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Land Clearing

Started by KjBarnwood, November 04, 2010, 06:59:23 PM

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KjBarnwood

I was trying to look for a way to make an extra buck or two... does anyone do any land clearing / right of way clearing?
Before I even start to explore it with any companies I was hoping to get some insight from any one with experience.  I was looking to do it with skid steer and various attachments.

Kj

WDH

It takes big equipment to clear right of ways.  I don't suspect that a skid steer with attachments will hold up for long.
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bill m

If you are buying new equipment plan on spending about 1 million to start. You should have a big grinder or chipper, tracked feller, grapple skidder, support equipment and crew to run everything. Then you need to find outlets for disposal, logs, chips etc. Now that you have all of this in place than you need to bid jobs and be the low bidder to get them. Good Luck.
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JDeere

Starting out doing right of way clearing is like flying jets before you fly a Cessna 150. I started doing lot clearing 25+ years ago with 1 chainsaw and a 17HP Kubota tractor. I would suggest taking small clearing jobs, like house sites, first and then moving up the chain as your experience and equipment grows. Good Luck!
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barbender

Are you talking about initial clearing or right of way maintainence KJB? I would think you could maintain ROW with a skid steer and forestry mower attachment in many cases, but ROW clearing forget it.
Too many irons in the fire

Phorester

My 2 cents - Skid steers might be too small for serious land clearing.

I had a landowner hire a couple fellows with skid steers to clear about 8 acres for tree planting a couple years ago. Trees ranged from 4" to 14" diameter, mostly around 8" to 10". Lots of thick brush, vines, briars.  I tried to talk him into hiring a company with dozers, but he knew these guys and wanted to give them the job. Hourly rates were comparable to a dozing contractor.  But the skid steers were so small it took them much longer to do the job.  It cost him almost 10 times as much as if he'd hired a regular construction company to clear it.


dsgsr

It does depend on the type & size of job you are doing. Some people do not want a tracked type of machine on the property (not wanting the soil tore up). My brother-in-law and I did a thinning of an acre this pass Tues. I used my tractor (wheeled) not to tare things up, because the thinning was for a better view. We were able to stash the slash on the property down over a hill as the owner did not want to pay the extra for off property removal. Now if this had been a complete clearing (stumps and all) It would have made more sense for a dozer or ex-hoe, and then your talking big $$.


David
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Skiddah

I did two large right-of-way landclearing projects here in Maine for powerlines, one 39 miles long, and one 29 miles long.  I did a 5 mile pipeline right-of-way clearing job in Massachusetts, and an almost 60 mile powerline right-of-way clearing alongside an exisiting 345kV powerline in Vermont.  You could say that I have experience in the field. ;)
I'll start off by saying that these jobs can be lucrative, but they're also cut-throat.  There are a few major players nationwide that like to do the new construction projects, and a few more national outfits who have the maintenence down to a science.  Not to discourage you, but as a new small time guy coming in with a skidsteer, you'd have an uphill battle.  A steep uphill battle at that.
You run into the equipment and size of your outfit problem.  The outfit I was working for had two tracked bunchers, 4 large grapple skidders (the smallest was a JD 648G), two excavators outfitted with Brown Brontosaurus mowers, 6 other machines on lease that were similar to those excavators, a tracked Bandit Grinder, a tracked Bandit 2400 Chipper, a few other excavators for mat road installation (I'll get to that later), dozers for plowing out accesses in the winter, 12 trucks ranging from triaxles to tractors and 4 Timberpro Forwarders.  We were considered a small contractor in the field.
When working on most pipelines and some powerlines, you might run into the union problem.  The vast majority of pipeline contractors and employees are unionized.  If you're not, you're not welcome on the ROW.  To some extent you find this with powerline contractors, but not as much in my experience as in the pipeline field.  Then you run into insurance issues.  If you think that just getting liability insurance is enough, you're mistaken.  You need Workman's Compensation, Liability, Surety Bonding,  and in most cases a little known policy called Contractor's Indemnification.  The last two are often the hardest to get.  A company without a lot of experience will have no such luck in getting a bond.  Indemnication is there to prevent the contractors, hiring you as a subcontractor or whatnot, from getting sued for your error, should you make one.
Now we get to the environmental and safety compliance.  These projects undergo round after round after round of permitting, and are often unpopular with adjacent landowners or even the land owners they cross (eminent domain), so expect all eyes on you.  In conventional logging (at least in Maine), we enjoy some leeway when it comes to wetlands, etc.  Not so on these ROWs.  No disturbance whatsoever in the wetlands.  That means you need to construct mat bridges, etc.  My company had approximately 7000 hardwood timber mats on hand, at a price tag of about $600 a piece if memory serves me.  Then you need to transport and lay the mats...
I'm sorry to say that you're skidsteer just isn't cut out of the ROW portion of your question, but it's not entirely ruled out of landclearing.  It might be a tad on the small side for larger projects, but I'd think you could look to homeowners associations for cutting back their roadsides, farmers for reclaiming some smaller pasturelands, etc.  You know the strengths and limitations of your machine, so only you can market yourself accordingly.  I don't mean to burst your bubble on the ROW work, it's just a lot harder than most people would expect.

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