I was wondering if anybody has any experience at the grinding business, the do's and dont's. I've worked around other subcontractors that do this kind of work, one guy ran all bandit's, other guy ran peterson pacific grinder I see Vermeer and Morbark seem like decent machines. Is any of them better than the other one or just comes down to dealer. How hard is it to find paper mills or plants that burn wood chips for their boilers? Grindering reduces the amount of material, but still alot of trucking to get rid of them.
i like duratech machines. they have a much nicer fit and finish!
hi dirthog, i run a vermeer TX6000, previously had a vermeer hg 525 on wheels, i find the vermeer a good machine the TX 6000 on tracks is a heaps better machine than the 525, productivity is around 50% higher and being on tracks makes it much easier to manouvreor around jobs, i have never owned other grinders however from what i hear they all have thier good and bad points.
I too am interested in a radio remote grinder to follow my excavator with vertical tree extraction grab around . Problem is , the trees come out roots and all . Would the dirt on the roots do damage to the rotor and hammers ?
the dirt has an affect on the hammers and tips. the rocks are really what do them in though. it's my experience that if the stumps are moderatley clean you don't see excess wear, keeping in mind this is a consumable part . meaning it's not if they are going to be replaced its when.
short answer is a little bit of dirt is not a worry, when we clear we push trees over stump, roots and all, if the tree breaks off we dig the stump out with a ripper fitted to the excavator,we then put all the trees in a windrow and then shear it in to pieces about 1 metre long, large stumps are sheared too, by that time most of the dirt has fallen off,trying to put whole trees and unsheared big stumps through a grinder is very slow, they need to be sheared, i use a tree recyclers hydraulic shear, the manual for my grinder says you can put material up to 42 inches in diamitar, however if you put stuff that large through it you get very low productivity, i find it cheaper to downsize the timber with an excavator worth around $100 per hour than trying to put large timber through a grinder with a 630 HP cat engine worth $500 per hour, grinder can use up tp 70 litres of fule per hour.
How do you get people to pay that amount of money for the grinder . I'm having trouble getting $150ph for the excavator and grab . I do'nt know how i would get another $500ph .
So Pete, do you guys do the clearing also or just come in and grind. You mentioned that you have an excavator with shear go through and cut the stumps off, one guy I've seen before goes through with one excavator and clears and stacks it all, then second excavator goes through and grinds everthings up, but has a labor with chain saw to cut stumps, claims the mill he hauls chips to won't take it if he grinds stumps with them. Them shears aren't cheap somebody told me like $25,000 just for the attachment. Equipment cost for grinding equipment is so expensive I'd like to see what kind of ROI you get from all of it.
Also Ironhorse, what are you classifying as a vertical tree extraction grab? Maybe I've seen, just called something different.
I had quite a few customers in the grinding business a few years ago and most used the Diamond Z tub grinders. Now days they are using other machines also and only a few were using horizontal machines. I don't know what the difference in cost is between the horizontals and the tub grinders but I think the products are different. Most of the horizontals I've been around are whole tree chippers that produce chips suitable for pulp. I know there are some horizontal units that are grinders. The tub grinders produce hog fuel which many times is just spread out on the land for binder so trucks can get through muddy spots. There are some places that burn it for fuel. The other way to get rid of it is to mix it with other material to manufacture top soil. Dirt and rocks are always to be avoided in grinders. Whole tree chippers have to produce a product of a specified dimension. Dulling the knives or chipping them really messes up the product. On the tub grinders it basically just slows down production and uses more fuel. In our area we used hydraulic thumbs on excavators for feeding the grinders. Most of the chippers I've worked on had their own loader. I've seen operators beat the heck out of the stumps before feeding them in. The cost of any grinder is astronomical just in the purchase price and gets even worse just keeping the thing running. Bits and grinder plates are extremely expensive. Most of the machines use engines of 600 horsepower and up. A couple of hundred gallons of fuel a day is not unheard of. Break one down for a belt or engine and you are in a hurt fast. Catching fire is not unheard of either. At any rate there is a whole lot more to know when you get into the business and it is not for the faint of heart. With the bad housing market you can probably find a used machine pretty reasonable. Just remember, the self destruct switch is the same one worked by the key to start it.
i run a cbi grinder for a company here in oergon. i have ground alot of houses wiht it and the only thing i dont grind is the kitchen sink, bath tub,furnace and the foundation. this grinder is a beast it will take trees stumps dirt rock and all. its big and heavy but in my opinion cbi makes the best grinder on the market.
$500 per hr is nothing flash, grinders are expensive to buy and run, mine cost a bit over $600,000, they are now $800,000. running costs, fuel $100 plus per hr,the steel infeed belt and sprockets wear pads etc was $30,000, mine is half worn out at 500hrs,i ordered a new one 2 months ago, it has now arrived, because i ordered mine before the dollar crashed my cost is $30,000. vermeer guy told me same stuff is now $40,000. glad i ordered early.tips are up to $100 each depending what kind you run, hit small bits of steel and tips stuffed, hit big bits of steel and who knows what cost, i have heard of a grinder hitting a piece of railwal line, cost $30,000. if you grind stuff in tips you run a far bigger chance of hitting steel, i stick mostly to land clearing, subdivisions, commercial and industrial sites.
we sometimes grind piles of timber, greenwaste, pallets etc although we usually do the clearing and grinding,we push over the trees with an excavator and stack them in windrows, we then shear them with a hydraulic shear on the excavator, shear does an excellent job, (shear cost $35.000 aus dollars)we dont seperate the stumps, just shear them and grind with the rest of the tree,it all mixes up and looks the same, most times we leave the mulch on site and they lose it around the job, there is an over supply of mulch so you cant sell it, sometimes people will pick it up for free, if the client wants us to move it we charge to take it away, i take it to a soil yard however he does not pay for it. as for the ROI at present it is not great, not much work and lots of low prices, we are working cheap now, looking forward to the good times, dont know when that will be with the current financial turmoil, the world is crazy..
i like your description of the self destruct switch, very true, every time i hear the sound of steel running around the mill i start shaking, although it can be a difficult business at times it can also be rewarding and it is very satisfying at the end of a good day to see the big piles of mulch on the ground.
i dont think there are any cbi grinders in australia, what horsepower are you running?
this was the first job when new,
grinding waste timber with plenty of dirt at canberra.
our grinder is 1050hp from the factory but it is turned up a bit so its about 1300-1500 hp now. we also have a peterson pacific 4700b,it sits in a yard and never leaves they grind about 6 hours a day with it. they then spend the other 4 hours a day working on it. here is the link to the brochure on our grinder they now call it the 8400 http://www.cbi-inc.com/library/pdfs/CBI_Magnum_Force_8400P_Brochure.pdf
This is the Vertical Tree Extraction Grab i use . I usually get more dirt off the rootball than this but i took the photo before i did . I would like a shredder that would follow me around so i could feed the trees in at the point of removal .
Pete , i hope you did'nt think i was asking you too justify your charges , i was'nt . I know how much thing's cost , but trying to explain that too the public is a thing i'm having trouble with . Take for instance my flail mower and 100hp tractor . It cost $132,000 and i charge $100ph , it cuts 8' wide and marches through at a quick pace and because it has a grapple , i pick up everything and place in a pile . My opposition has a $1500 45hp tractor with a 5' slasher , mows around everything , takes 3 times as long and leaves the place looking like crap . But he gets heaps of work because he charges $60ph . The public only hear the $ph and can't be convinced . By the way , lovely gear you have .
i know what you mean with people only thinking about the hourly rate, people who are not in the industry dont understand the cost of this stuff or how much more efficient a flail mower is compared to a grass slasher, we mostly qoute a fixed price for most of our jobs and do very little for joe public, occasionly people call who want a couple of trees removed, we are not competitive for small jobs like that
that is serious horsepower, mine is a 16 litre cat, 630 horsepower.
yeah it is a beast of a grinder. during the summer when everything is dry and light weight we can grind about 2,500-3,000 cubic yards of wood in a 9 hour shift. that is running a mix of clean wood and land clearing brush and trees.
Ironhorse, that's a pretty interesting attachment you got, I've never seen one before, I assume you just push the tree around and pluck it out of the ground. Seems like it would work good for small trees, but big ones you'd need to dig around the root wad to loosen. Your right about the cost, by the time you add all the support equipment for a grinder. That and the price to have one on tracks is outrages, but would definately beat dragging a towable one around especially through the mud. Seem's like around here you'd have to travel quite a bit to keep one busy. I've seen some guys price by the acre to clear and grind and them some grind by the hour if somebody else clears. How do you do your pricing Pete?
dirthog28 , The tree size pictured come straight out of the ground , but anything with Beetle damage at the base can break off . So i sometimes give the ground a bit of a rough up with the fixed tynes on the grab and then pull them out . I don't have a ripper and it would take too much time to remove the grab anyway . There is a knack to it though , the machine cannot just lift them out with the boom . Some trees are really tough and i need to grab them about 8' up and push them forward . This breaks the roots , then i grab them at the base and dipper in , crowd out and lift at the same time . This method pulls them through the soil as the grab twists up and the boom lifts them out . The root ball pictured is at this machines upper limits . They make a bigger grab for 30-40 ton machines .
that is a lot of material, mine can do a little over 100 cubic matres per hr, i think that is about 120 yards per hr, where do you get all the timber to grind < what do you do with the mulch ?
most of our wood comes from 2 land fills here in the area we also do land clearing jobs, and the company owns 3 wood recycling yard where anyone can pay to dump wood and our site.
mostly we give a price to clear and grind, sometimes when it has been cleared we grind by the hour, not often though, usually a lump sum price.
I think CBI and Diamond Z are the pinnacle of grinding. I saw a Diamond Z horizontal in arkansas doing 1000yds/hr in railroad ties. I don't care who you are that is cooking.
That is cooking , and one of the toughest jobs around . Railroad ties/sleepers open up after a while and the cracks fill with brake dust , track swarf and ballast . Extremely abrasive , and i bet the odd metal plate or spike goes through as well .
tie plates are hell on wood grinders, but spikes are fine. we have a different grinder we use for our tie grinding jobs. http://www.komptech.com/en/products/crambo-mobile/introduction.htm
wow, i did not think that was possible, what horsepower was it ?
I've seen those advertised what kind of production do you get out of it? I'm surprised the CBI can't handle the plates. This guy seems to think it is no problem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs366ZduuxI&feature=PlayList&p=539F54FB85E50C66&playnext=1&index=5
I'm not sure on HP around a thousand though. The biggest advantage that diamond z has is it is a down swing mill and creates a pinch that grinds and sucks the material in at the same time this creates a huge advantage if you have the HP to use it. There are 2 of them with various HP outputs http://www.diamondz.com/index.php?id=52 You will notice that the 7000 series is rated over 1000yds/hr. I saw the little one doing that. In my experience we can usually double what a grinder is rated at with a few low buck mods. Although at 1000yds/hr I don't know how could keep up with it in the first place. Our little 1260 can run over 1000yds/hr in certain material and there is no way you can keep up with it at that pace. Just think about 2000yds/hr? There would be some very high dollar modification to the infeed to stuff that much material down its throat.
the reason our cbi can not handle the plates is due to the type of mill we have in it. They build a very heavy duty mill and a lighter duty mill we have the lighter unit. here is a pic of the heavy one.Look at the 8th pic in the line up http://www.apolloequipment.net/equipment/2128mo_1998_cbi_4800.html here is a pic of the light duty style we have pic number 11 in this line up http://www.apolloequipment.net/equipment/2142m_2001_cbi_4000.html
take a look at the link below and on the left side of the [age it shows the different types of mills. zoom in for a better look http://www.cbi-inc.com/library/pdfs/CBI_Magnum_Force_8400P_Brochure.pdf
No shame in a grinder that can't chew up a rail plate , those puppies are high tensile steel . Plus if they are still attached , they will also have two spikes to try and chew up at the same time . Everything has a limit and these machines are designed to proccess wood .
Ok guys, here are a lot of questions, first I do what nobody else will do and thats been handling trees and do landclearing, the tree companys take care of the little tree jobs in town for a tree or two and the big guys take care of the larger scale jobs to go with their bid work on the entire project, that leaves the inbetween jobs for me too small for the big guys too big for the little guy, up till now we just grub it and burn it, most of the time anything of values been removed and sold for cash before I'm called, the problem is burning banned areas, are they worth messing with, its new to me I've avoided them so far but I get inquiries about doing them less than an acre up to 10 acres. I've talked to a half dozen companies that all did things different, most told me to stay away from tubs and horizontals and go disc or drum chippers and either haul off the stumps or else grind them in place with a stump grinder, theres no real close market for chips or mulch around me the closest is a 4hr drive one way and thats not looking feasable, others tell me there are more markets coming all the time for heating and cellulose ethanol, most of the jobs are 2plus hours from my home and hauling all the tops and brush home in trucks isn't going to be an option. What do you do with the stuff if you don't chip it and what do you do if you do chip it, the big tubs and horizontals aren't in my price range period and some of the whole tree chippers up to 18 inch might be an option, hiring someone hasn't worked out for me due to dependability in the past. Whats the difference between the product the chippers put out and the grinders put out whats the end product used for, I've watched horizontals, tubs and also disc and drum chippers work and understand how they work but nobody really says the pros and cons of each. The tree chippers look like they'd do the job for chipping up the tops and brush and smaller trunks, I can't see running stumps and all the dirt into a horizontal or tub, one contractor told me that the tubs were too expensive to chew up stumps and took too long it wasn't cost effective, he told me to haul those to a landfill by the semi load and its way cheaper. Some told me to chip it and blow it onto the ground and spread it when I'm done for erosion control. How many tons are on the average acre to grind if anything of value is gone already and just the junk is left, how does it condense when chipped, by half, three fourths, what. Thoughts and suggestions?
This may suit you as well . In my next lifetime , i will buy one of these , a disc mulcher . That way i can remove the big trees , roots and all with the grab and mulch the rest in situ with the mulcher . Piggy bank keeps hiding behind the bed tho .
that would be ideal for medium size jobs where getting a grinder in is too expensive, you can still take care of any big stuff including stumps.
We run a bandit & it seems to do well. Would do better with some more HP. Only has a 450 Detroit/Deere powerplant. It did break the cutter head shaft at around 2200 hrs. My opinon on cause was a combination of the previous "ruff" operator's gawdey welding on the hammers to build them up. Causing the head to be VERY outta balance. Plus he ran a 4ft piece of railroad iron through it. Will post some better pics when I get them off my card.
was probably the rail line, i know of a guy who did around $30,000 damage to a vermeer 525 horsepower grinder with a piece of railway line.
Thats what we thought as well, It ran for around 800 more hours after the iron went through it. Was amazed it held togther as long as it did. Esply considering how how much rust was on the face, where the shaft broke.
hey what brand is that big red mulcher?? Wouldnt mind exploring that a bit more!! Looks awesome let me know where u found it!
Quadco is the brand . The half covers can be fitted to either side of the disc depending on which way you want to throw the chips , or they can be left off so it cuts in both directions .
nice, ya we just finished building some brush cutters at work here and we used a ProMac rotary disk fairly similar, 2 door, with a 52" mulching disk
I wanted to build my own as well , but trying to find where to buy the overhung bearing adaptor and what size/type motor to use was as hard as finding out who's in charge of the Illuminatti .
Iron Horse, DieselSmoke, and the others...Just wondering, on some of the big clear cuts with a lot of debris, do you have some kind of skidder to bring the tops to the grinder? Or do you just move the grinder and trackhoe around the clear cut to the debris? What is the most efficient method? It seems moving the grinder around would not be as efficient, since the trucks to haul chips out need a track to get back into the new loading zones. What do you do?
when we do clearing we stack the trees in windrows and gring along the windrows, my grinder is on tracks so this is easy, hauling trees to a central pile is costly as you have to double handle it.
G'day Redbug , the way i clear timber is different to most . I pull the trees out with the Vertical Tree Extraction grab and lay them in neat rows . If they are long , i snap them in half with the grab . Then i get on my tractor with it's rake grapple and scoop them up and put them into piles . I do'nt have a grinder so i leave the owners with the task of burning the piles . I do'nt have piles more than a hundred foot apart so as to keep the cartage distance within reason . These are 3 shots of some small stuff i have been doing this week .
have you been busy reg? we were up to last monday when we finished a job, have done nothing for a week and have nothing to go to. i think the global finacial crisis may have caught up.
I'm a bit like you Pete , but at the death knock something always comes along . Still , i have been hessitant to borrow the 100K for a low loader . I own my gear and only have one loan to worry about . Anyone in big debt at the moment may be in big DooDoo soon . It's a good time to buy gear if you have the scratch . I have been doing a lot of swapping gear lately . Blokes with gear sitting , are keen to swap it for something that has a better chance of earning a dollar . Not everyone has cash , but nearly everyone has something they can swap .
Thanks Australian, and Iron. That looks like a great piece of property you are thinning Iron. A few hills interspersed with a creek or two. Great homesite potential. Things over this way are at a crawl. Timber prices are way down and many people are having to sell their equipment. It is a good time to buy. About the grinding operation...it seems like there would be a lot of waste when loading the chips onto the trucks using just a grab. A lot of stuff would be left behind, since a lot falls through. Do you use a loader to get the remains at the bottom of the pile? Seems like money lost if you got to leave small piles behind, scattered around. Also, it seems if the chips have a fair amount of dirt mixed in, it would not be good for pulpwood operations, (paper), or fuel use. Interesting topic...
Now this was a nice block of land , 500 metres/yards river frontage , it was all scrub and Lantana when i got there . The owner asked me what would be the result of my work ? I said i will put 50K on it's value at auction . He doubled his asking price after seeing the finished product , and got it . He thinks i'm a good bloke now .
picked up 2 jobs today,around 5 days work, it all helps,after many years of hard work i fortunately have good gear and very small debt, i would be buggered if i had big commitments.i can understand you being unsure about the new low loader, i guess you have to keep looking at the various options till you feel confident about which direction to take, i saw a hyundai excavator with 350 hours ( looked a bit rough) sell at auction last wek for $53,000, i wanted to bid bit was scared to spend the money, dont need it now but would be good to have when economy improves. the mower head for the rayco is now ready, will pick that up in the next couple of days and beging the big job of bringing the rayco up to good cond.
with the grab we use you can pick up 98% of mulch, i do have a front end loader however the grab is more efficient. there is no market around here for pulp wood or fuel use, on most clearing jobs we do the mulch is left on site and they lose it around the job for landscaping etc, it has no $ value, it is sometimes used to compost and mix with soil however there is an over supply of mulch so you cant usually get any moner for it, occasionally if some one needs some you can get a small amount of $ for it..
I'm looking for a stump grinder with a limited budget around $6000 to $7000. Any suggestions? I've been checking ebay but there must be some auctions going on or someone that has one to sale. thx in advance
I have been hiring in a 1000HP CBI horizontal after we push out and shear up big trees,It is a very quick machine we struggle to keep up with it. Much faster than another guys bandit which is 500hp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRYFeTmqZ6g&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
Looks like this post has been running a while. I have come across all brands and talked to owners of almost every brand. You'll find loyalists on every side of the fence when it comes to horizontal grinders and tub grinders. What I have found is it really depends on your application. What are you planning to grind? how much, and what will your final product be. there are other factors such as what are your time constraints and threshold for downtime. All play into selecting the right machine. A lot of buyers are tempted to just buy the biggest and baddest machine, but that's not always the best way to make the most money. Ideally you want to buy the machine that will meet your production needs for the right price. Matching all of those things up can be tricky though as every manufacturer will assure you that there machines are the best at just about everything. That said I have found that most brands have their niche where they excel. There is of course, a lot of overlap and most brands offer a full line of horizontal grinders to meet most applications. Even so, certain brands like CBI, Peterson and Diamond Z remain the best known for heavy duty applications. Other brands such as Rotochopper make a great unit for smaller applications and generally come equipped for coloring applications. I found a website that discusses some of the factors you should consider if you want to research it further. http://www.grinderinfo.com . If you have any other questions just shoot me a message and I'll see what I can do to get you on track.
hi grindrite, had a look at that website, it is an interesting site. i have a vemeer HG6000 TX grinder,we mainly do land clearing for subdivisions, i am fairly happy with the machine however the price of parts is expensive, i recently got a quote from the dealer in australia for a 14 foot chain and it was around $30,000 ,i found i could buy it in the US from a vermeer dealer for around $20,000. when i complained vermeer australia dropped the price to $21,000.. i think they were just plain charging what they thought they could get away with. do you know of any one in the US who sells after market parts such as an infeed chain for vermeer grinders ?
I'm not sure I can help you on the indeed part of the deal. You probably bought it long ago any how. Here are a couple of places to call next time you need parts. http://www.grinderwearparts.com/ http://www.cbtwearparts.com/ http://www.steelunlimited.com/wbwp/wbwp.html These last two are my favorites. Steel unlimited is on the west cast so you might be able to get some decent shipping on stuff to oz. They are usually at least half price of what other manufactures charge.
i run a cbi 4800, and i get all of my wear parts from http://www.grinderwearparts.com/ . they have great customer service and have always got me what i need when i need it. the few time i have had some bad parts come from them they were right on it to make things right.
thanks quantum, i will check them out. i purchased a CBI 5400 last week, not new however only 6 months old with 500 hrs, still have the vermeer.
How much better is it compared to the Vermeer? I'm not a big fan of electronics on grinders or anything that vibrates a lot and runs in the dust. we have a pretty good fleet of older diamond z tubs we run http://www.3xmgrinding.com/
i have only used it for a day and a half. mill is heaps stronger, it is not feeding material very well, , light material keeps choking up , i think problem is ajustment of feed roller, i have to experiment with feed roller to make it better, i saw an identical machine working in brisbane before i bought mine and it was brilliant.
the cbi i saw working in brisbane would be some where between 50% to 100% quicker than the vermeeer. vermeeer is 630 hp compared to cbi 765 hp,
we are running 1050hp out of a 3412e cat engine
The 765hp cbi is probably a C18 rather than C27 or C32. The C18 passes emissions better and comes on a bunch of grinders recently. I think it had to do with carb and how they classify hp vs emissions. Probably a better motor if it was rated down around 650hp and throw all the acert crap in the trash. I know a 3412 will be much happier rated at 850 or 880 vs 1000 or 1050. Install a pyro and keep an eye on it in tough grinding and see what you think. This one http://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=5_21&products_id=147 can be installed so it will set an alarm or in the case of grinding it will stop the in feed or tub until the egt drops. Depends on how hard you plan on running them, seems to me plans always change.
it is a C18, machine was built in 2010, it has twin turbos and complies with all US including CA emission rules.
a company around here gets 800 an hr. not counting trucking
I was looking into buying a horizontal grinder for grinding logging residue and selling the ground material for mulch and or biomass fuel. We are looking into following logging companies after they have harvested a tract of timber. We are going to get the loggers to leave the debris in large piles that would be close by the road used for hauling the timber out. There will be no land clearing of any kind. It is only going to be transferring the debris a short distance from the pile to the grinder. There is a decent demand for the end product at the time and the expectation is for a larger demand in the near future. I'm thinking that a rubber tire front end loader with a grapple to load the slash in the grinder and a large bucket to load open top van trailers with the mulch would be ideal. We would be getting paid $17 a ton to grind and load the material, and looking to do 500 tons a week. I know this is a vivid description, but does this sound at all profitable?
Depending on the cost of your equipment that sounds like some excellent pay. Couple things to think about is the mobility of the grinder where you will be working. Is it wet? Steep? Narrow? Getting a wheeled 50ton grinder stuck or worse yet slide it off the road can ruin much more than your day. Next thing to think about is what you want for a finished product. A horizontal can be faster and easier to deal with but it's end product is not as attractive as what a tub can produce. The idea of using a loader to feed the grinder and load trucks is a good one. Double duty for the loader and increased mobility is a win win. Too many operators use excavators to feed grinders causing poor efficiencies. One thing to keep in mind is sizing the loader big. We have a Volvo 110 with a 11.5 cu/yd bucket. If conditions are right we can grinder over a 1000 cu/yds/hr and load a 150 cu/yd trailer in under 10 minutes. Time is money. Don't skimp on equipment. Right now good used equipment is relatively cheap. Probably the hardest thing to find is a big roll out bucket with a trash clamp. Depending on conditions you may pencil out hauling the material to the grinder. Sometimes it makes sense. Having a broken grinder up in the woods really sucks especially in the winter.
Thanks for the info Quantum. The reason I was looking at the horizontal was because of the length of the material being fed into the machine. There will be small trees 20-30' long mixed in the debris pile. Is it hard to get a horizontal to produce a mulch quality product? The terrain is not too bad. Although occasionaly we log some tracts that are pretty steep. Its rolling hills for the most part. I know how much of a pain wet weather and heavy equipment can be. We try to purchase tracts close to the public road and on good soil for wintertime work. So I don"t think that is too much of a problem. What kind of grinder are you using? I looked into the bandit beast 3680 and it looks like a good versatile machine. A lot of guys around here use there chippers and are overall satisfied with them. According to bandit you can grind 75 tons an hour with the 3680. I don't know if that's realistic or not. I do know that the 300-400 hp chippers will chip up a 25 ton load in 15-20 min.
whats a decent used grinder for this application gonna cost?
The quality of the product depends heavily on your local market. If buyers of these products are used to buying material that has been processed through a horizontal you won't have any trouble. If you haven't done so already do some market research. Where are you getting your $17/ton figure? Can you contract that price? What is the specification for that price? Are there other contractors getting that price? If so how are they processing? We run all tubs and never go in the woods http://3xmgrinding.com/index.html . The price of a good grinder is pretty darn variable. One of the best grinders we run cost $20k 3 years ago at auction. If your good at working on things hit the auctions. Right now in Florida there are three of biggest auctions in the world running or getting ready to run. Check http://www.apolloequipment.net/ if you want kind of check market price.
Thanks again for the info quantum. I'm not positive the price can be contracted but I believe it can. The price is what a local mulch bagging plant was willing to pay. There are some other contractors in the area that are doing it and they appear to be doing really well. The other contractors have both horizontal and tub grinders, morbark and peterson pacific.
I would call Diversified Concrete cutting out of Sacramento CA They are good at horizontal cutting.