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During August 2001 two harvesting systems, one manual and one mechanized, were evaluated in terms of productivity and cost while performing a thinning in a lodgepole pine stand on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest in Wyoming. The existing manual system had a system rate of 2.76 green tonnes per Scheduled Machine Hour (SMH) with a system cost of $27 per green tonne. The mechanized system had a system rate of 2.93 green tonnes per SMH with a system cost of $39 per green tonne. In terms of tonnes per person-day the manual system produced 3.7 green tonnes per person-day compared to 11.7 green tonnes per person-day for the mechanized system. Residual tree damage to the stand was higher for the mechanized system at 420 damaged trees per hectare, compared to 49 damaged trees per hectare for the manual system.