Forest Road Construction
A properly located and constructed forest road is an essential first step to managing your forest lands.
Our construction costs average $15.00/m. Our costs can range from $10.00/m to as high as $20.00/m depending on site circumstances. The finished road has a 16-18ft road surface with turning areas constructed at least every 300m or as required.
Existing road rebuilds average $5.00/m across a wide range of conditions. This includes removal of brush/trees, water control re-establishment, and re-surfacing.
We typically use insitu material (i.e. material dug on site) for the road fill and our goal is to build all season roads, capable of supporting logging truck traffic in all but extreme road weather conditions.
Costs include all cross-culvert installations but do not include watercourse crossings that require more complicated solutions to meet the requirements of the Nova Scotia Department of Environment and Climate Change.
All work is completed with a 20-tonne excavator. The excavator comes equipped with appropriate guarding for woods work, a hydraulic thumb and quick-change hydraulic tilt and extreme duty digging buckets. Buckets have been modified for handling large amounts of brush and trees. Other attachments such as a hydraulic grapples and a root rakes are also available.
At an additional cost, dump trucks can be used to cap the road surface with pit gravel if the insitu material has a high percent of clay that could become problematic at certain times of year.
If jobs are not priced by the meter than the current hourly rate for these purpose-built excavators with a Red Seal operator is $155.00/hr. Note that the hourly can fluctuate based on site specific factors and job size and location.
For new construction exceeding 500m, ABL would prefer to complete the road location and provides this service free of charge. A well located road is less expensive to build and serves its clients better, across a broader range of weather conditions.
Road ROWs for new construction should be cut between 60 – 75 feet wide allowing room for the burrow pit method of construction. ABL also offers ROW cutting services if required.
ABL has a no charge floating policy for jobs exceeding $7500.00
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