Price per acre is the answer, not the question.

1. The lot

Density is the input that moves the price most and the one a customer describes loosest. Pick the class that matches what is standing, then correct the speed and pass count below if you know better.

2. The machine and the cut

Advance speed is how fast you move forward while cutting, not how fast the machine travels. Passes is how many times the same ground gets worked before the mat is finished.

3. What an hour of this machine costs

The two lines that go missing from a hand-written quote are the last two: carbide teeth are a consumable, and the payment is owed whether the machine turns or not.

4. Getting there, and what you want to keep

Mobilization is its own line because it does not scale with acreage — the trailer trip is the same length whether the lot is half an acre or five. Margin is taken on the price, not added to cost: 35% is cost / 0.65, not cost × 1.35.

The link carries these figures in the part of the URL after the #, which browsers never send to a server. Send it to a partner, a crew lead, or an estimator and they open this same job, already filled in, and can change any field to test their own numbers.

Don't count my use of this tool. The counter is anonymous, stays on this device, records only which features were used and the day, and already switches itself off for Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control.

Your quoted price per acre, on four densities

Same acreage, same machine, same costs, same quote. Only what is standing on the ground changes. This is the table to have open when someone asks what you charge an acre.

Common questions

How much should you charge per acre for forestry mulching?

There is no per-acre number that is right twice, and that is the answer rather than a dodge. The machine is paid for by the hour, so a per-acre price is a quotient: your cost per machine-hour divided by the acres per hour you actually cover on that lot. Cost per hour is reasonably stable for a given machine and operator. Acres per hour is not — it is set by what is standing on the ground, and it varies by more than five to one across the four density classes this calculator carries. Work the hours first and let the per-acre figure fall out of them, which is the order the arithmetic runs in.

Why does the same price per acre lose money on heavy brush?

Because acreage is not what you are being paid to remove. A 6 ft head advancing at 90 ft/min through saplings covers about half an acre an hour on one pass. The same head in 8 to 12 inch understory advances at maybe 30 ft/min and needs three passes to bring the mat down to something a customer calls finished, which is around a twentieth of an acre an hour — nine times the machine time on identical ground. The worked example on this page shows one $1,000 per acre quote on 3 acres earning $2,059.29 on light brush and losing $3,810.40 on the heavy class: a $5,869.69 spread on the same quote and the same acreage.

What production rate should I use — how many acres per hour?

Your own, if you have ever timed a finished lot. The presets here are starting points to argue with, not survey data: real production moves with the carrier's horsepower and hydraulic flow, the head, the species mix, how wet it is and who is in the seat, and it moves by more than the gap between two of these classes. If you know you did three quarters of an acre in four hours, put that rate in and the calculator will tell you the advance speed it implies on your head width, so you can sanity-check it against what the machine feels like. A rate you measured beats a rate anyone published, including this one.

Should mobilization be in the per-acre price?

Not as a per-acre line, because it does not behave like one. Loading, floating out, unloading and doing it again in reverse costs the same whether the lot is half an acre or five, so folding it into a per-acre rate overcharges the big jobs you want and undercharges the small ones you will regret. This calculator keeps it as its own line and tells you what share of the price it is. Once it passes about a quarter of the job, stop quoting that job per acre: a day rate or a stated minimum charge is the honest shape for it.

How much does carbide tooth wear really cost per hour?

Enough to matter, and it is the line most often left out entirely because it arrives as one bill months after the jobs that caused it. Teeth are a consumable, not a repair: divide what a full set costs you by the hours a set lasts and you have a real cost per machine-hour that belongs in every quote. The life figure is the one to be honest about — clean standing timber is kind to carbide and sandy or rocky ground is not, and cutting near grade shortens a set faster than anything else you can do. If you are unsure, halve the life and see what it does to the price before you send it.

Is margin the same as markup?

No, and confusing them is how a job that looked profitable is not. Margin is a share of the price: a 35% margin means price equals cost divided by 0.65. Markup is a share of the cost: adding 35% to cost gives price equals cost times 1.35, which is only a 25.9% margin. On the 3-acre example here that is the difference between quoting $2,737.29 and quoting $2,401.97 — $335.32 left on the table on one job, repeated on every job you ever quote. This calculator takes margin on the price, which is what operators mean when they say it.

What about stumps and stems too big for the head?

They are a different job and they need to leave the per-acre number. Mulching takes standing material down and leaves a mat; it does not remove a stump below grade, and a stem well above what your head is rated for is a felling job before it is a mulching job. The time to drop oversized material is not in any production rate, and forcing it through the drum is how a day goes to teeth, a belt, or worse. Tell the calculator the largest stem on the lot and the rating of your head and it will flag the gap, then price those stems separately or exclude them in writing.

Is any of this uploaded?

No. There is no account and the page makes no network requests — it runs entirely in your browser. Your acreage, your hourly costs, your machine payment, the margin you quote at and the jobs you price are never sent anywhere and never appear in a usage count. The optional counter records only which features were used and the day, stored on your own device, and it switches itself off for browsers sending Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control.

Can I send this job to a partner, a crew lead, or an estimator?

Yes — "Copy a link to this job" produces a URL that reopens this page with all twenty-five pricing figures and your deposit, price-hold, and payment terms already entered, so whoever you send it to can change the tooth life, the billable hours a month, or the quoted price per acre to their own numbers and watch the price move. That is more useful than a fixed worksheet, because a second opinion on a bid is a conversation about the inputs. The figures travel in the part of the URL after the #, which browsers never transmit to a server, but they are readable by anyone the link reaches; share it the same way you would share the downloaded worksheet.