Do Ufkes Greentec chippers stack up against its competition? The people who use them should know.
As a subcontractor working full time in tree care, Russell Fray has used a few different chippers and machines. A Cert 3 arborist, he now spends the majority of his working days with The Climbing Dutchman, a Mornington Peninsula-based arboricultural business, which keeps him fairly busy.
Russell is big fan of the Ufkes Greentec chippers, the Jaguar 40 chipper and its 16″ feed especially.
Experience
“I’ve worked behind the two main American-brand chippers with other companies,” the Mount Eliza-based arborist told The Australian Arbor Age.
“I’ve had enough experience with those to be quite confident in knowing their capabilities and how to operate and maintain them.
“These days I’m onsite with the Jaguar 40 most days, usually running the crew. I’ve probably been operating and working with that machine for close to 18 months.” During that time Russell has developed a healthy respect for the individual machine and the Ufkes Greentec brand.
Impressed
“The Jaguar 40 is definitely a good thing,” he said.
“I guess the difference between this particular model – and a lot of the range from Ufkes Greentec – and other chippers is that you can customise them with different add ons and have different set ups.
“The machine I’m working with has an 8.5-metre crane grab attached to the chipper. It’s a hydraulic, joystickcontrolled crane that’s able to grab branches and logs and bring material close and feed it in to the chipper. That’s probably the main point of difference with this particular machine compared to everything else that’s on the market. It’s able to feed itself using a hydraulic arm with a grab, and it’s sort of like two machines in one.
“A lot of other people may be set up with a traditional chipper and they’ll use a skid steer, small loader or excavator to bring the material to, and feed, the chipper. The crane grab on the Ufkes Greentec chippers enables us to be able to do that with a single, all-in-one package.
“The Jaguar’s crane has good lifting capacity, so if the tree or branch will fit through the 16″ (40cm) feed opening, you can pretty much grab it and feed it in in one go.”
High efficiency
Russell pointed out a substantial increase in efficiency due to the crane and chipper being a single unit.
“There’s no second machine – skid steer or excavator – involved,” he explained.
“We can run a much smaller crew, and achieve a lot more in a day, because the machine does all the work. It’s a faster, smarter way to work.”
Russell went on to outline the additional cost of having an extra machine on site – another trailer, tow vehicle and driver – and the possibilities afforded by the Ufkes Greentec set up.
“We wouldn’t normally do it, but there have been specific jobs where I could turn up on my own and handle a chipping pile someone’s left. I can just work my way through it with the crane grab, pretty much standing behind the chipper and having the machinery do all the work.
“It’s easier to fill bins with mulch and it’s easier to process material. It’s more efficient and it’s a lot safer.”
Tough as
While the efficiency and safety offered by the Jaguar is obviously a high priority, the durability of the Ufkes Greentec gear must also be a big consideration. There’s no gain in a machine which will run at high speed but won’t run for long because it constantly needs repair.
Russell had no reservations in that area.
“The Ufkes Greentec chippers are better engineered,” he said, clearly confident in his assessment. “It’s a heavier build quality for the whole unit. “Everything, from the quality of the steel to the painted finish, stands up well to the daily wear and tear this kind of work throws at it. We’ve never really had downtime due to breakages or with the way the machines have been engineered or constructed.
“The dual-axle trailer is a good example,” he continued. “It rides better than a single-axle trailer. We have a medium rigid truck pulling the chipper, and our set up is probably around 6.5 tonnes on the trailer. I can cruise on 100kph on the highway, no worries. I don’t even know the chipper’s on the back.
Bottom line
“You don’t realise the capabilities of the Ufkes Greentec machinery until you’ve worked on a job with it,” said the Victorian. “It’s not only doing the job of an excavator, skid steer or a loader saving the heavy lifting, but we can use it as a crane. As long as we’ve got the reach, we can crane things away with the climber still in the tree. It means we can work safer, minimising the impact of material falling on the ground or having to set up rigging and so forth.
“There’s a lot of advantages with the Jaguar 40. You can get a lot done in a day without the operators breaking a sweat.”
Second opinion
Another happy Ufkes Greentec owner is Mark Maiden of MJM Forestry Service in Gippsland, Victoria.
Mark, an owner of the business, has around 60 dozers, excavators and other machines in his fleet, but only the one chipper – the Ufkes Greentec 952MEGA with a 22″ x 41″ inch infeed and 400hp.
We wondered what led a bloke with so much heavy-machinery experience to choose Ufkes Greentec.
“I just wanted something that was big, horsepower-wise, but easy to transport,” said the straight-shooting Victorian. “And we can tow it around with our tippers.
“Otherwise, a machine equivalent to that, you’d have to have it on tracks and have a float to shift it all the time. We have our own floats, but with the Ufkes Greentec, we can go and do a small tree or a big tree. It doesn’t really matter with this machine.”
What Mark was getting at was, because the machine will tow on a trailer, there was no need to consider the expense of a crew and another truck with a driver and loader.
“It has its own crane, so it’s all pretty self-sufficient,” he explained. “It eliminates floating costs and the cost of an excavator. We can go out with just that machine and a tipper, and it can be a one-man band. We can pick up a log and put it through the chipper or whatever needs to be done.
“Getting good personnel these days is getting harder and harder. If we can have one man do the whole job, it’s quite good.”
Mark was happy with the power, too.
Tough going
Mark recently had his machinery and people working very hard indeed. “We had a big wind event about four months ago,” he remembered, “and it hammered all the local roads. We had a gig with the shire cleaning up and we would’ve done…” he spoke aloud as he calculated, “…five…six…10 thousand cubic metres, I reckon. The Ufkes Greentec stood up to it. It’ll do 20 cubic metres of chips in about 12 minutes if you’ve got the right material feeding it.”
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gear must also be a big consideration. Image: Ufkes Greente