A material reduction machine comprising: a cutting mechanism; a prime mover coupled with the cutting mechanism to drive the cutting mechanism; an infeed portion operable to engage a piece of material to be comminuted by the cutting mechanism and to feed the piece of material to the cutting mechanism; a sensor operable to sense a machine load parameter via detection of at least one of the cutting mechanism and the prime mover; and a controller coupled to the sensor and configured to receive a signal representing the sensed machine load parameter, the controller being operatively coupled to the infeed portion to control stopping and starting of each of a plurality of sequential cutting cycles on the piece of material, wherein the controller is further configured to: utilize a stored first stop threshold value of the machine load parameter for stopping a first cutting cycle of the plurality of sequential cutting cycles when the sensor signals to the controller that the first stop threshold value is attained, continue monitoring the sensor signal as machine load increases momentarily after reaching the first stop threshold, characterized in that the controller is further configured to determine and adopt a second stop threshold value, the second stop threshold value being based on an observation of the machine load parameter indicative of maximum load during the continued monitoring following attainment of the first stop threshold, and further being based on a stored correction factor, and utilize the second stop threshold value for stopping a second cutting cycle of the plurality of sequential cutting cycles following the first cutting cycle when the sensor signals to the control that the second stop threshold value is attained. a cutting mechanism; a prime mover coupled with the cutting mechanism to drive the cutting mechanism; an infeed portion operable to engage a piece of material to be comminuted by the cutting mechanism and to feed the piece of material to the cutting mechanism; a sensor operable to sense a machine load parameter via detection of at least one of the cutting mechanism and the prime mover; and a controller coupled to the sensor and configured to receive a signal representing the sensed machine load parameter, the controller being operatively coupled to the infeed portion to control stopping and starting of each of a plurality of sequential cutting cycles on the piece of material, wherein the controller is further configured to: utilize a stored first stop threshold value of the machine load parameter for stopping a first cutting cycle of the plurality of sequential cutting cycles when the sensor signals to the controller that the first stop threshold value is attained, continue monitoring the sensor signal as machine load increases momentarily after reaching the first stop threshold, characterized in that the controller is further configured to determine and adopt a second stop threshold value, the second stop threshold value being based on an observation of the machine load parameter indicative of maximum load during the continued monitoring following attainment of the first stop threshold, and further being based on a stored correction factor, and utilize a stored first stop threshold value of the machine load parameter for stopping a first cutting cycle of the plurality of sequential cutting cycles when the sensor signals to the controller that the first stop threshold value is attained, continue monitoring the sensor signal as machine load increases momentarily after reaching the first stop threshold, characterized in that the controller is further configured to determine and adopt a second stop threshold value, the second stop threshold value being based on an observation of the machine load parameter indicative of maximum load during the continued monitoring following attainment of the first stop threshold, and further being based on a stored correction factor, and utilize the second stop threshold value for stopping a second cutting cycle of the plurality of sequential cutting cycles following the first cutting cycle when the sensor signals to the control that the second stop threshold value is attained.