Analysis of the Offering and Resale Prices on the Second-Hand Skidders Market

Skidders, as self-propelled machines designed to transport trees or parts of trees by trailing or dragging it from the woods to a landing area, are still extensively used as the main wood extraction equipment in most of the Europe and worldwide. The high price of new machines (and even higher for CTL technology) makes the second-hand skidder market very interesting and appealing, especially for small forest owners and forestry contractors. So, this paper reports on a survey of used skidders available for purchase on the European market. Up-to-date empirical data was gathered by the analysis of the offerings on the main online marketplaces, i.e., specialized websites. The study included skidder make and model, variation in their age, annual usage and resale prices. The survey identified a total of 163 second-hand skidders and the results pointed out the prevalence of small-size machines (<110 kW), the average annual use (after excluding 1 year old machines from calculation) of 863 hours per year and the average re-sale price of about 65,000 EUR. Skidders are most commonly re-sold at an age of 16 years and the calculated price models show that skidder age is a stronger predictor of their value, i.e., resale price, than the total machine working hours. In the concluding section, paper also includes some reflections on possible future trends and perspectives of skidding technology in forestry.