ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY 



The balloon system has proven to be acceptable from an environmental viewpoint and 

 also has demonstrated the physical capability to log in the Idaho Batholith area. The 

 final test for a viable logging system is its economic feasibility. The balloon system's 

 economic feasibility was tested under a specific set of timber stand, harvesting, and 

 terrain conditions in the Idaho Batholith. Unfortunately, balloon logging cannot be 

 compared to conventional logging economics since these methods cannot be used to log 

 terrain similar to the Anderson Creek site due to physical or environmental limitations. 

 It is believed that this economic analysis will prove useful for assessing balloon 

 logging feasibility for the Rocky Mountain area in general. 



The first step in the economic analysis was to plot production per hour versus time 

 in days to see if a learning period could be identified during the startup of the system. 

 Cumulative plots of turns per productive hour (fig. 13) and pieces per productive hour 

 (fig. 14) were used because of the high variability in daily production rates. The 

 slopes of the line segments on the graphs indicate that production rates were not time 

 dependent. This is not surprising in view of the circumstances involved on this timber 

 sale. Boise Cascade had sent the crews to another balloon logging job on the West 

 Coast to be trained for the balloon system of logging. Operators were selected that had 

 experience on similar equipment used for cable logging. Supervisory personnel from 

 Bohemia Logging Company (a company with several years of experience with balloon logging) 

 were on hand during the startup and initial shakedown of the system. 



DAYS 



Fig-ure 13. — Turns per productive hour ( crumdative ) vs. date, unit. 



12 



