The trend in harvesting equipment has been to maximize size and thereby capacity for greater productivity. As a result, forestry machines have become increasely expensive and complicated for maintenance and repair. This challenge becomes more formidable with proprietary software and computer controls, emissions equipment and so on.
In agriculture, older tractors have been a receiving a premium and desired for simplicity and ease of repair. In forestry, wear and tear of ardous year-round working conditions often makes older equipment cost-prohbitive to repair, especially as service parts are not as readily available as agricultural equipment produced in greater numbers.
Many loggers are therefore relying on smaller numbers of newer, highly productive equipment, especially given the limitation of readily available forest labor. Ground-based logging in the United States, with few variations, is either cut-to-length teams of a harvestor and forwarder or tree-length operations of a feller-buncher and one or two skidders. When one machine goes down, many loggers bring in older equipment kept just in case- an out-dated harvestor, processor, loader, or skidder that can be put into service and make or break production goals and maintain profitability.
Again, the above trend towards fewer, larger, more expensive equipment assumes forest labor as the limiting factor. Smaller, more inexpensive machines allows greater reliabilty- if a machine goes down, productivity is not as greatly affected. Cycle of replacement can be simplier with staggered acquisition and disposal so equipment has a range of use and wear. However more labor would be required to operate more equipment, unless a new innovation is introduced such as AI.
