Assessing the Cost and Risks of Owning and Operating Used Machines.

The market for used forestry machines is growing. Standard machine costing methods do not account for already depreciated or used machines in a manner that reflects operations run by small-sized firms. This is because the assumptions made for new machines are not very descriptive of the actual conditions of the operations on the ground using used machines – no one size fits all. As a result, these methods alienate this segment of the logging community, because they are not very relevant to what they paid for the machine, nor the actual performance on the ground. To address this issue, this presentation is based on an expert-based understanding developed to integrate operational-economic-market factors in costing used machines. The intent is to help used machine operators more realistically value the cost of their operations in relation to the machines used and their production.