It is not logistically or financially feasible to bring that kind of equipment into the woods on to transport the chips out of the woods. Not to mention there aren't enough log truck drivers in the first place.
That's what we do in the northeast, and it is profitable.
What's the seasonality of your road systems, average slope of a harvest unit, and typical distance from a log landing to a mill or other endpoint for those residual chip products? It's been studied and piloted extensively in the PNW and does not work here unless heavily subsidized.
Different species mix as well. Less value per stem here as opposed to the eastern forests.
Here, mostly birch, beech, oak, maple, ash, for predominate hardwoods. Pine, cedar, spruce, hemlock, fir, and a few others for softwood. I'm not sure about road restrictions. Paved secondary roads are usually open for heavy equipment by May 1" (closed to heavy equipment around Mar 1 as the frost begins to melt). Average woods road slope ranges 0° to ~15°, mostly under 8°. There are a dozen log yards within 30 minutes. We have a lot of contracted private Canadian loggers operate in our north woods.
I had my land sustainably harvested (FSB) in 2015. They sorted the good logs and chipped the rest. I'm not aware of any OSB manufacturers in my area. There were 3 hardwood pellet manufacturers in the state but all are +100 miles away. I'm not sure where those chips went. There is a paper plant nearby that pioneered biomass boilers, but those are all shut down before 2015.
With the high price of OSB (and other products) these days I would think the PNW would be a goldmine. If your inclines are huge, low end pulp truckers scarce (don't need CDLs on private land), lack of chip trailers and trucks, distance from plywood/OSB factories too far ... I guess I get it. It blows my mind to let all that firewood/OSB chips and pellet material burn off into the atmosphere when I'm staring at +$6/gal heating oil and as low as -25F° at the worst in winter. I'm surprised the West Coast Greenies don't fund it as CO2 suppression by chipping the slag and using it in other products vs burning it. You'd think they would be concerned about global warming from the smoke and heat.
(post is archived)