Yesterday I spent the day helping to "nurse" a firewood processer. I've seen them ofcourse on YouTube and in person here and there for a few minutes. My friend had an estimated 24 cord pile of logs and was going to rent a processor for the weekend. Iirc it was around $8-900. He ended up finding out a guy that we both know that sells firewood also hires out. He'll bring the processor and conveyor AND operate it for $50/cord. I'll tell you it was fairly hectic keeping up with him even being fully mechanized feeding and removing. We did 14 cord yesterday, 3 of us with me not really contributing much.
My brother had his buddy bring his then new Dyna processor over to try it out some years back...he was pretty green on it, and we had to sort out the logs that were either too big or too crooked to run through it, but we still knocked out about a 10 cord pile by the end of the day. This is with stopping for lunch, and lots of "adjustments" time. I said then that it would take 3-4 guys to operate/feed this thing to run at its full capacity. 1 guy bringing logs, 1 operating, 1 hauling splits away, and one "floater". Sadly this machine (and many many cords of firewood) was lost in a 4th of July barn fire a couple years later.
It was never determined for sure, but yes, it is suspected that the neighbors fireworks had something to do with it...possibly even intentionally. I'm not sure on the insurance...I think there was an issue there though, as nothing was replaced the last I heard (IIRC)
The only thing (and it's a OCD thing) is about a processor is after 40+ years with a normal splitter is the somewhat lack of control over the size of the splits. After yesterday with anything about 14" + we'd send at least 2 of the splits off of the 6 way back through for another split. There also was a lot of kindling made compared to a slow old fashioned hydraulic splitter.
