.

 

[squisher]

Sounds like you need a different truck Sean. If I was rolling solo, one truck a lot of the time, it would definetly have the capability to haul a little bit of prunings or wood.

 

[Tucker943]

Ditch the pickup and get a one ton. Most of your reasons why you can't do one thing or the other point back to that truck. Common denominator. Not the chipper.

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

Ideally a one ton 4x4 flatbed, dump with removable sides. Money. I'd like to get a chipper bracket figured out for the arbor trolley.



Ya, Raj, that's all I'm talking about. Super small jobs.



I think that the longer I'm in business, the more I can consolidate jobs within different parts of town, making scheduling on my timetable possible with repeat customers.

 

[squisher]

Still seems like a pain to me. One more machine to fix and maintain. For your size setup right now I don't think it makes sense to roll with a truck just dedicated to holding climbing/rigging/cutting gear. For the money of one of those tiny chips I'd bet you could build/buy some kind of a box/storage set-up even on your current 1/2 ton to easily take care of any job that would be small enough to warrant one of those chippers.

 

[Tucker943]

I can understand Sean. Money is the common denominator that keeps all of us from perfecting out kit.

 

[Tucker943]

I agree with my man Squish. Move tool into the chip dump and take them out as necessary. Having the pickup on every job is a bleed. I've done it. It adds up $20 bucks at a time. If in a perfect year of 240 working days you took the pickup every time, that's $4800 bucks.

 

[MasterBlaster]

It's amazing how those small expenses add up at the end of the year.

 

[Tucker943]

It often floors me.

 

[MasterBlaster]

I used to pick up the guys and drop them off each day. They weren't very far away, but it did add 10 minutes each way. Doing the math, that's 20 x 5 x 52 which amounted to nearly 73 hours a year I was providing a taxi service.

 

[Tucker943]

Almost two work weeks.....

 

[Mick!]

You can get too obsessed by these things.if one of those guys gave you a good laugh or lent you a great tape/cd it was worth it.

 

[Mick!]

I'm being a bit hypocritical there actually. I whine and bitch like a toddler when I have to go out of my way to pick anyone up.

 

[Tucker943]

Obsessive, no. Mindful, yes. Managing a company for profit means managing expenses. We all know that. But I seem to think its a heavily mismanaged area. I'm guilty of it at times. I run through too much fuel.

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

The flexibility and extra towing make the pickup useful frequently, and noted about the expense. Breakdown issues and peace of mind of having another truck mobilized factor in, too. I leave the chip truck and chipper at jobs overnight, and drive all the valuable tools home at night, too. Storage with a flat bed truck seems challenging.

I'm envious of BOTS' RIG!

 

[flushcut]

Sean, How long do you think it will be before you will see a profit on a micro chipper?

 

[Raj]

I bought mine for $300, used once or twice, from a farm dealer. Retailed somewhere in the $900 range. I did two small (40ft) hemlock trees, hour each, charged $50 each. Dump was free. I did 3 cherry trees took may be 6 hours total, charged $200, for an Italian, also got buzzed off homemade wine and filled with sausages. Done a few other prune jobs, I charge usually about $40-50 an hour chippin' and the dump, but I'm rarely on it over an hour. I've probably have about another 5 billed hours on it. Most use it gets is shredding leaves at my girlfriends place and my elderly parents place.... but I can't charge for those....

As a side note, in my area it is not uncommon for tree companies to leave branches from prunings or take downs on the front lawns for sometimes weeks. I've seen up to 4 weeks! Same day or next day clean up is a big selling point.

 

[Tucker943]

Really? I'd have people at my door with pitchforks and torches if I left the brush for weeks.

 

[Raj]

I am not kidding. People put up with it for some reason from the bigger tree companies.

 

[squisher]

That wouldn't fly here.

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

How crazy is that?

I'd be happy to make a chipping run every other week. Never heard of it happening locally.

 

[MasterBlaster]

No shit! Same here.

Really? I'd have people at my door with pitchforks and torches if I left the brush for weeks.

 

[bstewert]

and I don't want to bother my neighbors. I try to avoid cutting much at home, as the saws are loud. The chipper, not so much. The splitter/ mini, are pretty quiet, too, in relation to the distance to the neighbors' houses. I'd guess 300' to the one neighbor, 400' to the other.

That's what I'd call being a good neighbor.