This is a sequence rather than a machine. Stumps are treated, slash is treated, the soil is tilled, scarified or mounded, and then the site is planted — and each step constrains the next. A site prepared poorly cannot be planted well, and a planting window missed cannot be recovered later in the year.
That window is the governing constraint. Site preparation must be finished before planting, planting must happen in conditions the seedlings will survive, and the client's schedule is set by the season rather than by contractor availability. A machine that is 20% faster but arrives after the window closes has no commercial value at all.
The dominant cost variable is the ground rather than the vegetation. Rock content and stump density determine tooth wear, gearbox loading and achievable hectares per day, and neither is visible from a brochure or reliably described in a tender document. Survey discipline is what separates contractors who hold their quoted cost per hectare from those who do not.
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.
Contracted hectares divided by working days available, plus an allowance for weather and breakdown days appropriate to the region. This almost always exceeds what an annual-capacity calculation suggests, which is why contracts get under-resourced.
Whichever the silvicultural prescription specifies — mounding for drainage, ripping for compaction, scarification for competition, full tillage for residue incorporation. The prescription belongs to the client and the site; the method determines the machine, not the reverse.
By shear, grinder or tiller depending on stump density, what the following operation needs, and whether the stump material has a biomass outlet. On conversion sites with high stump density this step can dominate the sequence.
The campaign's expected wear parts, on site before it starts. A two-day wait for tiller teeth in week three of a six-week window is unrecoverable, which makes pre-stocking cheap insurance rather than working capital tied up.
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 mounder, ripper or scarifier operated behind a tractor or dozer already in the business.
Phase 2
A carrier with a forestry tiller or stump cutter, plus a second implement for the same carrier.
Phase 3
Site preparation, planting machinery and mechanical pruning, resourced for a multi-estate campaign.
Tooth and tool-holder wear on rocky ground can exceed the entire consumable allowance in a quote, and no brochure figure or tender document will warn you. Walking representative ground before pricing is cheap by comparison.
Establishment revenue is bounded by weeks, not months. A fleet that could complete the hectares in a year and cannot complete them in the window has under-resourced the contract.
Parts ordered mid-campaign arrive against a clock that does not stop. The holding cost of a campaign's wear parts is small against the days they protect.
Wet ground stops the work. A schedule with no weather allowance will be late, and lateness here means unplanted hectares rather than a deferred invoice.
Works below the soil surface — and should not be confused with an agricultural rotary hoe.
Does not grind the stump — it penetrates, splits, loosens, extracts and handles it.
The strongest crossover market in Australian forestry — plantations, councils, utilities, mining, solar and fire.
A specialised removal business, not conventional logging — and never quote it by visible diameter.