A forwarder carries logs completely off the ground in a load bunk. A skidder drags stems or logs to a landing. That single difference drives everything else: contamination, soil disturbance, speed, and which production system the machine belongs to.
They are not really competitors. They belong to different systems — and choosing between them usually means choosing between cut-to-length and full-tree.
Framed as a machine choice, this comparison has no clean answer. Framed as a system choice — cut-to-length against full-tree — it resolves immediately, because each machine only makes sense inside its own production chain.
A forwarder carries sorted cut-to-length logs off the ground. It exists because a harvester produced sorted logs at the stump. A skidder drags whole stems to a landing. It exists because a feller buncher produced bunches and a processor waits at the landing.
Buying either without committing to its system produces an unbalanced fleet — which is the most common and most expensive structural mistake in harvesting.
Most of the confusion in this comparison comes from reading them as better and worse versions of the same thing. They are built for different work.
The load travels clear of the ground, which protects soil, keeps products sorted and delivers clean material to the landing. The price is loading time — the crane work that fills the non-travel part of every cycle — and a higher capital cost for the same payload.
Picking up is fast and travel is fast, which suits whole stems and long snigs. The material arrives with whatever it collected on the way, the ground takes the load, and the residual stand takes some of it too — all acceptable in clearfell and not in a stand you will work again.
Capability comparisons are easy to find. This is where the commercial difference actually sits.
Read across the row your own situation matches. Where most rows point the same way, the decision is straightforward; where they split, the comparison is genuinely close and the economics below should settle it.
Not a balanced summary — a recommendation for each case, with the reasoning.
Skidding through a thinning corridor damages the crop that pays for the next rotation, and machine width is the main lever available. A small forwarder is the standard answer for a reason.
Where a feller buncher is producing large bunches and the landing has processing and loading capacity, skidding is faster and carries lower capital per tonne extracted. Contamination is acceptable if the mill tolerates it.
Two constraints point the same way. Dragging stems through wet soil creates both rutting exposure under the harvest plan and contamination the mill will penalise.
Each step narrows what the next has to establish. Worked in order, most buyers find the decision resolves before the last one.
Cut-to-length implies forwarding and full-tree implies skidding, and the system is chosen by stem size, terrain and the mill's product specification rather than by extraction preference. Where the system is already fixed, this comparison is largely answered.
Extraction cycle time scales with distance while felling does not. A machine sized on the average will be the constraint for the part of the coupe that is furthest out — which is usually the part that takes longest to work.
Where the stand faces further thinnings or another rotation, compaction and residual damage are increasingly contract conditions with stated thresholds. That can rule out dragging before any productivity comparison.
Several sorted products favour carrying them clear of the ground and sorting at the stump. A single assortment or whole stems removes most of that advantage.
Landing placement, an extra access point or resequencing the coupe change the haul the fleet faces — frequently by more than either machine choice would, and without carrying depreciation.
Carries cut-to-length logs completely off the ground — payload × trips per hour is the whole economic model.
Drags stems to the landing — the workhorse of full-tree and tree-length systems.
The cut-to-length machine — fell, delimb, measure, buck and sort in one cycle.
Highest-throughput felling in the full-tree system — cut, accumulate, bunch, repeat.