I have the PTO drive version - SC554 from when it was Crary Bearcat. It's a good solid piece of machinery. For small brush and branches up to about 4" diameter it works well. The shredder function is nice to shred up the smaller piles of twigs and debris. For a homeowner doing cleanup and those occasional brushing jobs mine works great. However for any medium or big jobs it is slow and really maxes out at 4" diameter though larger branches will fit, they just need to be softwoods or it will bog down. It does not like hardwoods, particularly knots. It will jam up on the larger branches or knots and the flywheel will stop but the belt will keep spinning. Next thing you have smoking rubber drive belts and have to shut down quick or the belts will be trashed. So I keep extra belts on hand. Changing them out takes about 30 minutes. The other big maintenance item are the chipper blades. There are 4 on the flywheel and I keep 3 extra sets ready to go. They last me about 4 hours in clean wood and brush between sharpenings. My recommendation is if you are planning to make money doing chipping, shredding, brush cleanup then at that price you should just rent a 12" or larger chipper as needed. It is so much faster to use a larger chipper, that is what I do. I pile mine up in my yard until I have several other local jobs then the rental is covered plus some decent income, and I have the machine for an afternoon to get all my material shredded too.
