The tree service industry is seeing a trend toward higher-horsepower, larger-diameter brush chipping machines, which means there's an opportunity for rental centers to dip into an investment once considered unwise.
Higher-horsepower chippers provide numerous advantages. They allow contractors to haul more chips and dispose of fewer logs with increased efficiency and safety. Most contractors prefer bigger machines in the 110- to 170-horsepower range because their engines take less time to reaccelerate. Some have estimated that the reacceleration difference between a 200-horsepower chipper and a 100-horsepower chipper is nearly 40 percent.
According to Phil Smith, project engineer for the Vermeer Manufacturing Environmental Division, tree equipment customers are now looking for machines that are stronger and faster.
"We've looked at our sales data," he says. "Four years ago, 60 percent of our customers were buying smaller-horsepower engines over turbocharged engines for their brush chippers. Now that percentage is around 50. In other words, more customers are buying larger-horsepower chippers than ever before.
"We have attributed this to the fact that contractors want to get into the jobsite, get the job done as quickly as possible and move on to the next job. Higher horsepower helps further that goal."
Wider is better, too Many contractors prefer renting chippers in the 18- and 20-inch classes to the once more popular 8- and 12-inch models.
Jim Freireich, vice president for Eastside Landscaping in Cleveland, says his primary reasons for using an 18-inch chipper over a 12-inch model are work and cost efficiency. "We were maxing out the 12-inch chipper, which we knew was putting heavy wear on the machine and reducing its useful life," he says. "Going to a higher horsepower and a larger diameter made sense to us.
"When we did a tree removal job, we found ourselves either stopping the chipping at the 12-inch log size in order to spend chainsaw-labor time dicing up the larger pieces, or we were hauling the larger logs to the city and paying the disposal costs."
Rental centers such as Vandalia Rentals in Montgomery, Ohio, sense the trend. "The 4-inch chipper used to be a very popular piece of equipment for us, but people began to ask for bigger chippers," says owner Randy Barney, who now stocks 12-inch chippers in his fleet. "Larger contractors were still asking for more, so we got an 18-inch unit," he says. "Contractors that are working on big jobs need larger chippers to remove trees before going in with dozers. They are getting the job done faster."
Renting a chipper is ideal for contractors who are clearing a site before landscaping, Barney says. "There is no maintenance problem with them, and the chipper isn't left standing idle during the rest of the project. These larger chippers do the job quickly, and that's what contractors are looking for. They also save a lot of money for the customer."
In addition to more frequent rentals, Barney says his larger-horsepower chippers are rented by contractors for longer periods of time than his smaller chippers.
Stay Sharp With an increasing number of contractors looking to rent larger, higher-horsepower chippers, rental stores can profit by providing the appropriate machine. But even if the rental center has exactly what a contractor is looking for, the machine is only as good as its regular maintenance program, Barney says.
"If the blades aren't kept sharp, the equipment will have to work harder, and this puts wear on the machine," he says. "Brush chipping can be very abusive to a machine, small or large. The key to help cut down wear is to sharpen blades. We check the blades each time it's rented and typically replace them after every other rental. With dull blades, a contractor's work will not be as productive."
In this trend toward larger, higher-horsepower chippers, everyone can win. Rental centers find new markets and possibly new customers, while contractors get bigger jobs done faster, more efficiently, and without the buying investment and maintenance commitment on a machine that may sit idle after the land clearing is completed.
