Logistics of roundwood and biomass comprise a high number of operations, machinery, storage sites and transportable roundwood and biomass assortments. Moreover, complex and highly varying operational environment through the year poses logistics challenges incurring additional costs. An extensive review of studies was conducted in Sweden and Finland concerning roundwood and biomass logistics, starting from roadside landings and ending with delivery to a mill or a conversion facility. The main aim of the review was to describe trends in roundwood and biomass logistics since the start of the century. Papers were classified to categories of truck transports and roads, terminals, multimodal transports, storage and supply chain logistics. Slightly over 50% of reviewed articles were constrained to biomass only, 31% to roundwood only and 14% to both. Rapid technology development, amendments concerning road transports, increasing environmental concerns and forestry sector’s push to decrease the logistics costs can be seen as the biggest drivers for the reviewed studies and their study objectives. These aspects will also drive and increase the demand for research and development in roundwood and biomass logistics in the future.

Today, timber trucks of gross vehicle weight (GVW) up to 76 tonnes are allowed to operate on Finnish roads from roadside landings to mills. Reducing trucking costs and exhaust gas emissions have been the dominant reasons for the increased GVWs of timber trucks. A discrete-event simulation (DES) method was used to compare the impact of the truck and payload size, trucking distance, and timber assortment lengths on trucking performance indicators (e.g., productivity, energy efficiency, and costs of trucking) in the procurement area of a case logistic company operating in Central Finland. The studied truck sizes were 68, 76 and 84 t, of which the 76-t trucks dominate timber trucking in Finland. Over a transport distance of approx. 105 km with an average assortment length of 4.2 m, 76-t trucks had 9% higher and 12% lower productivity (m³/100 km), 1% lower and 4% higher fuel consumption (l/m³) and 4% lower and 6% higher trucking cost (€/m³) compared to 68- and 84-tonner options, respectively. The improvement in regards to previous indicators was clearly bigger for the 76-tonner than the 68-tonner if the trucked wood assortments were lengthened to 5.0 m. The differences in cost and fuel efficiency as well as annual trucking volumes were increased as a function of the trucking distance, when comparing the truck configurations with different GVWs and payloads. To conclude, the tendency of the size increase in GVWs in timber trucking in Finland can be justified in light of the study results.

Despite positive signals from increasing growing stock volumes and improved roundwood trade, first commercial thinnings (FCTs) tend to be a bottleneck in Finnish forest management and forestry. The reasons are many, but probably the most crucial would be the lack of simultaneous economic incentives for participating agents, i.e., private forest owners and forest machine contractors. This is due to poor stand characteristics in most FCT cases: low cutting removal with small average stem size. There are five predetermined management options: (1) Industrial wood thinning with only two timber assortments, pulpwood and saw logs, (2) Integrated procurement of industrial and energy wood, (3) Energy wood thinning solely consisting of delimbed stems, (4) Whole-tree energy wood thinning with an energy price of 3 € m⁻³ and (5) Whole-tree energy wood thinning with energy price of 8 € m⁻³, that were applied for six separate forest stands located in Northern Finland, and derived from a database representing stands with an urgent need for FCT. Then, a two-phase financial analysis consisting of stand-level optimization (private forest owners) and profitability assessment (contractor) was conducted in order to find out whether there would be simultaneous economic incentives for both participants of FCT. The stand-level optimization revealed the financially best management options for a private forest owner, and then, for a contractor, the profitability assessment exposed the profit (or loss) associated with the particular management option. In brief, our results demonstrated that conducting either an industrial wood thinning (1) or an integrated procurement (2) resulted in a positive economic incentive for both the private forest owner and the contractor in all six cases (stands). Further, applying energy wood thinning with delimbed stems (3) would even generate a financial loss for the contractor, given the roadside prices applied in this study.

This study assessed the situation of Finnish cut-to-length (CTL) machine operators’ work well-being with workability index (WAI), investigated CTL machine operators’ lifestyle habits, and collected operators’ good practices to maintain and promote well-being and vitality at work. A questionnaire was conducted in electronic form, including questions concerning background information, work environment, work organisation, well-being at work and free time, and workability index. Mean WAI among respondents was 42.2 points (max. 49) falling into the rank »good«, while the current workability compared with the lifetime best was 8.2 (range 0–10). WAI was strongly impacted by age (p<0.000), the score declined during ageing, and standard deviation grew. The results were in line with previous WAI studies. Statistic differences were found between youngest age group (age≤25) versus all others. Compared to other studies and occupational groups, CTL machine operators’ WAI was average. Operators revered independent nature of work and forest as a working environment, thus promoting and maintaining well-being at work. Furthermore, breaks during work shift, with or without physical exercise, was recognised to ensure and retain vitality and concentration at work.