Towable vs Tracked Wood Chippers

The right type depends on how often the difficult sites come up in your workload, not just what the worst-case job looks like.

Learn more in this handy guide, from experienced wood chip machinery and groundcare specialists.

How a towable wood chipper works

A towable chipper sits on a braked, road-legal chassis with a tow bar.

You hitch it behind a pickup, van, or 4×4, drive it to the job, unhitch, and chip.

When the last job is done, you hitch back up and move on.

They’re available in 6-inch and 8-inch throat sizes, with petrol and diesel engine options across the range.

How a tracked wood chipper works

A tracked chipper has no tow bar and no road chassis.

It runs on rubber tracks and drives itself to where the work is, across soft earth, up steep slopes, down narrow paths, and into sites where getting a tow vehicle near the timber simply isn’t an option.

Forst’s tracked range runs from the 6-inch TR6P (petrol) and TR6D (diesel) through to the 8-inch TR8D. Above that sits the XR8D Traxion, built for demanding off-road contracts: railway embankments, motorway corridor clearance, remote woodland management, and estate work on difficult terrain.

ARBMAX’s D45X is built for fast, high-volume processing on demanding forestry and land clearance contracts.
A tracked chipper still needs a trailer to travel on public roads.

The machine drives itself on site but can’t be towed between jobs. If you don’t already run a suitable trailer, factor that into your options before you commit.

Tracked towable wood chippers

A tracked-towable chipper combines on-site mobility with straightforward transport. It runs on rubber tracks and drives itself across soft ground, slopes, and confined spaces, then loads onto a standard plant trailer to move between jobs.

The ARBMAX D35 is a 13-inch tracked drum chipper built on exactly that principle.

It sits between a towable chipper and a fully tracked machine in both capability and logistics. Worth considering if you need tracked access on site but want to keep transport simple.

When a towable chipper is the right call

Towable chippers work wherever a vehicle can get within reasonable reach of the timber.

For contractors moving between several jobs in a day, they’re the practical choice because hitching and unhitching takes seconds, while loading a tracked machine onto a trailer, securing it, and unloading at each stop adds meaningful time to every move across the working week.

Hire costs are lower too, and there’s no trailer to source or budget for.

For short-term hire or for contractors whose work sits predominantly on accessible ground, a towable is the cheaper, easier option.

When a tracked chipper is the right call

The most obvious terrain issues are steep slopes and soft ground, but narrow residential access paths and sites with no vehicle entry cause exactly the same problem.

On those jobs, the alternative to a tracked chipper is staff carrying timber by hand to a machine parked at the roadside.

Rather than carrying material across rough ground to a roadside chipper, the operator walks the tracked machine to where the timber already is.

On a full day of woodland clearance, that approach can add an hour or more of usable chipping time.

We hire tracked machines most often to contractors who run a towable chipper as their everyday machine and bring in a tracked model for a specific contract. This may be a woodland clearance job, railway embankment work, or an estate site where the terrain rules out towing.

Council groundcare teams and land management contractors use them for the same reason.

Practical differences between both types

Whichever type you choose, both must be operated safely by trained, qualified operators.

Here are the three main differences between both types.

Road transport

Towable chippers connect directly to a suitable vehicle and go.

Getting a tracked machine between sites requires a trailer, so if you don’t already run one, add that to your hire cost comparison alongside the day rate of the machine itself.

Site access

Towable machines depend on getting a tow vehicle close to the work area.

Tracked machines drive themselves through standard garden gates and up slopes where towing would be unsafe.

On sites where no vehicle can get through the gate, a tracked chipper lets you chip where the tree is. Without one, the crew is carrying timber back to the roadside by hand.

Running costs

Tracked chippers hire at a higher day rate and carry higher maintenance costs than comparable towable machines.

For those contracts, run the numbers against what you’d spend on crew time hauling material to a chipper that can’t reach the site. On most jobs that need a tracked machine, the hire rate balances out against what the crew gets through in a day.

Hire or buy tracked and towed woodchippers

Towable and tracked chippers are both available to hire from our fleet or to buy new through us.

Whether you prefer Forst or Arbmax, we have a great range to help you with your processes. Plus, as Scotland’s only supplier of Arbmax wood chippers, you can be confident you’re getting the full support of a dedicated local dealer, from machine selection through to parts and servicing.

Buying a towable for everyday work and hiring a tracked machine for the specific contracts that need it keeps capital costs down.

You get access to the right machine without owning one that sits between difficult jobs for weeks at a time, and we deal with plenty of operators across Scotland who run exactly that arrangement. We’ve been supplying and servicing chippers across Scotland since 2007, and we’ll give you an honest steer on what makes sense for the work you’re actually doing.

If you want a straight conversation about which option fits your workload, call us on 0141 775 9288 or get in touch online.