I work for a tree service part time. Friend of mine. I keep trying to quit but he won't let me. I'm getting to old for tree service work !
It's hard on the body
Anyways to the point
Middle of winter is the best time. Only the most established tree services can manage to find work in the winter and it's generally significantly less production than during the warmer months. And if they have loans out on expensive equipment like chippers and stump grinders or bucket trucks, they want the work and most will discount it to get it.
The guy I help out is a couple weeks behind . He will cancel small jobs ( after communicating with the homeowner) if there is a bigger better paying job or if it's an emergency situation such as tree blown on a house in a windstorm. That goes to the top of the list.
I'm not sure how others price out their tree service but where I'm used too it's hourly based on the size of the crew. So if it's a 3 man crew for 4 hours that's a certain rate x 4. If it's big and a 4 man crew that's rates higher. If a crane is being contracted that's higher yet. And so on
If it's just chipping brush ( and it's heavy brush ) that's 2 men. One guy to drive the chip truck and chipper in tow. Another guy towing the skid steer. If the tree service doesn't have a skid steer, bobcat, etc and they are using human power to drag brush it's costing you more. Brush is heavy. A skid steer can drag large amounts of it and feed it into the chipper in minutes. In 3 to 4 hours it's easy to process tree tops and brush from several trees , for example if we had 4 or 5 or more large oaks the brush would be gone in less than a 1/2 day. The climber would be at a completely different job altogether since he is making $28 hr no need to use him for chipping brush and he would be doing a prune or removal somewhere else and we would go there after cleaning up the brush to process whatever he made a mess of.
A few hours at most. Should cost you under $1000 from a production tree shop. A mom and pop shop without high volume capability using all human power to drag the brush is going to be more to cover their costs and extra hours on the job site. And if it's a lot if brush and they have a small chipper say a 12 inch or something those you need to stand next to to reverse the feed when too big of pieces get in them and for that mom and pop shop they might just give your brush one full day for their entire crew. So other jobs are put on hold and your cost as the customer goes up.
Just my thought.
As for renting a chipper that depends on the size chipper. A 18 inch 150hp diesel chipper is $10,000 lbs or more. you need a 3/4 ton pick up to safely tow it. But if you have a tow vehicle, and you can process the wood chips into the woods or yard somewhere, this is a good option. Depending on the cost to rent the chipper[/