Head to head

Tree shear versus feller buncher

Attachment on an existing excavator, or a dedicated felling machine?

9 criteria compared

This is the most common felling decision in the Australian market, and it is decided by one number: annual paid felling hours.

A tree shear turns an ordinary excavator into a controlled tree-cutting machine — it grabs, cuts, retains and places the stem. A feller buncher does one job, extremely quickly, and does nothing else.

Framing

Why this comparison recurs

The reason this comparison recurs is that both machines fell trees, and the specification sheets make them look like points on a single scale. They are not. They belong to different business models, and the deciding variable is not machine capability but how many paid felling hours a year the business can contract.

A shear converts an asset you already own. The excavator keeps its civil, demolition and drainage revenue, resells into a deep national market, and takes a shear, grapple, mulcher or stump shear depending on the week. A feller buncher does one job very quickly and has almost no alternative use.

That difference shows up entirely in fixed-cost recovery. A dedicated machine's depreciation, finance and insurance have to be carried by felling work alone; an excavator's are spread across everything it does.

What each is for

These are not two points on one scale

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.

A shear is a capability you add to an asset

It turns a machine you already own — and that already earns elsewhere — into a controlled tree-cutting machine for the weeks that need one. Its commercial argument is never production per hour; it is that the carrier's fixed cost is already being recovered by other work.

Best at

Regrowth, fence lines and shelterbelts where stems are modest
Clearing work interleaved with civil, drainage and demolition
Sites where the same carrier will also grapple, mulch or shear stumps
Businesses whose felling hours are real but not the majority of the year

A feller buncher is a production commitment

It exists to put stems on the ground faster than anything else and to bunch them for extraction. Accumulation per cycle, swing speed and travel between trees are where its advantage compounds, and none of that matters unless the hours are there to compound over.

Best at

Plantation clearfell with contracted, sustained felling hours
Steep, broken or soft ground where a tracked base earns its cost
Chains sized to absorb high felling output without stock building
Heavy timber where stability under a large head is the constraint

Side by side

The comparison

Criterion	Tree shear on an excavator	Dedicated feller buncher
Acquisition cost	Lower	Much higher
Carrier versatility	High	Low
Production	Moderate to high	Very high
Plantation clearfell	Limited	Excellent
Civil clearing	Excellent	Specialised
Occasional tree work	Excellent	Poor economics
Multiple attachments on one carrier	Yes	Limited
Utilisation flexibility	High	Lower
Resale market	Broad — the carrier sells easily	Narrow buyer pool

The decision

Which one, and when

Choose tree shear on an excavator when

Felling work is in the hundreds of hours a year, not the thousands
The carrier must also earn from earthworks, demolition, drainage or log handling
Work is scattered across small sites where mobilisation cost recurs
Stem diameters sit comfortably inside the shear's production range

More detail →

Choose dedicated feller buncher when

3,000+ productive felling hours a year are contracted, not hoped for
Clearfell production is the dominant requirement and the downstream chain can absorb it
Terrain is broken, steep or soft enough that a purpose-built tracked base earns its cost
Accumulation per cycle is the constraint — a shear cannot bunch like a felling head

More detail →

The decision rule

A land-clearing business doing 500 hours of tree cutting annually will usually get better asset utilisation from a 25-tonne excavator plus a shear. A harvesting contractor doing 3,000+ productive felling hours can justify the dedicated machine.

The threshold is not a rule of thumb about machine size. It is annual paid felling hours.

The money

How the two differ on cost, specifically

Capability comparisons are easy to find. This is where the commercial difference actually sits.

Factor	Tree shear on an excavator	Dedicated feller buncher
Where fixed cost is recovered	Across several industries the carrier works in	Felling hours alone
Depreciation exposure if work stops	Low — carrier redeploys	High — narrow alternative use
Dominant consumable	Blades, pins, bushes	Disc-saw teeth, undercarriage
Transport cost per move	Standard excavator movement	36 t class, often permitted
Resale market depth	Deep national market for the carrier	Narrow specialist buyer pool
Production per felling hour	Moderate to high	Very high

What would change the answer

The variables that move this decision

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.

Variable	Points to tree shear on an excavator	Points to dedicated feller buncher
Annual contracted felling hours	Hundreds	Thousands, in writing
Share of revenue from non-felling work	Substantial	Little or none
Downstream chain capacity	Modest; would not absorb high felling output	Sized to clear a buncher's production
Terrain	Accessible, moderate	Steep, broken or soft
Number of separate work sites per year	Many, scattered	Few, sustained

Three situations

What we would actually recommend

Not a balanced summary — a recommendation for each case, with the reasoning.

A land-clearing business with roughly 500 felling hours a year alongside civil work

Choose: Tree shear on the existing excavator

At that utilisation a dedicated machine's fixed cost has nowhere to go. The excavator keeps earning across earthworks, demolition and drainage, and the shear is a modest capital addition rather than a business-defining commitment.

A harvesting contractor with 3,000+ contracted productive felling hours in plantation clearfell

Choose: Dedicated feller buncher

Accumulation per cycle, swing speed and travel between trees compound over that many hours into production a shear cannot approach. The fixed cost is recovered comfortably, and the downstream chain is sized to absorb the output.

A contractor with 1,200-2,000 hours and a contract that may or may not renew

Choose: Shear now, and revisit at renewal

This is the genuinely difficult band. The shear keeps the downside contained while the contract proves itself, and the decision can be made again with real production data rather than a forecast. Hire or rent-to-buy on a dedicated machine is the other defensible route.

What goes wrong

Mistakes specific to this decision

How to settle it

The order to work through, for your own case

Each step narrows what the next has to establish. Worked in order, most buyers find the decision resolves before the last one.

Count contracted felling hours, not enquiries

Hours you are paid for, in writing or historically achieved. This is the variable the whole comparison turns on, and it is the one buyers most often inflate.

Check what the downstream chain can absorb

A feller buncher feeding extraction and processing that cannot clear its output produces roadside stock, not tonnes. If the chain tops out well below the machine's felling rate, the extra capacity is depreciation.

Run the lift chart if a shear is in contention

The shear's cutting rating is what it can sever. What the carrier can hold at the reach the work actually uses, with attachment, rotator and coupler weight deducted, is what decides whether the job is safe.

Convert both to cost per tonne at your hours

Not at the hours the machine deserves. At yours, and then again at the pessimistic case. The comparison usually resolves itself at that point.

Often overlooked

The option that is not on this page

Subcontract the felling

The option most often skipped. A contractor with felling hours too high for a shear to keep up with and too low to carry a feller buncher can subcontract the felling peaks and keep the carrier earning elsewhere. It trades margin for the removal of a large fixed-cost commitment, and for a business whose felling volume is growing but not yet contracted, that is frequently the correct answer for another year or two.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

How many felling hours justify a feller buncher?

There is no fixed number, but the arithmetic is clear. A machine carrying $100,000 in annual depreciation costs $40 per productive hour at 2,500 hours and $80 at 1,250. Below roughly 1,500 contracted productive hours, an excavator with a shear almost always returns more — and the key word is contracted, not forecast.

Can a tree shear handle plantation clearfell?

It can fell the trees, but not at clearfell production rates. Accumulation is the gap: a felling head that holds several stems before placing the bunch cycles far faster than a shear placing each stem individually. For occasional clearfell or small blocks a shear is workable; for sustained volume it is not.

What does a tree shear cost compared with a feller buncher?

Different orders of magnitude — an attachment against a machine in the $700,000-and-above class. But the more useful comparison is fixed cost per felling hour, because the shear's carrier is usually already owned and already earning elsewhere. Run both through the machine cost calculator with your own contracted hours.

Is a shear safe for larger trees?

Within its rated capacity and the carrier's lift chart, yes — and it is considerably safer than pushing trees over with a bucket, because it grabs, cuts, retains and places the stem under control. The constraint to check is whether the carrier can hold the stem safely at full reach, which is a lift question rather than a cutting one.

Detail