Spring is a busy time of year for gardeners. From planting new flowers and trees to removing the dead ones left by winter, there is always lots to do.
If you have a whole bunch of branches or leaves that need to be disposed of, renting a wood chipper may be for you.
What To Expect? Renting a woodchipper can cost anywhere from $70 a day, to over $400 a day. The cost will vary based on your location, the type of wood chipper you want to rent, and delivery fees.
The cost may make you think about purchasing one for home use, but they come with a hefty price tag as well.
What Do You Need a Wood Chipper For
A wood chipper is a machine that can chop up logs and wood pieces into smaller, manageable pieces.
The machine is made up of a large cylinder with blunt blades.
The logs get put in through the top, either by the operator or by equipment while the operator puts in the branches or twigs from the side.
When the process is done, there is a safety switch that needs to be turned off before wood chips can be discarded from the bottom.
If you’re looking to get rid of wood, a wood chipper can be worth the investment.
A wood chipper can quickly chop up large branches into smaller pieces that can easily be burned or disposed of.
A wood chipper is also handy to get rid of branches and pieces of wood that are much too large to burn in a fireplace or woodstove.
If you live in a area where the majority of something is a tree, a wood chipper can be an amazing tool.
Factors that Affect Cost
There’s a pretty big difference between $70 a day and over $400 a day, so why is that?
Many factors affect the cost of renting a wood chipper.
Chipping Capacity
Here’s the size of the woodchipper.
The smallest wood chippers have a 2″ capacity and go up to a 12″ capacity.
The capacity determines the size of the branches you can feed through the chipper, so a 2″ diameter capacity can take twigs and sticks with a maximum diameter of 2 inches.
However, if you have seen sticks and branches, you also know that they are not straight.
If not cut beforehand, then the bends and angles of sticks will get stuck in the machine.
If you think you need a larger capacity machine, you will pay more.
This chart shows an estimated daily price according to 5 similar in the U.S.
| Wood Chipper Size | Daily Rental Price |
|---|---|
| 2” Capacity | $96 |
| 3” Capacity | $105 |
| 6” Capacity | $205 |
| 12” Capacity | $430 |
If you have branches that are larger than 12″ in diameter, you will need to search for tree chipper rentals instead.
Length of Rental Time
The length of time you rent a wood chipper will also change the overall cost and change the cost per day also.
Some places rent on a day by day, week by week, or month by month basis, and longer wood chipper rentals will be cheaper on a per day basis.
Let’s look at the rental price of the 6″ wood chipper again. A standard per day rental price is $205.
| Per Day Cost | Per Week Cost | Per Month Cost | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rental Cost | Cost per day | Rental Cost | Cost per day | Rental Cost | Cost per day |
| $205 | $205 | $530 | $75 | $1360 | $45 |
This chart shows you the cost to rent a wood chipper for a day, a week, or a month.
The total cost may go up but the more you rent a wood chipper, the cheaper the per day cost gets.
You can use this information to try to secure a better deal for yourself.
If you were to rent a 6″ woodchipper for 3 days, that cost would be $615.
In this example, it would have been cheaper to rent it for the whole week and take your time.
These numbers will change depending on where you rent a wood chipper.
Where You Rent From
This is meant in two ways.
The first means your geographic location; where do you live in the States?
This table will show you the average cost to rent a 3” capacity wood chipper and a 6” capacity wood chipper in six different states.
| State | 3” Capacity | 6” Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| New York | $103 | $195 |
| California | $97 | $285 |
| Illinois | $110 | $145 |
| Texas | $195 | $295 |
| Arizona | $270 | $395 |
| Pennsylvania | $97 | $220 |
This also applies to whatever store you want to rent from.
The box stores will have similar costs regardless of the store you rent from as well, whether in New York or Texas.
Independent businesses are going to have multiple prices, even in the same market!
Two rental locations just down the road could have a price difference of more than $100 for a wood chipper rental for one day!
Insurance and Deposits
Wood chippers are big dollar items, and in order to protect themselves from the possibility of theft or damage, rental companies will have you pay a deposit or buy insurance on the wood chipper.
Although this is another expense you will incur, when you buy insurance, you protect yourself.
Rental services thoroughly inspect the wood chipper before, and after they check it out for you to use, so they will be able to charge you for each scratch or parts that are missing.
If you happen to do some major damage due to your error or due to the chipper malfunctioning, you may have to pay for a new wood chipper.
Pick-Up vs. Delivery
There’s costs of getting the dumpster to your site.
If you have a vehicle to throw it into then you can pick up the dumpster and take it home.
If you have no vehicle to get it home you will likely incur an extra cost.
You have a couple options:
The first option is to rent a trailer and pick up the dumpster yourself and bring it back to the rental shop.
The second option is to pay to have the dumpster delivered and picked up. Depending on how long you rent the dumpster, you may get a lower price for the delivery.
The cost to deliver will be anywhere from $0 to a couple hundred, but each rental place will charge differently.
Best Price: Call a few of your local equipment rental stores and combine rental and delivery fee to figure out what the best deal is.
What to Consider When Renting a Wood Chipper
So you’re trying to rent a wood chipper, and you are feeling a little confused.
Some rentals are cheaper, some rentals are more expensive. How do you decide?
These considerations will be useful and help you understand the price variations so you can make the right decisions for the work you need done.
Capacity
The capacity is one of the principals to keep in mind when deciding which wood chipper to rent from the rental shop.
If you have any large branches in your backyard to throw away nothing is going to be up to the task of a 2″ capacity wood chipper.
If you know the 2″ wood chipper is big enough for anything in your backyard, then no sense in renting a larger, more expensive wood chipper.
Power Source
Some wood chippers use electricity and some wood chippers use gas. Both have their upsides and downsides.
Electric wood chippers are going to generally be inexpensive to run, but you will need a long extension cord or you will need to use a portable generator to run the wood chipper which are two other costs that may or may not be an expense you already have.
Gas-powered wood chippers are going to need gas. The more you run the wood chipper, the more gas you will have to get and gas is not cheap.
You won’t have an extension cord lying around for a gas powered wood chipper to trip and fall on.
When you are busy with work, you may not be watching and paying attention to everything at ground level, and it would be very easy to trip on an extension cord. If you happen to trip and fall towards the wood chipper, you might find yourself in for a nasty spill.
Combination Machine
Take a look at what you’ve got in the backyard that you want to clear out.
Is it just twigs, sticks, and branches?
Or do you have leaves you want to clear out too?
If you only have twigs, sticks, and branches, all you really need is a wood chipper.
If you have piles of leaves you want to clear as well, you should purchase a machine with the shredding feature.
The shredding feature will increase the cost of the wood chipper, and if you don’t want to pay any extra, don’t.
Ways to Save Money
You can easily spend hundreds of dollars unnecessarily on a wood chipper if you rent it longer than you actually need to.
Here are a few tips to save you some money!
Compare Prices
Before you go ahead and sign that rental contract for a wood chipper, make some calls now and try to find some cheaper options.
The charts above illustrate different averages by state. So, you can call neighboring states to determine if you have to travel a bit further to save some cash.
You need to factor all of the below charges so you have the actual rental cost per wood chipper:
- rental price
- insurance or deposits
- delivery
- fuel costs
Get Things Ready in Advance
The most time consuming part isn’t chipping the wood.
The most time consuming part is getting the pile of wood together so you don’t have to go around your property and gather in the wood.
To chip a big pile of wood (15 feet long by 15 feet wide by 6 feet high) will take you only a couple of hours, however it may take you days to get the pile together.
In this case, you can rent a chipper for 4 hours, or even a day, instead of paying for a few days.
Have Extra Gas
Okay, this doesn’t apply if you’re renting a gas-powered wood chipper, and it almost only applies to renting for a day.
Time is money, and if you have the extra gas on hand, you don’t have to stop working and run out to get more.
If you’re not stopping your work to run out for more gas, you can get through the job faster (and not need to spend more money to rent the wood chipper for additional time).
Is Buying Better Than Renting
That raises a really good question; is it worth your money to purchase a wood chipper versus renting one?
There are many things it is going to depend on, all based on you and what your needs are.
Here are some questions before we explore the differences in cost.
- How long do you intend to rent a wood chipper for this time?
- Are you going to need to rent a wood chipper at the end of the season? Next year?
- Do you have any family or friends around you that may wish to rent a wood chipper?
- Do you have adequate space to store a wood chipper?
The prices of buying a wood chipper vary but it could be as low as around $700.00 to as high as around $5000.00. depending on size, quality, and features.
You can easily find a very good quality, gas-powered wood chipper with a 6″ feed capacity for around 2000.00, so let us use that as the standard.
Using the Example Above – It cost approximately 1360.00 to rent a 6″ wood chipper for one month, but again this may be different based on where you are and where you are renting it from.
Ultimately, if you are expecting to rent the wood chipper for one more month, whether that is later in the season or, the following year, it would be financially smarter for you to invest into one the very first time instead of renting two.
If you have family or friends living around you, you could even do what we talked about earlier; split the costs and privately use the wood chipper.
The wood chipper you split together would cost each of you less money to have access to a wood chipper for a lifetime, than it would cost to rent it for one month.
However, this would also come down you having the space to store it.
Winter Storage – The wood chipper should ideally be stored in a garage or shed, but it should at minimum be covered to keep water out of it.
This is a personal decision to make to rent or buy; but hopefully, this makes the decision easier.
Final Thoughts
If you’re shopping for a woodchipper and thinking through the option of renting one, hopefully you will consider all your options first.
Consider how many days you will need it for, what size you need and whether or not you will have to pay extra for delivery and pick-up.
If you’re going to be using it a number of times or you know someone else who needs to use a wood chipper, it could be worth it to purchase one eventually!