Harvesting Systems and Costs for Southern Pine in the 1980S

Timber harvesting systems and their costs are a major concern for the forest products industries. In this paper, harvest costs per cord are estimated, using computer simulation, for current southern pine harvesting systems. The estimations represent a range of mechanization levels. The sensitivity of systems to factors affecting harvest costs– machine costs, fuel prices, wage rates, tract size, and planted stands–is examined to determine trends in harvest systems and costs. Highly mechanized full-tree systems are the most cost-efficient and should increase in number in the 1980s. Tree-length systems and labor-intensive systems fall at the next average cost level with partially mechanized systems having the highest average costs. Although increasing real costs for machines and interest, high average costs on small tracts, and depressed markets will inhibit adoption of highly mechanized harvest operations, these types of systems will retain a substantial average harvest cost advantage. Decreasing labor availability and needs for plantation thinning also favor use of mechanized full-tree systems. If sufficient progress is made toward the adoption of the most efficient systems, logging costs could rise less than the general inflation rate. Real cost increases may occur if depressed economic conditions and high machine costs prevent loggers from adopting highly mechanized systems as such systems must maintain stable, high volumes of output.

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