This package is a deliberate trade. Instead of buying purpose-built machines that each do one job well, it buys a carrier and attaches capability to it. No individual task is performed as efficiently as a dedicated machine would perform it, and that is accepted in exchange for an asset that earns across civil earthworks, demolition, vegetation clearing, log handling, tree removal, stump removal, road construction and drainage.
The commercial logic is utilisation, not productivity. A dedicated mulcher is the better machine for mulching and the worse investment if mulching is four weeks of the year. Spreading the carrier's fixed cost across several unrelated demand cycles lowers the hourly rate every one of those jobs has to carry, and keeps the machine saleable to buyers who have never worked in forestry.
The package fails in one predictable way: when the carrier is chosen after the attachments, or chosen on operating weight alone without checking that the lift chart supports the work at the reach it is actually done at.
Every fleet produces at the rate of its slowest element and pays for all of them. This is where that element usually sits in this package.
Each one has an answer specific to your sites. A default taken from someone else's operation is where imbalance starts.
The 20-30 tonne range is the common base: large enough to carry useful attachments and hold material at reach, small enough to transport on a standard float and to remain attractive to civil and demolition buyers at resale. The point within the range follows the stem sizes and reach the work requires.
Confirm required flow and pressure for each attachment against the carrier's auxiliary circuit, and confirm whether a dedicated cooling package is needed. Mulchers are the demanding case: an underpowered circuit produces a machine that overheats and wears rather than one that simply works a little slower.
Those used weekly. Attachments used a handful of days a year carry capital cost every day and earn on very few of them, so hire converts them into a job cost that can be passed through and keeps the coupler free for the work that pays.
When attachment changes are costing more billable time than a second carrier's fixed cost, or when two attachments are genuinely needed on the same site at once. Until then, a quick coupler usually solves the problem more cheaply.
The package above assumes a typical case. These are the departures that change the configuration rather than just the rate.
Very few contractors start at the full configuration, and the ones who do are usually carrying more capital than their contracted work supports.
Phase 1
A 20-30 tonne excavator with a forestry grapple, hiring specialist attachments per job.
Phase 2
Grapple, shear or grapple saw and a mulcher, with a compact track loader for finishing.
Phase 3
A second carrier, a dozer, and a chipper or grinder where residue volume justifies it.
Cutting capacity and lift capacity are different specifications. A carrier chosen on the first will meet trees it can cut and cannot safely hold, which is the failure mode this package most needs to avoid.
It will appear to work while overheating, cutting slowly and consuming teeth and bearings. The cost surfaces as premature wear that is easy to blame on the attachment.
Specialist attachments carry capital cost daily and earn occasionally. Hire is cheaper and more flexible until utilisation genuinely justifies ownership.
On a machine that changes function several times a week, unbillable change time accumulates into real money. The coupler is usually the cheapest productivity purchase in the package.
Turns an ordinary excavator into a controlled tree-cutting machine — the fastest-growing attachment category.
Geometry beats size — the grapple should be selected according to material flow.
The strongest crossover market in Australian forestry — plantations, councils, utilities, mining, solar and fire.
Does not grind the stump — it penetrates, splits, loosens, extracts and handles it.
Excavator or purpose-built machine — the biggest single commercial buying decision.