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Australian Forestry Equipment

2026 Edition

Industrial forestry machinery — the commercial buying guide

Written for the person signing the order. Every chapter connects specifications back to cost per cubic metre, tonne, hectare or stump — because that is the only number a machine is ultimately judged on.

19 chapters~168 min readUpdated 2026-09-12

Part I — The market and the buyer

  1. 01

    The Australian Industrial Forestry Machinery Market

    Why forestry machinery is not a single equipment category, what Australia actually harvests, and how the resource base shapes where equipment demand sits.

    • · Market structure and resource base
    • · Harvest volumes and plantation estate
    • · Regional Forestry Hubs
    • · Long-term supply outlook
    8 min
  2. 02

    Who Actually Buys Industrial Forestry Machines

    Six fundamentally different buyer groups, each with a different fleet philosophy, different commercial measures and a different definition of the right machine.

    • · Plantation harvesting contractors
    • · Land-clearing contractors
    • · Vegetation-management contractors
    • · Plantation establishment and silviculture
    • · Arboriculture and large tree contractors
    • · Biomass and wood-waste contractors
    9 min

Part II — Systems and machines

  1. 03

    The Main Commercial Production Systems

    Cut-to-length versus full-tree, what each system does to your risk profile, and the bottleneck principle that governs every harvesting fleet.

    • · Cut-to-length harvesting
    • · Full-tree and tree-length harvesting
    • · Commercial advantages and disadvantages of each
    • · The bottleneck principle
    9 min
  2. 04

    Harvesting Machines and Heads

    Feller bunchers, harvesters and the harvesting head — including the single most common and most expensive specification error in Australian forestry.

    • · Feller bunchers and buying criteria
    • · Harvesters and the purchase decision
    • · Harvester and processor heads
    • · Optimum diameter versus maximum diameter
    9 min
  3. 05

    Extraction — Forwarders and Skidders

    Payload times trips per hour is the whole forwarder model. Skidders trade soil disturbance for speed. Neither should be sized in isolation from the landing.

    • · Forwarder economics
    • · Current forwarder benchmarks
    • · Ponsse capacity classes
    • · Skidders and skidder types
    9 min
  4. 06

    Attachments — Shears, Grapple Saws and Grapples

    The attachment market that turns ordinary excavators into forestry machines — and the two rules that govern it: production diameter beats maximum diameter, and cutting capacity is not lifting capacity.

    • · Tree shears and the Australian range
    • · Tree shear versus feller buncher
    • · Grapple saws and lift capacity
    • · Forestry grapples and grapple geometry
    9 min
  5. 07

    Stump Systems

    Grinders, planers, shears and tillers produce genuinely different site outcomes. Choosing between them is a question about the required result, not about machine size.

    • · Stump grinders and benchmarks
    • · Stump grinder economics
    • · Cutters, planers, drills and shears
    • · Commercial stump-system comparison
    9 min
  6. 08

    Mulching, Tilling and Mechanical Pruning

    The strongest crossover market in Australian forestry — and the one where quoting from satellite imagery destroys the most margin.

    • · Forestry mulchers and carrier classes
    • · Why maximum mulching diameter is a poor metric
    • · Teeth and rotor selection
    • · Forestry tillers and combination machines
    • · Mechanical pruning
    9 min
  7. 09

    Hydraulics and Carrier Matching

    Why "my excavator has 300 L/min" is not enough information, and the nine numbers a buyer actually needs before matching an attachment to a carrier.

    • · Calculating hydraulic power
    • · What a flow figure does and does not tell you
    • · The nine specifications to request
    • · Lift chart arithmetic
    9 min
  8. 10

    Chippers, Grinders and Biomass Processing

    Chipper or grinder is a feedstock decision, not a productivity comparison — and the offtake agreement must come before the fleet.

    • · Whole-tree chippers
    • · Large brush chippers
    • · Horizontal grinders
    • · Chipper versus grinder trade-off
    9 min

Part III — Carriers, cost and risk

  1. 11

    Carriers, Steep Slopes and Terrain

    Excavator or purpose-built carrier is the biggest single commercial buying decision in forestry — and it resolves to one number.

    • · Steep-slope forestry and winch assist
    • · Excavator versus purpose-built forestry carrier
    • · Commercial rule for carrier selection
    9 min
  2. 12

    Buying New Versus Used

    Hours alone are not enough. What the Australian used market actually looks like, and how to inspect a machine that can hide a great deal of wear.

    • · New versus used
    • · Australian used-market snapshot
    • · Machine, harvester, head and mulcher inspection
    8 min
  3. 13

    Total Cost of Ownership

    Purchase price is only the first line. Worked models for cost per hour, per cubic metre and per hectare — and why utilisation is the variable that governs all of them.

    • · Total cost of ownership model
    • · Fixed cost per hour
    • · Cost per cubic metre and per hectare
    • · Productive hours versus clock hours
    • · Machine availability
    9 min

Part IV — Procurement

  1. 14

    Dealer Support and the Australian Supplier Ecosystem

    For commercial forestry, the dealer should be considered part of the equipment. Who supplies what in Australia, and the questions that reveal whether support is real.

    • · Dealer support as an economic variable
    • · Major brand strengths
    • · Onetrak, Randalls, FAE, Fecon and Vermeer
    9 min
  2. 15

    Procurement — Buy, Hire, Tender and Quote

    How to structure the buy-versus-hire decision, what a tender specification should actually say, and how to make two quotations genuinely comparable.

    • · Buy versus hire versus rent-to-buy
    • · Attachment ownership strategy
    • · Tender specification
    • · What a dealer quote should include
    • · Consumable pricing and parts stock
    • · Transport costs
    9 min
  3. 16

    Tracks, Fire Suppression and Operator Protection

    The specifications that do not increase production but protect the asset, the operator and the contract.

    • · Tyres, chains and bogie tracks
    • · Fire suppression
    • · Operator protection and Australian codes
    8 min

Part V — Decision framework

  1. 17

    Red Flags

    The claims that should trigger a follow-up question, whether the machine is new or used — and the twenty questions to ask any used-machine seller.

    • · Red flags when buying new
    • · Red flags when buying used
    • · Questions for a used-machine seller
    9 min
  2. 18

    Data, Telematics and Measurement

    What a professional contractor should record, what to calculate from it, and why the commercial value of telematics is not the dashboard.

    • · Data a contractor should record
    • · Metrics to calculate
    • · Why telematics matters commercially
    9 min
  3. 19

    The Decision Framework

    The scorecard, the hierarchy, the machine-type matrix and the single principle that every specification should eventually connect back to.

    • · Machine selection scorecard
    • · The commercial hierarchy for buying
    • · Final machine-type matrix
    • · The core commercial principle
    9 min

Alongside the chapters

Three reference pages sit outside the chapter sequence because they are meant to be consulted rather than read through.

Glossary

The terms this guide uses, defined as a buyer needs them rather than as a dictionary would — productive machine hour, optimum versus maximum, lift chart, brash mat.

Frequently asked questions

The questions that recur across every chapter, answered in one place: what a machine costs per hour, how to find a bottleneck, buy or hire, new or used.

Sources

Where every published figure on this site comes from, including the one we could not verify against its primary source and have flagged rather than quietly kept.