Chips made from recently-harvested wood contain a high moisture content which varies and can reach 100%, meaning that they are heavier than dry chips. As mills want to minimize their transport costs (in tons), it makes sense to buy dry chips, which is not favorable to the productive process. On the other hand, wet chips create an uncertainty with regards to the mill’s raw material intake. Due to perverse incentives, conflicts arise between the forest owners, service companies, and the mills, which are difficult to resolve. Additionally, reconciling the weight of the harvest wood with the weight of the standing wood becomes an imprecise and laborious task.

In the case of manual measurement, it is subjective and imprecise given the difficulty of measuring the surface irregularities. A volume overestimate implies an increase in raw material costs. Furthermore, it is a slow and highly-costly operation.