# There's no money in selling firewood



## dhamblet

Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack it, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.

I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere. 

If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.

Denny
'72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
stihl 031
stihl 032
Kubota L2900


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## willt1981

took a load to a guy today whose son was there to direct me where to put it and pay me at the end. stoner was an understatement for this kid. one of the first things he said was "i bet you make a killing doing this! all you need is a saw and a truck." right...


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## biggenius29

dhamblet said:


> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.
> 
> Denny
> '72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
> stihl 031
> stihl 032
> Kubota L2900




How you make money, you sell it for cash. B Hussien Obama takes enough of our money (unless you live in the hood, they get my money) 

I am finding alot of people like working for cash, and like paying cash.


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## Wood Doctor

Know how to put away $1 million selling firewood?

Start with $2 million.


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## Nailsbeats

I always tell people that ask that you won't get rich selling firewood.


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## rancher2

Your right this is why I don't sell fire wood any more. If I didn't have pasture to be cleaned up I wouldn't cut wood at all but we do and I always need more excerise the doctor says. It is sure nice to have the house a 75 degrees and the shop a 70 degrees so I keep cutting wood for me.


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## blackdogon57

Volume - To make serious money you need to sell hundreds of cords per year if not over a thousand.


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## Hoover

Know how to put away $1 million selling firewood?

Start with $2 million. 
__________________
Doctor Ed

:agree2:


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## flotek

as long as billy down the road cant find work and is selling truck loads of split hardwood for 40 bucks it will forever remain a labor of love and not profit


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## dhamblet

TreeCo said:


> Splitting by hand?
> Is your truck human powered, too?



FWIW I have looked at power splitters and could afford one if I wanted it but wheres the fun in that. Plus they appear to be almost as much work getting the rounds onto the splitter as simply swinging a maul. I'd bet I could outsplit a power splitter with my splitting maul. after all most of my wood is alder although right now I'm working on some 4 foot daimeter fir rounds between 14" and 20" thick. its all good


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## Freyboy23

Dont know about you guys but I am making money on selling Firewood.


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## dhamblet

biggenius29 said:


> How you make money, you sell it for cash. B Hussien Obama takes enough of our money (unless you live in the hood, they get my money)
> 
> I am finding alot of people like working for cash, and like paying cash.



Truth be told, thats the only way I'll sell it. Wife (CPA) is always spazzed out worried that the revenuers will find my ads on Craigslist and catch me.

I'm Joking -- of course I pay all my taxes just in case you're reading this. Fact is I'm getting taxed right into the poorhouse. Last year I cut, limbed, bucked up and decked three log truck loads of Alder and had it hauled to the mill. I thought I had made a little bit of spending money for our snowbird trip to Arizona till my wife (the CPA) figured up the taxes. Crap, I musta been working for about 2 bux an hour playing logger but it was fun. Loggers, my hats off to you too.


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## Walt41

Focus on quality and find customers who will pay cash for it. Right now I am working on some red oak and maple for next year, all the perfect 16" no knot pieces go for sale in perfectly stacked lots, all the mongrels go to me for burning. I will be the highest priced guy next season but predict a sellout. Gotta have a "wow factor" if anyone is going to buy your stuff around here IMO


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## BlueRidgeMark

blackdogon57 said:


> Volume - To make serious money you need to sell hundreds of cords per year if not over a thousand.




Bingo. 

I did the math on this a few years ago. It's beer money at best, unless you go big time.


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## wkpoor

My neigbhor says (before he retired) he would rather work a couple of hours overtime and buy his wood than go after it himself. Now he does it for exercise and maybe a little extra in the pocket.


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## l2edneck

We are F'N slammin!!!!!! im sellin assloads by the truck load for 20$ a fat wheel barrell....!!!!!In central Florida!!!!!!

We load the F800 with almost a 20yard box a day and sell out right at dark.
Screw deliverin.My boss got a hunny hole at a church where the pastor said Yes please id appreciate it on a HEAVILY traveled road.And wont let anybody else park there.Granted we aint makin a killin but im workin 7 days a week since week b4 christmas. 

Runnin a hydro and a super splitter....






Takes me all day with big saws and a bobcat to fill the truck!!!!We had to do some tree work for 3 days and now i been behind still slingin'........!

Boss' woodpile took a lick boy....95% oak very little junk but all WELL seasoned.Was 25' high 25' wide by atleast 80' long!!!!! GONE 2 WEEKS!!!!!






^^^^^^junk to the left,pile o slash pine to the right,whats left of the oak in the middle. Seasoned all of it!!!!!Keeps cold here we will have to change the signs to PINE fire wood 20$ a wheelbarrel and that s*it splits quick and straight....Prolly 10 trucks of oak and 30 of pine left as of today.

Yes sir I'd have to say been a stellar firewood season.....

TRUCKLOAD






Greatest Woman in the world bringin my crew lunch,drinks,cigs....whatever they need,then preparing em all plates....







So yea,there aint no money in firewood,lotta work,touch it 100 times,bend over all day etcetcetc.....

But ya know what?

Its money when my phone is dead...better learn how to do it better so you can enjoy it.

-Nick


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## BuddhaKat

The only way to make money selling firewood is volume. It's all about volume. When you go out in the woods to cut, you have to bring back a bunch of wood each day.

When you're splitting you need to be able to split a bunch of wood per day.

When you sell, you need to sell a bunch of wood every day.

You need to decide just how much a bunch is.

I have a small operation. Two saws, a 16' flatbed dump truck, and two helpers @ $7.50 hr. I do 100% of the cutting. Where I cut is about a 180 mi. round trip from my yard and the truck only gets 5 mpg. Gas is currently setting me back about $100 per day. I don't pay for travel time. The rule is 4 cords per day. We don't leave till there's 4 cords on the truck, period. Some days we're done in 5 or 6 hours, some days we're working 8 or 10.

It takes the two guys all day to split the bounty. On average, I've got about 32 man hours to put 4 split cords on the ground. Loading takes them about ½ hr per cord. So, I've got an average of 34 man hours @ $7.50 hr.= $255 in wages. + $100 for fuel and $60 for the USFS permits. Then gas and oil for the saw, I figure about $20. Grand total costs = $435. On average, I sell a cord for $180 × 4 = $720. Leaving me $285. Not bad for a day, but it sucks for a week.


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## blackdiesel

im by no means in it big time. just a couple hundred cords a year. if i could be in standing timber that i could cut at the stump instead of having to push with a dozer i could make good time and fall, cut, load, and deliver a cord in 2.5 hours. 170 a cord so thats $68 bucks an hour.

take out 8 gallons of diesel fuel (~$20) equipment payment ($600 a month) wear and tear/repair bills, insurance (have to have over a million dollars of coverage to drive on BCL's property, ~$2000 a year), price of logs (anywhere from $15-$90 bucks a cord, depending on how its purchased)

so that comes out to roughly either $100 a cord if the wood is bought on the stump, or $10 a cord if the wood is bought and trucked in on bunk trailers. Which is either $40 an hour or $4 an hour respectivly

Which brings me to my current dilemma... i cannot find standing timber close to purchase. which means in order to cut wood, ill need to buy land. i average around 10 cords per acre, and land around here sells for 1000-2000 dollars an acre. Of course, in theory, you should be able to resell the land and re coupe your investment.... but that will require you to either push the timber with a bulldozer or buy a large stump grinder and make a day of it. (more like months of it)


Your right, there is zero money in cutting firewood. even in large quantities. This is ridiculous.... anyone need to buy a processor????


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## forcedintoit

I have a guy down the road here that cuts wood to sell, the real kicker is he only sells enough to buy propane for his heat!!!!:bang:


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## des170stihl

*Just Business*

The business of selling firewood is like any other business. It,s the way you run it. I sell the wood that I can,t use. And I make very good money doing so.


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## sawinredneck

I can make decent money at it and I'm not "big time" by any means!
Oak is going for $100plus a rick/face (we sell three rick a cord) plus a delivery fee, plus a stacking fee. $25 to deliver, $10 to stack it.
For the cheap wood I get that from tree services, they drop it off, I move it in the back then cut, split and stack it. Get it for nothing delivered, sell it for $60 a rick. Thats the money maker for me.
The Oak I have to drive 100 miles each way, cut it, haul it out with a min skid steer, load it, haul it home then cut and split it up. I can easily get four to five rick on the trailer with my mini on the back in three hours by myself. Six hours total, then cut to length split and stack it in the same time.
I'm not getting rich, but I am paying my bills and KS is a "no tax state" on firewood so it's all legit.


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## blackoak

dhamblet said:


> FWIW I have looked at power splitters and could afford one if I wanted it but wheres the fun in that. Plus they appear to be almost as much work getting the rounds onto the splitter as simply swinging a maul. I'd bet I could outsplit a power splitter with my splitting maul. after all most of my wood is alder although right now I'm working on some 4 foot daimeter fir rounds between 14" and 20" thick. its all good


I thought the same thing about out splitting a power splitter by hand.......I did it for about 10 minutes. Depending on what condition your in you may out split one for 20 minutes after that the power splitter will win. I can use my power splitter all day, but I sure can't swing a maul all day.


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## treeman82

I sell a couple cords of wood each year, but never more than 5 cords.. so I buy it off a friend and re-sell. It's only to my good clients for the most part. 

I wouldn't mind selling wood, if I had a good situation. The guy I rent space from would charge me more money each month if I started dropping wood there for myself, plus there's already somebody on the property who is selling wood, so I wouldn't want to have any problems with keeping wood separate. 

I'd love to keep about 20 cords for sale, however... if I was to make 20 cords of wood, I'd have to pay at least another $50 - $100 per month for storage. So that would be $600 - $1,000 for the year or 3 - 5 cords. Then there's the money to pay out for the labor just to split it... 20 cords should be roughly 8 man days, or $1,500... there goes another 7 cords, then I have to drop it off with the truck, so fuel will cost me roughly another cord of wood, maybe more... beating on the saws, equipment, so forth, and so on. When I do my jobs, there's almost always a neighbor, or a friend of mine close by who wants the wood. I'd rather give it to them, than haul it back to the yard burning up more fuel. 1 load of wood isn't the end of the world, but 2 or 3 loads when the job is 45 min away from the yard kills a lot of time.

I told some guys this past season who were just getting into the wood business to put about 5 - 10 cords off to the side until after the new year... price goes up because supply goes down. They sold about 20 something cords, but they sold out EVERYTHING before Christmas. Once a year I seem to get a call from a new person... it's February, we need wood, and our normal guy is out... ok, $300 - $500, no problem, we need it and you can get it. That's the type of situation I'd like to get myself set up for, but in the end I'd rather just get rid of the wood close to the job.


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## dhamblet

blackoak said:


> I thought the same thing about out splitting a power splitter by hand.......I did it for about 10 minutes. Depending on what condition your in you may out split one for 20 minutes after that the power splitter will win. I can use my power splitter all day, but I sure can't swing a maul all day.



It all depends on what kind of wood your working with. Out here on the Northwest coast its mostly straight grained alder up to 24 inches which splits like nothing. Many pieces can easily be split on their side by maul with a golf swing or with one hand and a heavy axe. Easier than picking it up to set it on a splitter. I just split it where it lays rather than picking it up and carrying it to the splitter. Then I shove it into a pile with the tractor or scoop it up in the bucket. Now nutwood or fruitwood would be an entirely different situation. I once had some holly that absolutely could not be split without a precut, it was like a block of rubber. ` For it I would have liked a splitter.


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## 23putts

My grandfather always said it was a poor mans living. $105 a cord for seasoned or green oak here in southern MO.


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## farm girl

In the Dayton, OH area a cord of wood is bringing $120 to $150. That is for ash and the other hardwoods. 

We thought about selling some of our wood but you have to sell all the good wood and then we would be burning the softer and poorer wood. Have to fire the stove more and get less heat. We might sell a cord or two next year to buy fuel oil for our furnace.


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## Wood Doctor

farm girl said:


> In the Dayton, OH area a cord of wood is bringing $120 to $150. That is for ash and the other hardwoods.
> 
> We thought about selling some of our wood but you have to sell all the good wood and then we would be burning the softer and poorer wood. Have to fire the stove more and get less heat. We might sell a cord or two next year to buy fuel oil for our furnace.


+1. $100 a mounded up truckload here, which equates to about the same price. You end up selling the good wood to the customers to keep them happy and burning in your own stove whatever they don't want.

That gets old fast. Farm girl has got it right. :agree2:


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## Coldfront

Around here anyone who is out of work and has a pickup and a saw is selling firewood, the price is beat down to about $50 for a pickup load of split oak, but it's not seasoned. People with owb's don't care. Like I have always said if you want money you would be better off $ per hour flipping burgers at Mcdonalds.


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## alderman

With access to 60 acres of forest there's always something to cut.

I'm not in it for the money, but it does keep me in chainsaw money and the exercise is a plus.


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## willt1981

i think if you have to buy all the things to run a firewood business just to sell a few cords a year then its crazy. but for me it seems to work out well. theres not much going on in farming from nov. - mar. except for feeding cattle in the morning and evening. i have a tractor for other farming activities. i have a saw for clearing pasture and logging. i have a truck for general farming. i have 60 acres of land im clearing for cattle pasture so i have all the free wood i want. the only specality item in my operation is the splitter. and to be fair people buy splitters to split less than my dad and i did by hand for our houses before i started selling. selling wood i make enough to pay my bills and house payment in the months that i listed. it works great for me. but.... if i had to buy a $30,000 tractor to skid out my wood, a $1000 saw to cut it, a $1500 splitter to split it and a $5000 truck to haul it (without a dump) to make around $10,000 a year i wouldnt do it. like i said - it falls in with everything else im doing and works well. i think folks should find their scale and try to equip themselves from there.


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## Patrick62

*Quite right*

In all fairness there is little to be gained.

If you like working like a fool, then it is a interesting way to turn time and effort into $. If ya blow a bunch of $$ on equipment then it don't pay so well.

I have sold about 80 cd's this year, and with any luck will do more next year.

The cost of processing and delivering wood, with labor figured at $12 hour, I am clearing around $10 per cord.... which is nothing.

-Pat


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## CLEARVIEW TREE

dhamblet said:


> Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack it, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.
> 
> I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere.
> 
> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.
> 
> Denny
> '72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
> stihl 031
> stihl 032
> Kubota L2900


 I only bring wood home when i am payed to remove it! Then when i sell wood, i get cash. I sell to high end clients who want a good product and i get payed well for it. A friend owns a fireplace store and who do you think he sends his firewood referalls to????


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## STLfirewood

It all depends on who you sell to. I deliver once a week to restaurants. They buy almost 1 1/2 to 2 cord a week. I can cut and deliver to them in 2 days total time. I have to drive 115 miles round trip on the delivery. I get $390 a cord for this. So o me that is making money. It's not making me rich but it's steady work that is there every week of the year. Around here you can get $300 a cord delivered and stacked pretty easy.. Some people get more then that. I have another firewood seller that wants to buy some seasoned wood. I told him $270 a cord. He wanted it cheaper but I won't sell it cheaper then that. He is going to buy it anyway. He wants 3 cords this week anyway. He would like more but I have to make sure I have enough to make it through the winter and enough supply for my restaurants. If I had to sell wood for $105-160 a cord I don't think I would do it. There is a lot of time and money in the right equipment.

Scott


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## fishercat

*i don't think it's worth the money.*

i just do it because i have plenty of wood,i burn as well,it relaxes me,it pisses the neighbors off,it's an excuse to buy more equipment,


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## tomtrees58

well its a quick $25'000.00 for me tom trees




this is not 1/2 of it


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## tomtrees58




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## Curlycherry1

BlueRidgeMark said:


> Bingo.
> I did the math on this a few years ago. It's beer money at best, unless you go big time.



That about sums it up. Go big or go home. Here is a Google Earth image of the family operation that my brother now runs. He is on track to sell well over 1800 face cords. He has over $150K in equipment and that is just to process wood. He buys all his logs from loggers. There is no money to be made fetching it from the woods when there are so many loggers around.

Green roofed shed is where the Timberwolf processor is at. The red thing near it is a 90 Hp Kubota. Those are logs piled parallel with the road that runs by the green roofed shed. Many of those log piles are at ~30' tall. As tall as a loader can get them. The other rectangles in the pictures are piles of processed firewood. The pile near the paved road towards the top left is ~400-450 face cord.


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## KMB

Wow. Some of y'all have some pretty impressive firewood operations.

Kevin


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## dhamblet

*Very impressive operations*



KMB said:


> Wow. Some of y'all have some pretty impressive firewood operations.
> Kevin



Exactly my thought, kinda puts my 10 cord stacks to shame. Very impressive. Must be able to get good prices for it rather than the measily $150-200 we get around here.

I'd be curious how you cure and measure it for sale, up in Minnesota do you stack it and let it dry for a year then measure cords out of the stack? 

In New York, where its just piled up how do you delineate a cord or do you simply sell it by the truckload?


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## gallegosmike

Wow, that is ALOT of wood! I wish we (New Mexico) got the rain to support that kind of wood growth! Just tiny scrub tree's for most of the state. Ive got to cut 25-30 trees to get about 3/4 of a cord.


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## KMB

dhamblet said:


> Exactly my thought, kinda puts my 10 cord stacks to shame. Very impressive. Must be able to get good prices for it rather than the measily $150-200 we get around here.
> 
> I'd be curious how you cure and measure it for sale, up in Minnesota do you stack it and let it dry for a year then measure cords out of the stack?
> 
> In New York, where its just piled up how do you delineate a cord or do you simply sell it by the truckload?



10 cord stacks would work for me. I'd like to have 2-3 cords for myself and 2-3 cords for my mom-in-law ready for the next burning season. Plus, I should be able to squeeze 6 extra cords into my yard to sell for the next burning season. I'd like to at least get the splitting done by the time the "suthern" heat arrives. Mission impossible...we'll see. 

Around here, from $150 and up is about the going rate on what folks are asking for a seasoned cord, split and delivered. What folks around here say is a "cord" and "seasoned" is a different story.

Kevin


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## Taxmantoo

KMB said:


> What folks around here say is a "cord" and "seasoned" is a different story.
> 
> Kevin




Like when there's a 'seasoned cord' on a pickup truck with a warm saw on top?


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## themaddhatter

Hey Curly,

Where in MN is that operation?

Does he have any "scrap" he would like to get rid of?

Everything burns in the OWB :monkey:


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## Curlycherry1

themaddhatter said:


> Hey Curly,
> Where in MN is that operation?
> Does he have any "scrap" he would like to get rid of?
> Everything burns in the OWB :monkey:



That operation is in CNY, North of Syracuse. And no there are no scraps. What do you think he heats that ~6000 sq ft house with? If you guessed OWB you would be correct.


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## KMB

taxmantoo said:


> Like when there's a 'seasoned cord' on a pickup truck with a warm saw on top?



LOL, yep.

Kevin


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## A. Stanton

Dham,
You forgot to put in the rant on equipment costs: the old nail or clothesline hook that you can always find in a yard tree.


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## sawinredneck

Reading this brings a couple of things to my mind.
I've had more than one customer show up in a Ranger or S10 pickup, I couldn't ever SAFELY put a full rick in the bed of one, they had to make two trips.

I also cannot SAFELY put two rick in the bed of a pickup, long or short bed, I've gotten close but I was damn glad I didn't have to drive it home!
The way I sell it, 18-20" lengths, three rick makes a cord so any more than one I take the trailer.
Now thinking about this from my perspective, anybody that shows up with a "cord" of wood in a "pickup", unless it's NEATLY stacked higher than the top of the cab, might just be shorting you on wood?


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## Ohiowoodguy

sawinredneck said:


> The way I sell it, 18-20" lengths, three rick makes a cord



This would be 4'x8'x5', or 32 cubic feet more than a 128 cubic foot cord. 3 4x8 "ricks" of 16" length wood would be a cord. No?


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## sawinredneck

TreeCo said:


> A half cord tossed in my 3/4 ton 4x4 Dodge full sized bed makes a slightly mounded pile slightly above the rails at the edge and about one foot above the rails in the middle. It piles up a little more against the pallet that protects the back window.



Thank you Dan, kind of makes my point.




Ohiowoodguy said:


> This would be 4'x8'x5', or 32 cubic feet more than a 128 cubic foot cord. 3 4x8 "ricks" of 16" length wood would be a cord. No?



Yes, problem being most people can't burn 24" wood and 16" wood people tend to scoff at. They get a better deal on the cord, but most only want a rick or two (face cord). But I'd rather give them more, than rip them off. happy customers are repeat customers! Really around here, I might sell three full cord a year, most just come back and buy what they need as they need it.
A lot of guys around here sell two rick, 18" wood. as a cord, I don't care to practice that way myself.


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## treeman82

Around me the wood sell for anywhere between $175 and $250 per cord early in the season. Everybody sells out by December. I've got over $300 per cord in February. My fear if I started selling wood, is that I'd want EVERYTHING. So the job I just did where the wood could stay, odds are I'd be in there for an extra day or so pulling out wood... or other jobs I've done in the past where they said I could take the wood if I want... it's all in nasty spots, but there's a lot of it. Odds are I'd be all over it for days on end.


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## aokpops

just kept stock piling . just look at what the saving are every year .not many would pay what it is worth . just saying . got about 10 years of wood . would anyone pay 10000 or 20000 for the pile nope screw um kept it an save that much. they can.t tax it well maybe .always get weird looks someone ask. hey you have lot of wood can I have a truck load . nope did not see you helping in way sorry. hey go to the woods an get off the meds


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## milkie62

Like some of the guys have said,you either have to go big or stay home when it comes to selling firewood.I have a unique situation that gives me play money for tools,snowmobiling,or hunting equipment.
#1 I have right around 100 acres with a little over 55 wooded
#2 The town drops off all kinds of wood since they are not allowed to drop it at the dump anymore
#3 I have a splitter anyways for my woodstove and furnace
#4 I have a late model F250 for hauling the sled trailer and for snowplowing
#5 I also have a 7x12 dump trailer that I use for landscaping that will carry 2 cord if need be.
#6 I have big chainsaws because I play in my woods
#7 I have a couple of tractors for maintaining my property

What ever good hardwood the town drops off I throw into the selling pile.The junk I burn in my outdoor furnace.I get $180/cord for unseasoned hardwood.I try to cut alot and split it during the winter and just store it covered and sell it for $240/cord kinda like great interest on my money to let it sit for 6 - 8 months.

I have all the equipment anyways so it is nice money for me that wifey does not touch.......


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## injun joe

actually we burn wood for ourselves and when i started firewood biz i had most but not all and as we sold more we saved got more saws more trucks better equip. and so on and so forth but i will have to admit if your cheap dont do it like me you would have heartattack. but after everything has paid for itself then the real money starts. the small firewood biz i run is not big by any means but each year i have increased the # of cords sold by 10. my uncle had some great words of advice you have to spend money to make money and that is so true and i continue to do this and it judt keeps on getting more fun and more effficient.


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## Henry G.

fishercat said:


> i just do it because i have plenty of wood,i burn as well,it relaxes me,it pisses the neighbors off,it's an excuse to buy more equipment,



Well said. 
I just get what I can, burn all I want, give friends some and bring lots out camping to share with my buddies, and sell the good stuff for cash to neighbors and some friends. 
An aquiantance/neighbor drove by the other day while I was working, asked how much a half cord? $120. How much for a whole cord? $240. I told him I barely make anything on the half cord why would I do double the work to make even less when I have way more customers than wood. He asked last year too, never bought any, I hate these cheap skates "friends" who want deals, if they were really a friend they would pay extra. I prefer to make customers that become friends, than friends that become customers.
And I like everyone driving by seeing the giant wood pile on my property! :greenchainsaw:


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## jasult

I have the neighbors, I have my freinds, I have my work freinds. I have my relatives. They all ask me for FREE WOOD.

MY ANSWER is we can do this one of two ways.
I can sell them wood and deliver it too them
or they can come down to my yard and donate a 8 hour hard days work for free when we are splitting and they can take all they want that season.

MOST OF THEM RUN AWAY and never ask me again


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## CLEARVIEW TREE

THATS RIGHT, PRETTY MUCH WHAT I TELL THEM! Amazing how mny people think, it's just wood and its free???? later


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## Walt41

People will ask for anything they can get, over the summer we bought two semis of evergreens for our landscaping end of things, we had at least three people stop and ask for free trees, because we had so many...


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## IcePick

Of course there's no money in the business. I have a log splitter and split wood I get from side jobs, and during the winter I sell and deliver about 3-5 face cords a weekend for 85-90 bucks a pop. All that money goes into my daughters savings account is bout it. I enjoy doing it, and usually pick up jobs as I deliver.


Also, it all depends on HOW you do it. If you can back your pickup up to the pile and load and unload, it makes life a hell of a lot easier and the process less time-consuming.


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## ropensaddle

dhamblet said:


> Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack it, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.
> 
> I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere.
> 
> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.
> 
> Denny
> '72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
> stihl 031
> stihl 032
> Kubota L2900



Lol I started by trying to get our prices up where they need to be. I advertised seasoned oak and hickory 200.00 per cord. Guy advertised two spaces below me 135.00 per cord what gives? I will keep it and burn it myself anyway the price has been 150.00 per cord here for as long as I remember but everytime I deliver a cord I always hear thats twice as much as the last guy! I have thought of ordering a cord from this clown just to see for myself


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## kentuckyblue

just being some one looking in because i dont sale firewood i burn it ,oh but i did own a sod company for 13 yrs if i didnt have to deliver the sod i would have made a ton more than i did ,with fuel as high as it is.i bought what the guy called a cord 2500 chevy it was loaded for 150bucks but he brought it to me and he lived 1.5 -2 hrs away and he said he did it everyday his fuel bill must have been out rages ,this is what i would do cut wood all summer and spring cut,split and stack,then find me a place to sit up in a parking lot or something like that then load a trailer or dump truck with wood and let the money come to you sell a load or two and call it a day,that was something i could not do selling sod because home owners dont buy enough so i sold it to contractors when they were still building new homes way back in the day,i could be wrong


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## ropensaddle

kentuckyblue said:


> just being some one looking in because i dont sale firewood i burn it ,oh but i did own a sod company for 13 yrs if i didnt have to deliver the sod i would have made a ton more than i did ,with fuel as high as it is.i bought what the guy called a cord 2500 chevy it was loaded for 150bucks but he brought it to me and he lived 1.5 -2 hrs away and he said he did it everyday his fuel bill must have been out rages ,this is what i would do cut wood all summer and spring cut,split and stack,then find me a place to sit up in a parking lot or something like that then load a trailer or dump truck with wood and let the money come to you sell a load or two and call it a day,that was something i could not do selling sod because home owners dont buy enough so i sold it to contractors when they were still building new homes way back in the day,i could be wrong



It would need to have side boards be a long bed and piled to the cab height to make a cord!


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## kentuckyblue

no side boards but it was stacked up about half way up the back glass the wood was small 12 14 inches long and dry as dust it burnt up so fat went through it in a month


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## ropensaddle

kentuckyblue said:


> no side boards but it was stacked up about half way up the back glass the wood was small 12 14 inches long and dry as dust it burnt up so fat went through it in a month



Not a true cord prolly more like 3/4 cord!


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## CLEARVIEW TREE

ropensaddle said:


> Not a true cord prolly more like 3/4 cord!


darn right rope! A friend and i alike, have pretty much decided to keep the firewood in the family and let those terds and butthole customers fend for themselves. Tought i was doing the right thing a month ago and let a friend of my wifes friend at work have a rick for half price, with free delivery and free stacking. Only because the woman had supposedly been left by her hubby, bout to lose home, etc. house full a kids, so i gave in. NOW, 30 days later the lady's fireplace has almost eaten a rick of wood and they want more???? Funny thing is i've thought
someone may be full of it, but i never get to meet the lady. She's got a big ole house, and the friend of my wife is kinda the mediator for the lady and my wifes friend is very wealthy and notorious for being slippery when wet in many situations,lol. So i told her last night, i'd get some out there, but full price on all this time, but she obliged, so we'll see.


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## rarefish383

I can get all the free Oak I want. Starting in the spring I'll start dumping a cord or so at a time in my spliting area. All summer lone, every time I make a pass by the pile cutting grass, I get off the tractor and split a block or 2. I stack in measured 1 cord racks as I go. By winter I have 6 or 8 cords ready to go. 2 cords for 1 friend, 1 cord for my neighbor, and the rest for me. That's as close to making a living on wood as I want to get. When Dad had the business and I was a kid I got to keep all the wood money if I kept it split and stacked out of the way. For a tree company fire wood is/was a neccessary evil. You had to do something with it. My cousin just quit selling wood, was losing money processing it. Hard work for your return, Joe.


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## ropensaddle

CLEARVIEW TREE said:


> darn right rope! A friend and i alike, have pretty much decided to keep the firewood in the family and let those terds and butthole customers fend for themselves. Tought i was doing the right thing a month ago and let a friend of my wifes friend at work have a rick for half price, with free delivery and free stacking. Only because the woman had supposedly been left by her hubby, bout to lose home, etc. house full a kids, so i gave in. NOW, 30 days later the lady's fireplace has almost eaten a rick of wood and they want more???? Funny thing is i've thought
> someone may be full of it, but i never get to meet the lady. She's got a big ole house, and the friend of my wife is kinda the mediator for the lady and my wifes friend is very wealthy and notorious for being slippery when wet in many situations,lol. So i told her last night, i'd get some out there, but full price on all this time, but she obliged, so we'll see.



Problem is full price here is 150 but there no selling true cords and you can talk to the customer till your blue they will opt for .066 of a cord everytime lmfao. I tried 200 per cord sold a few early birders but no calls since the guy went in for 135 per cord. I have decided to just keep good customers with easy access sell them at 150 and forget it just do 10 cords or so a year and quit burning junk for myself lol.


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## kentuckyblue

ropensaddle said:


> Not a true cord prolly more like 3/4 cord!



thats what i said i made a post on craigslist and said that people were ripping you off if they said they had a cord in a truck bed and this guy sent me a email tell me what a fool i was that a cord would fit easy on a truck i told him to go yuck him self


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## ropensaddle

kentuckyblue said:


> thats what i said i made a post on craigslist and said that people were ripping you off if they said they had a cord in a truck bed and this guy sent me a email tell me what a fool i was that a cord would fit easy on a truck i told him to go yuck him self



I can get a cord on my 66 f250 long bed stacked to cab height but it is more than you want on the truck. I have done it a time or two now mostly use the trailer. It can be done but not easy and not unless you have a long bed and side boards.


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## banshee67

you can get up to $220+ here for a full cord if its 100% oak and seasoned
mixed hardwood seasoned, full cords go for around $180-200 
ive done it the past 2 winter, 2 of us, truck + trailer, able to move aboout 2 cords total per day, as long as you can sell it, we can both make $120+ a day each after gas/oil etc, lot of hard work, not rich, but its money and you have no boss.. being able to generate your own money at a young age without anyones help is a good feeling


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## banshee67

taxmantoo said:


> Like when there's a 'seasoned cord' on a pickup truck with a warm saw on top?



ill admit im guilty of showing up to a few customers houses and havign to unload our saws off the top of the wood piile on the trailer right in front of them.. the wood was seasoned dead locust that had been leaning for years dead and barkless, non the less, we have been in that situation in front of a few customers, unloading saws and gascans before their wood.. it makes me wonder what they were thinking, they probably though tthey were gettin green wood


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## banshee67

sawinredneck said:


> Reading this brings a couple of things to my mind.
> I've had more than one customer show up in a Ranger or S10 pickup, I couldn't ever SAFELY put a full rick in the bed of one, they had to make two trips.
> 
> I also cannot SAFELY put two rick in the bed of a pickup, long or short bed, I've gotten close but I was damn glad I didn't have to drive it home!
> The way I sell it, 18-20" lengths, three rick makes a cord so any more than one I take the trailer.
> Now thinking about this from my perspective, anybody that shows up with a "cord" of wood in a "pickup", unless it's NEATLY stacked higher than the top of the cab, might just be shorting you on wood?



we have had people come to us to pickup wood. 
they ask for a cord, then show up in a half ton pickup with a 6 1/2 foot bed and ask if they think they can fit it all in one load!!
one person filled their dodge ram shortbed up, was happy with it, we told them it wasnt a full cord, they didnt care, paid for a full cord, thanked us and left!
others were surprised how much a FULL CORD was and had to come back for a second trip because they wanted all the wood they were paying for.. and i dont blame them, just shows how many people out there are NOT giving FULL CORDS, most homeowners have no idea how much wood a full cord is and areVERY pleased when you give them a FULL cord


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## clearance

I have stacked a split cord on an old GM 3/4 ton. It is right from the tailgate to the back window, wheelhump to wheelhump but no wider, about 1' above the cab. Thats to much for any 1/2 ton, and probably to much for an 8600lb. GVW truck. Its a lot of wood, and people are suprised.

Enough of this "pickload" of firewood b.s..


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## sawinredneck

Thats what I am saying Clearance!

I had a lady and her son show up the other day, cold as hell and I was caught off guard, I didn't have any wood stacked!
There are MANY around here that take advantage of this situation, sell them greenwood, sell them crap wood or short them.
I fired up the mini moved the snow drifts and started stacking between the T-posts.
The mom got a little irratable with me about taking so long. I calmly explained to her I wanted her to see and know what she was taking home, yes it took longer but I knew when she left she hadn't been ripped off.
She really didn't know what to say so she quietly got in the truck until I was done.
It's so easy to screw someone, but it's ten times as hard to get them back. That one customer I am garunteed a return customer, plus I have the added fact of word of mouth form them, plus whomever they tell, plus whomever they tell.
It's easy math for me, make a customer unhappy or rip them off, loose ten customers. Make a customer happy you have the oppertunity to gain 1000 customers.
It seems to me a lot of buisnesess could learn a bit from that mantra!


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## sawinredneck

In MY truck I know closely and have/will load that. In a customers truck for pickup, I want them to see what we are loading.
I HAVE shorted a couple of customers loading by eye, only to have to go back and drop off more wood. That is embarising and time lost.


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## super3

jasult said:


> or they can come down to my yard and donate a 8 hour hard days work for free when we are splitting and they can take all they want that season.





That sounds like a hell of a good deal to me. If you lived around here you would have a lot of takers. I would be one of them!


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## Curlycherry1

We could get 3 face cords on our F250s but we had a ladder rack on the truck that was just a bit above the cab of the truck. From that rack I had boards with a hook on one end about 12" in from the end so when these were hung on the rack the wood could be piled 12" above the rack. With 3 face cords of wood 18" long on that truck there was 4 full rows above the rack and one next to the tailgate that went about 8-10" above the tailgate.

Those three face cords were generous and being that it was 18" wood it made for a little more than a full cord, but the important thing was the wood had 4 piles nearly 14" above a ladder rack and one that was 2/3 up the ladder rack.


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## BuddhaKat

TreeCo said:


> I also toss into a one ton truck and measure 185 cubic feet of tossed wood and sell it as a cord. I'm marked a line inside the chipper box so I know how high to toss to make a cord.


Wow, what a generous guy, given that a cord is only 128 cubic ft.


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## sawinredneck

128 stacked, 180 thrown loosly.


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## blackdiesel

i find it takes closer to 200-210 cubic feet for a thrown cord. 16" wood, all uniform out of my processor. i know every one's wood is different so everyones will vary. i used to sell 170 ft3 as a cord, untill i stacked one. it was close to half a rick short.


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## rarefish383

sawinredneck said:


> In MY truck I know closely and have/will load that. In a customers truck for pickup, I want them to see what we are loading.
> I HAVE shorted a couple of customers loading by eye, only to have to go back and drop off more wood. That is embarising and time lost.



Some times being honest sucks. I have a couple customers that I cut my wood at 16". Normally 2 4X8 rows is a cord. But since the wood is only 16" it takes 3 rows. It's a measured 128 Cu feet. When I first sold wood to them they said I gave them a lot more than others had. I explained that it was a lot more work to cut short and some folks believe that the penalty is just 2 4X8 rows that happen to be short. If they are told that , I'm OK with it. But I measure. My trailer is marked for stacked wood. I don't trust thrown piles, they always seem to come up short for me, Joe.


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## ducati996

Some of you guys might want to brush up on your math skills....

try this link (many others out there), you dont even have to think 

http://www.state.me.us/ag/firewood.html


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## Curlycherry1

Ahem, why would anyone need to "guess" about firewood? We always stacked our wood to let it season for close to or over a year. Thus when sale time came it was a simple matter of just measuring off part of the stack, putting it on a truck and going. All the times I stacked my wood I always piled it so each face cord could stand on its own with criss crossed ends, and it was over 4' tall to compensate for the ends. There never was any question about volume because the wood was stacked to dry.

For years we also stacked it upon delivery but when we crossed over 500 cord/year I said I had enough of that %$^& and I started only doing dumps unless the customer paid for stacking. My dad hated when I implemented that policy but he was not making most of the deliveries, I was.


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## rarefish383

ducati996 said:


> Some of you guys might want to brush up on your math skills....
> 
> try this link (many others out there), you dont even have to think
> 
> http://www.state.me.us/ag/firewood.html



I like that, makes figuring easy, with odd length wood. 4X8X(3X16")=128 CF


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## BuddhaKat

sawinredneck said:


> 128 stacked, 180 thrown loosly.


Yeah, I know. I was just messin with him. :greenchainsaw:


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## milkie62

What I did to speed things up was to stack a cord in my trailer then dump it and use the Kubota to just fill it back up to see how many buckets it was.Now as I split to sell green wood from the splitter to the bucket to the trailer and then just to kick the pile around to knock it down some.That 1st fill and refill has saved quite a bit of time.


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## banshee67

so what do you guys do when a customer calls you back and says the wood is no good and its not burning right.. after youve already burned the same wood in your own fireplace and it burns great? i think a lot of these idiots take full size logs, put a little newspaper under them and light it and wonder why their fireplace doesnt look like it does in the movies within 10 mins.


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## Curlycherry1

banshee67 said:


> i think a lot of these idiots take full size logs, put a little newspaper under them and light it and wonder why their fireplace doesnt look like it does in the movies within 10 mins.



That is exactly what some of them do. I ran into customers that literally had zero clue about how to start a fire. I went to talk to them and find out what they were doing and sure enough they were using big hunks and a wadd of paper to try to get things burning. Explaining about kindling and even giving them some made the whole issue go away and they were greatful in most cases. I did have some people that still could not get things going and blamed the wood so I gave them a full 100% refund and took back the wood.


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## milkie62

I sold a truck load to a buddy at work--10 month old split,covered cherry.He tells me a few days later it does not burn.I told him he is full of it and asked him what he was using for kindling.He said a little bit of newspaper under the wood like his neighbor told him.I would hate to have to rely on him in a survival situation.


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## ropensaddle

milkie62 said:


> I sold a truck load to a buddy at work--10 month old split,covered cherry.He tells me a few days later it does not burn.I told him he is full of it and asked him what he was using for kindling.He said a little bit of newspaper under the wood like his neighbor told him.I would hate to have to rely on him in a survival situation.



I always hand them several chunks of pine knot when I sell a cord and explain its use. It creates return customers<a href="http://www.sweetim.com/s.asp?im=gen&lpver=3&ref=11" target="_blank"><img src="http://content.sweetim.com/sim/cpie/emoticons/00020110.gif" border="0" title="Click to get more." ></a>


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## liquidmetal

when we used to sell wood we would save all our wally world bags all year and fill em with the bark from under the splitter and give each load a bag full of kindlin with it. just takes an extra minute to make up, and keeps everyone happy.


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## spike60

Henry G. said:


> I prefer to make customers that become friends, than friends that become customers.



That it really, really good! I'm going to borrow that now and then if you don't mind.


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## BuddhaKat

I give away all the kindling and bark bits a customer could want.. Bring your truck and a shovel and you can have it all. Otherwise I'd be up to my ears in scrap.


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## hunter0182

dhamblet said:


> Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack it, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.
> 
> I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere.
> 
> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.
> 
> Denny
> '72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
> stihl 031
> stihl 032
> Kubota L2900



I like cutting ,i have 100 acres, red oak,white oak,water oak,cheery,maple, a few others,around here 125.00 a cord is average,i am in south east georgia,i was cutting wood just for myself, with several poulan 2150s, several people yrs ago said hey i will buy a load from you,well it was on then,i have two 60 cc craftsman saws ,which are poulans 6 4620 poulans, and two sthils,i just bought a oregon 511a chain sharpener, i have built 4 ford ranger pickup bed trailers for delivering wood,two log splitters ,all paid for by selling wood, i sell around 100 cords a year,i have already sold out two times this year,i am dropping trees for next year,i cut and stack wood all summer long ,my problem is i just cant find decent help, i plan to sell even more next year,because i am going to advertise,


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## tnxm

First post Pretty interesting on how its different for eveyone. I just recently got in to selling firewood, but very minor. My father asked me 2 years ago if he bought me a saw would I cut fire wood to heat the basement, figured in the winter months when im home from college it would keep me occupied, and would get me out of the house. I fell in love with cutting, splitting, stacking, work on on my saw. Its funny because my friends enjoy it too they call me and see if i want to go cut, or if we wanna split wood tonight. Sold my first cord last week (150) plus.35 cent a mile and stacked free. Split that with my buddy,bought 2 new chains and a case of beer. It keeps me from taking it out my pocket really. My friend has 50 acres he lets me cut on that has tons of dead locust and oak, we hand split everything and it burns great. I will say i do need to get a work truck/hauling trailer. I had to borrow a trailer to deliver the cord, my nice truck takes a beating in the woods, and i guess the ladys dont like 2 inchs of saw dust in my truck or the smell of 2 stroke in the truck 

Average load






My baby Husky 455 rancher





A friday night with one other buddy, I try and keep the garage full so my dad doesnt have to go outside to much


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## MNGuns

Thanks for sharing the pics. That little truck looks like it's just about full as it could care to be. $150 a cord seems to be pretty cheap, at least in these parts. Todays CL has face cords has face cords going for $140. Not sure if they are selling a whole lot, but $100 a face cord of oak moves plenty fast in these parts.


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## Henry G.

There is SOME money in this biz but not much unless you go big and full time. Thats the opposite of why I started... I decided at the start to stay small, less headaches, less overhead, no tax issues, and all the free quality wood I could burn. So far so good. All my saws and equip have been bought with wood money and I still enjoy it. If I begin to loathe it, then its over.


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## Johndirt82

I think alot of it depends on your location. In San Diego, a good cord of Oak can go for 350-400 bucks, working by myself , with an occasional hand from the fiance' I cut 4 days a week and deliver when ever orders come in. On avereage I sell 6-8 cords a week which isn't a ton of wood but keeps me busy. Thats a low of 2100 up to 3200 a week. Operational cost is about 300 bucks for the week, diesel, saw gas, and food Lord knows I do eat alot to maintain my girlish figure. So you can make money cutting wood. Like others have said Its all about volume and keeping your overhead as low as possible.


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## BuddhaKat

I have a girlish figure myself. I've got bigger boobs than my wife and I've been pregnant for 20+ years. (Milk not beer).


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## LipDawg

" i guess the ladys dont like 2 inchs of saw dust in my truck or the smell of 2 stroke in the truck"

Nope, they love that, they just don't like jap trucks.


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## dh1984

heck i been selling oak fire wood for $45.00 a ford ranger truck load split and seasoned and i load it to the max where my mud flaps are draging goin down the road and they are about 5 or 6 inches off the ground and i had one guy buyin it and now he has quit and the last time he was here said i buys it all dy long for 20 bucks a load and i asked him where at and i'll see if it's green or what mine has been seasoned for 2 years stacked in the barn where no water could get to it and no one here in union county tennessee buys it anymore they think you suppost to give it to them for free afther spendin al your time cutting and busting and hauling it and they think you have to give it to them so it looks like next year i have to find me a new job to do during the summer or something but i tell you i piad 75.00 for my 041 stihl chainsaw and 42 bucks for a carb and feul lines and spark plug and i just evened out from selling fire wood and didn't get enugh to buy anything


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## ropensaddle

hunter0182 said:


> I like cutting ,i have 100 acres, red oak,white oak,water oak,cheery,maple, a few others,around here 125.00 a cord is average,i am in south east georgia,i was cutting wood just for myself, with several poulan 2150s, several people yrs ago said hey i will buy a load from you,well it was on then,i have two 60 cc craftsman saws ,which are poulans 6 4620 poulans, and two sthils,i just bought a oregon 511a chain sharpener, i have built 4 ford ranger pickup bed trailers for delivering wood,two log splitters ,all paid for by selling wood, i sell around 100 cords a year,i have already sold out two times this year,i am dropping trees for next year,i cut and stack wood all summer long ,my problem is i just cant find decent help, i plan to sell even more next year,because i am going to advertise,



A point here not trying to be an<a href="http://www.sweetim.com/s.asp?im=gen&lpver=3&ref=11" target="_blank"><img src="http://content.sweetim.com/sim/cpie/emoticons/000203BB.gif" border="0" title="Click to get more." ></a>but average 125 per cord and 100 cords per year and can't find good help Ok, so 12500 gross minus fuel to split, haul. What could he possibly look forward to? Half of poverty is worse than poverty, just saying<a href="http://www.sweetim.com/s.asp?im=gen&lpver=3&ref=11" target="_blank"><img src="http://content.sweetim.com/sim/cpie/emoticons/000203FC.gif" border="0" title="Click to get more." ></a>


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## BuddhaKat

LipDawg said:


> " i guess the ladys dont like 2 inchs of saw dust in my truck or the smell of 2 stroke in the truck"
> 
> Nope, they love that, they just don't like jap trucks.


They don't like 2" of anything.


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## dh1984

you got that right the get awful :censored: if they get something that is 2 inches but i don't have a wife or a girlfriend at the moment so i don't have to worry about them geting :censored: at me at all lol


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## hunter0182

ropensaddle said:


> A point here not trying to be an<a href="http://www.sweetim.com/s.asp?im=gen&lpver=3&ref=11" target="_blank"><img src="http://content.sweetim.com/sim/cpie/emoticons/000203BB.gif" border="0" title="Click to get more." ></a>but average 125 per cord and 100 cords per year and can't find good help Ok, so 12500 gross minus fuel to split, haul. What could he possibly look forward to? Half of poverty is worse than poverty, just saying<a href="http://www.sweetim.com/s.asp?im=gen&lpver=3&ref=11" target="_blank"><img src="http://content.sweetim.com/sim/cpie/emoticons/000203FC.gif" border="0" title="Click to get more." ></a>



well now this is just on the side ,i am not trying to make a living doing this,i have hired several teens to do the work ,but they cant stay off the cell phone,and they look at it and say i didnt know it was this hard,just to stack and split wood,its not rocket science,i normally use them 4 hrs a day and pay them 7.00 to 8.00 a hour,whick is better than min wage here,i had a lawn service since 1992,had a retired military guy working for me,paid him 1000.00 a week til he ran off with the trailer and equipment, i retired from the state of georgia dept of transportation in 2004,and work for proctor and gamble nowand i am only 49,still got a few yrs to really retire


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## dh1984

heck far if i was closer i would come and work for ya because i'm use to the hard work i live on a farm and every thing around here is hard work and wood stackin and bustin it is no problem for me to do i been doin that every since i was 13 years old not busting at that age tho but stacking and when i got big enough to where i could bust it with a manual buster i started bustin and stacking


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## hunter0182

Curlycherry1 said:


> That is exactly what some of them do. I ran into customers that literally had zero clue about how to start a fire. I went to talk to them and find out what they were doing and sure enough they were using big hunks and a wadd of paper to try to get things burning. Explaining about kindling and even giving them some made the whole issue go away and they were greatful in most cases. I did have some people that still could not get things going and blamed the wood so I gave them a full 100% refund and took back the wood.



i had the same problem with a few cutomers,i carried them some fatlighter and a few i told to go get some of the firelog starters,i carried one guy some good seasoned wood out of my personel wood,you could just about light it with a lighter,and he could not get it to light,i carried him some kindling and finally he learned,i was listening to him talk about the guy that brought him the first load,i said wow i dont want him talking about me like that, :greenchainsaw:


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## Jester4736w

dhamblet said:


> Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack it, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.
> 
> I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere.
> 
> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.
> 
> Denny
> '72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
> stihl 031
> stihl 032
> Kubota L2900




Well, I've been lurking around this forum for a year or so now but finally had to sign up over this thread. I don't want to see people new to the firewood business (or firewood in general) getting the wrong idea about selling firewood. 
Yes, maybe it won't make you rich over night and get you the mansion on the hill but it's a pretty good "hobby" income. You have to enjoy doing the labor in order to make any money though or lee it isn't worth it. 
To maybe cut down on dhamlet's labor issues a little there are a few thing I can see that could be cut from the equation if they are available to you. I know everyone isn't lucky enough to have some if these luxuries (including me) but if you do it might not be so bad. 
First off is a splitter. That alone will make the job much much easier. Then if (again not everyone has this but some may or could build up to this point) you have a dump trailer and loader. I'm lucky enough to be able to use these three so it makes selling firewood that much easier. 
I buy firewood at log length, buck it up, split it and pile it up to dry. No stacking (I'll come back later and stir up the piles with the loader). When someone wants wood I'll load the dump trailer with the loader and deliver. Then I bring the check to the bank. 

Now, this whole post (specially for my first post) might sound like I'm bragging. That is not my intension at all with signing up and posting to this thread. The sole reason for explaining my situation is so that someone that is just starting out doesn't get discouraged and quit trying. Things can get easier and in turn will start closing the gap between time spend and money earned. 

Anyways, I thoroughly enjoy the site and the information that you all are willing to share. Thanks all.


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## davidbradley360

dhamblet said:


> Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack it, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.
> 
> I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere.
> 
> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My quote]
> 
> 
> *you hit the nail there. I was talking to a guy from New Hampshire this week, he said it's hard to even find firewood where he is anymore. The loggers who cut trees prefer to take them directly to the sawmills. He also said that big diameter, old growth trees are getting hard to get rid of anymore. A guy he knows cut about 10 acrews of large trees and could not selll them locally, none of the sawmills wanted them. They have all downsized their equipment to handle smaller logs. He had to take them to Canada to sell them.
> 
> this same guy told me he was literally begging these loggers to drop a load of long logs at his house for firewood, for him to process and cut up himself- and they REFUSED. they just don't want to bother with it anymore.
> 
> I only heated with wood in shoulder months or when my coal stove was down. It plugs up the chimney too fast with creosote, and the burns times are too short, and needs contant tending. My coal fire only needs tending 2x daily, and if it warms up can get by with one time daily.
> 
> when I was getting firewood for my in-laws, they were putting $20 in my F150 every day we went and got a few loads of wood. I told them, that $20 in the tank daily, would heat my house with coal for 5 days. They finally woke up and saw the light. I found an Iron House Newcastle coal stove for them for $250, changed the gaskets on the doors and window, and helped them install it. Now they're burning coal. Much less work, long burn times, and the mother in law age 74 can tend it easily.
> 
> wood used to be the cheapest best way to go. but the powers that be have hit it with everything in their arsenal. laws limiting the type of stove you can burn it in, smoke laws, and the biggest one is the quantitative easiing the Federal Reserve is doing, $85 billion a month of printed money, causing fuel costs to go up, along with everything else. So wood is not cheap anymore. Wood heat costs more than natural gas or coal now.
> 
> they obviously don't want us burning it. I think they want to monopolize the fuel and heating supply. All that standing timber out there, scares them, and is a "sin" in their eyes. It's competition. If you can heat with wood cheaply or for free, you don't need their natural gas, oil, electric, propane.
> 
> so they go about making wood heating not so cheap, to herd us back into their market.*
> 
> *you're not going to find cords for $165 now. It's $220 here, and in NH he said it's $280. He tried buying long longs and just splitting and selling it. There's not even any money in that anymore. Any big log operation that uses a lot of diesel, needs to get abusive prices for their logs, to cover it. They spend $2000 a week on fuel to run all their machines.[/*quote]


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## farmer steve

welcome to the site jester. as to your post we all started out somewhere.everybody bought their first saw and went from there. i pull up old threads once in a while,theres always a new "opinion".


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## Jester4736w

Thanks for the welcome farmer Steve. Old posts here are a great source of info I'm finding. And well said about starting small.


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## Dirtboy

Del_ said:


> Splitting by hand?
> 
> 
> Is your truck human powered, too?



He lives in S. Puget Sound, not Bedrock...yabadabbado...


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## luckydozenfarm

I make pretty good money selling 300+ cords a year at $250 per. Its good money in the wintertime when my mechanic shop and farming slows down a bit. I had one lady say, "I bet you have a hard time making ends meet during the summer months." Ummm..I have a REAL job too, lady...I don't sell firewood because I need the money to live off of. I like working outside, I like chainsaws (a lot) and I like manufacturing a product and all the thinking and planning to make the process better and more efficient than the last year. Its also a way to make use of my existing farm machinery that would otherwise be sitting around during this time of the year not making me any money. With this polar vortex thingy, I sold out my stash of wood earlier than I ever have. And yet the calls keep coming.. Next year will be even better.


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## Wood Doctor

Wood supply has now become my problem also. Propane has just jumped to $2.50 a gallon, and winter and last fall are both about 40% colder than 2012. I have back orders beyond belief but no way to fill them because I'm stocked out of dry wood, the same way that the propane dealers are hurting for supply. I figure I'm watching at least a grand disappear because I underestimated mid-winter sales. This business can put you in the nuthouse.


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## John R

dhamblet said:


> FWIW I have looked at power splitters and could afford one if I wanted it but wheres the fun in that. Plus they appear to be almost as much work getting the rounds onto the splitter as simply swinging a maul. *I'd bet I could outsplit a power splitter with my splitting maul.* after all most of my wood is alder although right now I'm working on some 4 foot daimeter fir rounds between 14" and 20" thick. its all good


 You could, but you won't hold up as long as the splitter.


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## Jester4736w

That's it exactly... Most of us could split wood ourselves with a maul but in a business you try to get the most gain from the least labor to separate the profit from the "time spent" I guess.


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## luckydozenfarm

The firewood business is a heavily marginal cost business. It still costs the same to buy a wood splitter, chainsaw, truck, trailer, tractor, etc whether you run 1 cord through or 100 per year. The overall profit margin of the business increases for every next cord you can produce. I have yet to find the Economic Demand Limit for my product in the Houston area. Every year I go up in price about $5 per cord, and every year I sell out before the cold weather is over. I sold almost 300 cords this year.
However, my other limits are twofold.

1) Economic Supply Limitation. I am finding that I am having to travel further and further out to find people with trees to cut down. At some point I will have exhausted my supply until my Economic Supply Limit is reached. (It becomes uneconomical to travel to get the wood than I can make on selling the wood.) 

2) Economic Time/Cost limitation. As I stated earlier, I have another job that I have during the week. According to my calculations, it takes my current processes about 3 man-hours to cut/haul/split/deliver each cord of wood. I have a time/cost limit on how much I time I can afford to spend on firewood before my costs start to arise from me being away from my other businesses. I can offset this by hiring more people, but there is a cost involved with that as well. Time is money as we all know.

I have owned many businesses and this is the only business that I have been involved with that I can actually say that I have to be more careful on the supply side rather than the demand side.


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## sb47

So you want me to give you my trade secrets so you can compete with me?

Why would I do that?


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## luckydozenfarm

LOL..SB47...I sell everything I can cut every year. I have gotten all the "secrets" of the Houston market all figured out already. I sold out three weeks ago and I still had the phone blowing up this morning from customers I sold to back in November. Trust me my friend, there is room for all of us in this market. In fact, PM me sometime and maybe we can work together. I had at least 10 people I could have sent your way this morning if you had any wood left over.


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## CRThomas

dhamblet said:


> Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack iit, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.
> 
> I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere.
> 
> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.
> 
> Denny
> '72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
> stihl 031
> stihl 032
> Kubota L2900


i


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## sb47

luckydozenfarm said:


> LOL..SB47...I sell everything I can cut every year. I have gotten all the "secrets" of the Houston market all figured out already. I sold out three weeks ago and I still had the phone blowing up this morning from customers I sold to back in November. Trust me my friend, there is room for all of us in this market. In fact, PM me sometime and maybe we can work together. I had at least 10 people I could have sent your way this morning if you had any wood left over.


I figured that was you last week calling and asking for a delivery for your friend that was home bound.lol You’re out there off FM2920 aren’t ya? Your rite, I sell almost everything that pertains to firewood. Hell I even sell the sawdust for horse bedding. Nothing goes to waste. All my seasoned wood is already gone, already working on next years stash.
We need to meet or talk on the phone, since I’m sold out and get asked where to buy from my customers, it would be nice to have someone I could recommend, that is trust worthy. Give me a call.


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## luckydozenfarm

I'm close to FM2920 but no that wasn't me calling you. I know a few guys in Magnolia and Conroe that had wood up until Christmas but they are sold out also.


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## [email protected]

sb47 said:


> So you want me to give you my trade secrets so you can compete with me?
> 
> Why would I do that?




^^^^ This comment pretty much sums it all up or a comment like "there is no money to be made in this business" --- sometimes people like to down play whatever business they are in so as to not have more competition (lower prices/making less profit).

Thanks for starting this thread up again and giving others another view of the business.


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## luckydozenfarm

[email protected] said:


> ^^^^ This comment pretty much sums it all up or a comment like "there is no money to be made in this business" --- sometimes people like to down play whatever business they are in so as to not have more competition (lower prices/making less profit).
> 
> Thanks for starting this thread up again and giving others another view of the business.


He was kidding around..He and I both sell wood in the Houston area and he was thinking I was trying to get him to tell me his secret. That post was aimed at me directly not anyone else on the forum I'm sure....Its all good


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## luckydozenfarm

Curlycherry1 said:


> Ahem, why would anyone need to "guess" about firewood? We always stacked our wood to let it season for close to or over a year. Thus when sale time came it was a simple matter of just measuring off part of the stack, putting it on a truck and going. All the times I stacked my wood I always piled it so each face cord could stand on its own with criss crossed ends, and it was over 4' tall to compensate for the ends. There never was any question about volume because the wood was stacked to dry.
> 
> For years we also stacked it upon delivery but when we crossed over 500 cord/year I said I had enough of that %$^& and I started only doing dumps unless the customer paid for stacking. My dad hated when I implemented that policy but he was not making most of the deliveries, I was.


I know what you are saying about the deliveries. I'm pretty sick and tired of trekking a wheelbarrow across uneven pavers, watching out for shrubs, and trying to get through tiny gates. I'm going to pallets next year and I'm going to just unload the pallet on the driveway and say "here ya go". That little extra of stacking it for them means I can only get to about 6-8 customers a day. And if I brought help, I wouldn't make any money and it wouldn't be worth doing. If I can pull up and drop off a pallet and be back on the road in 10 minutes, I could get to more people per day. I'm just hoping ppl are ok with that and I don't lose customers.


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## jrider

luckydozenfarm said:


> I know what you are saying about the deliveries. I'm pretty sick and tired of trekking a wheelbarrow across uneven pavers, watching out for shrubs, and trying to get through tiny gates. I'm going to pallets next year and I'm going to just unload the pallet on the driveway and say "here ya go". That little extra of stacking it for them means I can only get to about 6-8 customers a day. And if I brought help, I wouldn't make any money and it wouldn't be worth doing. If I can pull up and drop off a pallet and be back on the road in 10 minutes, I could get to more people per day. I'm just hoping ppl are ok with that and I don't lose customers.


 
I did 100 cords this year as a side thing and delivered pretty much all of it. I accomplish most of my deliveries on weekends so time is crucial therefore, unless you are old or have a medical condition, I don't offer stacking. One thing I have mentioned to potential customers who want it stacked though is to find a local teen looking to make a few bucks and pay them to do it. Better yet, if you can find a reliable one with a car, he can go house to house after you deliver and do the stacking. With the economy as it is, there are plenty of hungry kids out there looking to get paid honest cash for honest money. Are there plenty who don't want to work but still want the cash? You bet but as a high school teacher, I have found plenty who will bust their butts for cash. If you don't want to deal with the headache, simply find a few who want to work and give out their numbers to potential customers and then you don't have to worry about it.


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## luckydozenfarm

Yeah I'm pretty much getting tired of that particular part of the business to be honest. In order to do more wood than I'm already doing I'm going to have to stop stacking wood and just drop it off. It just takes too long and by the end of the day my back is really feeling it. At least on a pallet its stacked and shrink-wrapped. They can re-stack it wherever they want or just leave it in the pallet.


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## [email protected]

luckydozenfarm said:


> He was kidding around..He and I both sell wood in the Houston area and he was thinking I was trying to get him to tell me his secret. That post was aimed at me directly not anyone else on the forum I'm sure....Its all good




Not picking on him "per se" but the attitude. Look at the threads name. A couple of weeks ago, I asked about starting up a firewood business and you get the comments like "there is no money to be made in it" and the like---it is just a weak attempt to dissuade people getting into the business in hopes that there will be less competition and high firewood prices. But I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else.


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## luckydozenfarm

Well you aren't going to be on the Forbes 500 list by selling firewood, let's be honest. 
I like to compare it to picking up a penny off the street. It's money right there on the ground, all you have to do is bend down and get it.
There is money to be made, and I would guess its about $20-30 per hour in my firewood business. It's more of a money making hobby, along with my vegetable truck farm. However, its a good way to make money in the winter for me when most of my other businesses slow down. Plus my capital outlays are almost zero because I already have most of my equipment.


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## hammerhead 5410

Come sell it here in suburban Chicago......$330 a cord mixed and $400 to $420 oak!! All year long!!


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## Jim Timber

luckydozenfarm said:


> I know what you are saying about the deliveries. I'm pretty sick and tired of trekking a wheelbarrow across uneven pavers, watching out for shrubs, and trying to get through tiny gates. I'm going to pallets next year and I'm going to just unload the pallet on the driveway and say "here ya go". That little extra of stacking it for them means I can only get to about 6-8 customers a day. And if I brought help, I wouldn't make any money and it wouldn't be worth doing. If I can pull up and drop off a pallet and be back on the road in 10 minutes, I could get to more people per day. I'm just hoping ppl are ok with that and I don't lose customers.




This has been my plan from day one. Build a pallet or skid that I can load onto a trailer and drop then drive away. I'll make the pallets out of my less desirable wood and it'll be factored into the costs. I can also stack fully deliverable quantities in pallet racking via a forklift, so my storage space could be minimized.


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## muddstopper

I cant believe I just sat here and read this entire 4yr old thread. I guess that just proves everything that was said is still relevant today. 
I dont sell fire wood, but I try to keep a pretty good supply on hand for my own use. I have had people ask to buy some, but I just tell them Not for sale. If I was to hear of someone in a real needy situation, I would probably give them a wk's worth or two, but I wouldnt sell them any.

Based on my experience of burning wood for heat, the cost of produceing wood can get very high. Saws, Trucks, splitters and then finding wood to cut. I am an opportunist in that I take every kind of log I can get my hands on. I dont care if its big, little, knotty, crooked or straight. I built a splitter that will handle it all. I dont think if I was selling I would accept some of the wood I use simply because that old cull wood takes time to process. I think in a firewood business, speed and productivity would be the key to how much money you can make. You cant think in the terms of I only sell xx cords per year and I do it because its fun and I can keep in shape. Walking and exercise will keep you in shape and doesnt cost a fortune in gas and tools to accomplish. To me, if your selling firewood, then you have a business not a hobby, doesnt mater if its 1 cord or 1000. The overhead is the same. Same saw, same axe, same truck. the only difference is the more wood you sell, the more you can spread out the cost of your equipment. A $500 saw and a $20000. truck dont make financial sense if your only going to sell a cord or 2 or wood, but spread that cost over a 1000 cords and all of a sudden that saw and truck dont seem like so big an expense. Dont think just because you already own a saw and truck and wood splitter that the cost of owning that equipment doesnt factor in to your partime hobby wood business. Simple fact is if you use that equipment to maintain your business, then you have to make something back to pay for them. Otherwise, that brand new truck and chainsaw will be worn out in a few years, because of their use in a business, and you wont have any money in the business account to replace them. That little bit of hobby income you produced over the life of your equipment is gone in a puff of smoke to replace the very equipment you used to produce that income. Thats the number one reason you see so many flyby niters in any business. Those folks simply dont know how to figure out the total cost of doing business and once all their equipment is worn out, they cant afford to replace it, so they move on to the next sure thing, get rich quick, business. You dont have to go big or go home in the firewood business, but you cant underprice your product just to increase the amount you sell. Your fixed cost will remain the same and you must charge enought to cover all expenses or dont make the sell. No body is in business to lose money, but if you aint factoring in all your cost before you start counting the profits, you will either endup working for free or loseing money on every cord you sell.


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## PLAYINWOOD

hammerhead 5410 said:


> Come sell it here in suburban Chicago......$330 a cord mixed and $400 to $420 oak!! All year long!!



Toronto is 550 all year long


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## zogger

PLAYINWOOD said:


> Toronto is 550 all year long



What is median pay in Toronto? How does that wood price compare to propane/fuel oil/natgas/pure electric heating costs?

Because that is simply an unreal price for wood, that is like bulk wood at bundle prices.


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## farmer steve

muddstopper said:


> I cant believe I just sat here and read this entire 4yr old thread. I guess that just proves everything that was said is still relevant today.
> I dont sell fire wood, but I try to keep a pretty good supply on hand for my own use. I have had people ask to buy some, but I just tell them Not for sale. If I was to hear of someone in a real needy situation, I would probably give them a wk's worth or two, but I wouldnt sell them any.
> 
> Based on my experience of burning wood for heat, the cost of produceing wood can get very high. Saws, Trucks, splitters and then finding wood to cut. I am an opportunist in that I take every kind of log I can get my hands on. I dont care if its big, little, knotty, crooked or straight. I built a splitter that will handle it all. I dont think if I was selling I would accept some of the wood I use simply because that old cull wood takes time to process. I think in a firewood business, speed and productivity would be the key to how much money you can make. You cant think in the terms of I only sell xx cords per year and I do it because its fun and I can keep in shape. Walking and exercise will keep you in shape and doesnt cost a fortune in gas and tools to accomplish. To me, if your selling firewood, then you have a business not a hobby, doesnt mater if its 1 cord or 1000. The overhead is the same. Same saw, same axe, same truck. the only difference is the more wood you sell, the more you can spread out the cost of your equipment. A $500 saw and a $20000. truck dont make financial sense if your only going to sell a cord or 2 or wood, but spread that cost over a 1000 cords and all of a sudden that saw and truck dont seem like so big an expense. Dont think just because you already own a saw and truck and wood splitter that the cost of owning that equipment doesnt factor in to your partime hobby wood business. Simple fact is if you use that equipment to maintain your business, then you have to make something back to pay for them. Otherwise, that brand new truck and chainsaw will be worn out in a few years, because of their use in a business, and you wont have any money in the business account to replace them. That little bit of hobby income you produced over the life of your equipment is gone in a puff of smoke to replace the very equipment you used to produce that income. Thats the number one reason you see so many flyby niters in any business. Those folks simply dont know how to figure out the total cost of doing business and once all their equipment is worn out, they cant afford to replace it, so they move on to the next sure thing, get rich quick, business. You dont have to go big or go home in the firewood business, but you cant underprice your product just to increase the amount you sell. Your fixed cost will remain the same and you must charge enought to cover all expenses or dont make the sell. No body is in business to lose money, but if you aint factoring in all your cost before you start counting the profits, you will either endup working for free or loseing money on every cord you sell.


Well said muddstopper.now if you could post that on craigslist..................................


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## John R

I don't want to sell any wood, so don't flame me.


I just had a load of wood delivered (10 cord) and what I paid for it, if I could sell wood at the prices you guy's are getting for a cord, I could make out great.


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## PLAYINWOOD

zogger said:


> What is median pay in Toronto? How does that wood price compare to propane/fuel oil/natgas/pure electric heating costs?
> 
> Because that is simply an unreal price for wood, that is like bulk wood at bundle prices.


median pay....50Gs for poor folks, average hous is about 500 and change, most in a decent area is 800.
The rich, the green and artistic love wood plus there is a huge Italian and jewish population that build bagels and thin crust pizza using wood fired ovens. Did I mention the rich, its a fashion statement
and every high end Hotel in a town of 6 million
LPG 4 a gallon, now,
NG cheap and cheaper
oil 4 a gallon, hardly anyone on it.
wood..550 a cord.
2 or 3 companies do 3000 to 5000 cubic cord a year plus the small guys


www.universityfirewood.ca/


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## PLAYINWOOD

zogger , Toronto is third after NYC and LA for size in NA, last time I looked, Atlanta was 4th which familiar with. Imagine if wood powered air conditioners in Atl. That's what happens in TO in the winter...
logistics and travel time are the profit killer


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## zogger

PLAYINWOOD said:


> median pay....50Gs for poor folks, average hous is about 500 and change, most in a decent area is 800.
> The rich, the green and artistic love wood plus there is a huge Italian and jewish population that build bagels and thin crust pizza using wood fired ovens. Did I mention the rich, its a fashion statement
> and every high end Hotel in a town of 6 million
> LPG 4 a gallon, now,
> NG cheap and cheaper
> oil 4 a gallon, hardly anyone on it.
> wood..550 a cord.
> 2 or 3 companies do 3000 to 5000 cubic cord a year plus the small guys
> 
> 
> www.universityfirewood.ca/



Nice business man! Thanks for the reply, I guess if de po folks make 50 grand..those prices aren't terrible then.


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## PLAYINWOOD

I shouldn't say po folk, some on the streets of course,
but a garbage man is 25 an hour street car or bus driver is $30.
Plumber/auto shop/pool/heating/roofing/ company is $90/hr


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## zogger

PLAYINWOOD said:


> I shouldn't say po folk, some on the streets of course,
> but a garbage man is 25 an hour street car or bus driver is $30.
> Plumber/auto shop/pool/heating/roofing/ company is $90/hr



I make less than an hour for a garbageman pay a day.....

That's why I got so completely berserker annoyed when my good saws got stolen..


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## cantoo

zogger, from this website. http://www.workopolis.com/content/a...earning-the-average-canadian-wages-right-now/
Curious about how much money people are making? Well, Statistics Canada’s most recent report on wages in Canada had some good news, indicating that overall Canadians were making about 2.2% more at the end of 2011 than we were in 2010. So how much are Canadians earning? The average salary in this country is roughly $883 a week or *$46,000* a year. [Editor's note: This article is from February 2012 - a February 2013 salary update is available here.]


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## PLAYINWOOD

zogger you make 30 dollars a day?


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## zogger

PLAYINWOOD said:


> zogger you make 30 dollars a day?



No, less, about twenty bucks and change a day. Part timer work, but 7 days a week. Winter not so much work, spring summer and fall I make up for it. I do get a little cabin provided though, so that makes it almost affordable, ha! In the winter I putz with wood, when it is warmer I putz with my rolling junk trucks (that I got for scrap price), I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with one of them this spring though. I had it up and running, but then the fuel line rot and lift pump went, got the parts, that is almost all done, try it again. A few more things after that, should be ready to drive a bit, then sell it. Take that money, leapfrog it into the next one, trying to work my way up to a full size decent truck. I don't work on my stuff until parts are in hand and the weather cooperates, I can't stand working on anything steel in the cold anymore. Those two issues make my wrenching forays infrequent. If I had a garage I would work more on my stuff. I can hold a saw or a fiskars when it is cold, but my fingers don't work anymore very well and doing mechanic stuff ..well...have to admit reality, just can't much anymore, but I like to putz with it when I can. something to do, keep busy, etc.


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## Brian B.

I cut and split for my father in law and for neighbors,

I now have a better idea of what wood should cost, as well as what it takes just to get it down the road.

The prices some of the firewood guys used to quote I now see we're indeed quite fair.

Good thing I enjoy it- if I had to do it every other day or thrice a week, maybe not so much.


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## naturelover

Really love the garage for mechanic work, especially in the winter.

Buddy runs a trucking company, and I used to help him do mechanic work on his 3-5 truck fleet. 

Good thing I enjoy doing mechanic work, cause it sure wasn't much fun crawling under them things in the cold and snow. The worst is the fingers, as gloves restrict too much, but numb fingers ain't much good either..

Brrrr... cold chill from memories..


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## John R

Brian B. said:


> I cut and split for my father in law and for neighbors,
> 
> I now have a better idea of what wood should cost, as well as what it takes just to get it down the road.
> 
> *The prices some of the firewood guys used to quote I now see we're indeed quite fair.*
> 
> Good thing I enjoy it- if I had to do it every other day or thrice a week, maybe not so much.


I think some guy's are reasonable, and some are way out of the park on prices.
Gets to a point where it's cheaper to heat with gas.
I burn wood to save money, not because it's fun.


----------



## farmer steve

Brian B. said:


> I cut and split for my father in law and for neighbors,
> 
> I now have a better idea of what wood should cost, as well as what it takes just to get it down the road.
> 
> The prices some of the firewood guys used to quote I now see we're indeed quite fair.
> 
> Good thing I enjoy it- if I had to do it every other day or thrice a week, maybe not so much.


 it does get old indeed Brian.5 out of the last 6 out in the cold,snow and wind.trying to get ahead for next year but it just ain't happening.people are out of wood and will buy anything that looks dry. but i love to cut wood and this is the time of the year i have time to do it.hauled 4 cords in yesterday and there is about a 1/4 cord left. most of it was sold in 1/4 cord piles.


----------



## sb47

luckydozenfarm said:


> He was kidding around..He and I both sell wood in the Houston area and he was thinking I was trying to get him to tell me his secret. That post was aimed at me directly not anyone else on the forum I'm sure....Its all good


Yes I was being sarcastic. If you’ll look at my past post I have gone into great detail about how I get things done. This business is not for the lazy man, its hard work and you have to go through a learning curve and do lots of research. If you have some sort of common since you’ll figure it out. You’re not going to start up and have great results rite away. It takes time to build a good customer base.

Top things that work.

Number 1 is answering the phone: if someone is shopping and you let it go to voice mail, they will most likely find someone else before you get back to them.

Number 2 be friendly, honest and be willing to answer any questions they have. And trust me people can ask some pretty dumb questions.

Number 3 say what you will do and do what you say.

Number 4 is be on time for your appointments.

Number 5 only sell a quality product.

Last year I did lots of deliveries and did pretty good. This year I did very little deliveries and did about a third better then I did the year before.
Basically business 101 

Ok there’s 5 good tips for everyone to ponder.


----------



## [email protected]

sb47 said:


> Last year I did lots of deliveries and did pretty good. This year I did very little deliveries and did about a third better then I did the year before.
> Basically business 101
> 
> Ok there’s 5 good tips for everyone to ponder.




Sounds like a price increase. Its is always nicer to get paid the same or more and do less work.


----------



## sb47

[email protected] said:


> Sounds like a price increase. Its is always nicer to get paid the same or more and do less work.



Since I charge for deliveries I make less for wood that’s picked up at the yard. I have a base price for pickup and a minimum charge plus millage and time. You have to factor in load time, drive time, gas and insurance plus a stacking fee if I have to wheel barrow it in the back yard. My time and labor is worth money just like everyone else.


----------



## farmer steve

sb47 said:


> Since I charge for deliveries I make less for wood that’s picked up at the yard. I have a base price for pickup and a minimum charge plus millage and time. You have to factor in load time, drive time, gas and insurance plus a stacking fee if I have to wheel barrow it in the back yard. My time and labor is worth money just like everyone else.


you guys won't believe this but i make more on wood picked here that i do delivering.used to deliver everything. started to sell a few roadside bins here and there .soon most of my time was spent filling bins.i only deliver to a few old time regulars now cause thats what i did and most of those are 15 minutes or less away.most deliveries are $85-$100 per 1/2 cord. 1/4 cord bins are $55 picked up they haul. i don't know if people are tight on cash or what,but thats what has been selling for me.have a guy coming today to get a bin. he got one about 2 weeks ago.


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## TNGreen

Sell as much of it as possible in small amounts such as bundles or skids .we sell skids that contain 26 pieces for $20.bundle goes for $5.00. There is a whole lot of bundles in a face cord/rick of wood. Nobody here buys cords only face cords.we sell it those 3 ways so we can satisfy whatever need the customer has for their wood.A lot of people this fall was only interested in enough wood to burn to sit out and watch the game on the patio.


----------



## TNGreen

Sell as much of it as possible in small amounts such as bundles or skids .we sell skids that contain 26 pieces for $20.bundle goes for $5.00. There is a whole lot of bundles in a face cord/rick of wood. Nobody here buys cords only face cords.we sell it those 3 ways so we can satisfy whatever need the customer has for their wood.A lot of people this fall was only interested in enough wood to burn to sit out and watch the game on the patio.


----------



## Mr Black

I've extremely green to log farming....

Bought a home, last year, that uses LP. $400 per month from Oct-Feb. If I don't burn wood costs me $2,000.
Saved up last Summer for a saw $300, Home Owner's Insurance Deductable $1,000 for a new Stove Installed, all in $1,300...
$2,000(LP) - $1,300(equip.) = $700 saved

Next year, and years after, the whole $2,000 is saved...
That IS money in firewood.

I know it ain't "making a living" as the OP implies... But it's making MY living a whole hell of a lot better...


----------



## ChoppyChoppy

I usually let calls go to voice mail and call back in the evening or the next day. I've found that it slows me down a bunch taking calls all day.
Even better is emails/Facebook since I can do that in the evening or early morning, often when most folks are sleeping (like right now)

Most folks understand that and are usually just happy I even bothered to call back.

Ideal would be a secretary that is handling calls, paperwork, scheduling, etc, but for now I'm pretty much wearing many hats.



sb47 said:


> Yes I was being sarcastic. If you’ll look at my past post I have gone into great detail about how I get things done. This business is not for the lazy man, its hard work and you have to go through a learning curve and do lots of research. If you have some sort of common since you’ll figure it out. You’re not going to start up and have great results rite away. It takes time to build a good customer base.
> 
> Top things that work.
> 
> Number 1 is answering the phone: if someone is shopping and you let it go to voice mail, they will most likely find someone else before you get back to them.
> 
> Number 2 be friendly, honest and be willing to answer any questions they have. And trust me people can ask some pretty dumb questions.
> 
> Number 3 say what you will do and do what you say.
> 
> Number 4 is be on time for your appointments.
> 
> Number 5 only sell a quality product.
> 
> Last year I did lots of deliveries and did pretty good. This year I did very little deliveries and did about a third better then I did the year before.
> Basically business 101
> 
> Ok there’s 5 good tips for everyone to ponder.


----------



## Wood Doctor

I usually load four rows into my pickup truck when I deliver by the truckload, packed like a sardine can. Another alternative is to sell by the row, say for $40 apiece. A row is about 100 logs stacked up almost cab high, so that comes out to 40 cents a log. Just a suggestion for partials. Giving a row of firewood logs for a holiday gift to a friend would be an interesting idea. WDYT?


----------



## muddstopper

Wood Doctor said:


> Giving a row of firewood logs for a holiday gift to a friend would be an interesting idea. WDYT?


I think that is a great ideal, I dont sell firewood, but I never stop scrounging. I pick up anything that will burn. I am way ahead of my next years wood. Next load will go to a life long friend.


----------



## ChoppyChoppy

Wood Doctor said:


> I usually load four rows into my pickup truck when I deliver by the truckload, packed like a sardine can. Another alternative is to sell by the row, say for $40 apiece. A row is about 100 logs stacked up almost cab high, so that comes out to 40 cents a log. Just a suggestion for partials. Giving a row of firewood logs for a holiday gift to a friend would be an interesting idea. WDYT?



100 logs? We usually get 40-50 on the log truck for around 9-10 cords.


----------



## Guswhit

ValleyFirewood said:


> 100 logs? We usually get 40-50 on the log truck for around 9-10 cords.



Pretty sure he ment splits not logs.


----------



## logger450

We get around $240 a full cord here in upstate NY .Talked to a guy in New Hampshire that is selling it for $350 and can't keep up. Doesn't make sense, 100 gallons of fuel is equivalent in BTUS to 1 full cord of wood and fuel is selling for $1.80 a gallon.


----------



## ChoppyChoppy

logger450 said:


> We get around $240 a full cord here in upstate NY .Talked to a guy in New Hampshire that is selling it for $350 and can't keep up. Doesn't make sense, 100 gallons of fuel is equivalent in BTUS to 1 full cord of wood and fuel is selling for $1.80 a gallon.



Diesel here is $2.48


----------



## flotek

The old timers got it right when they coined the phrase " firewood is a poor mans business "


----------



## Gypo Logger

ValleyFirewood said:


> Diesel here is $2.48


Ours is double that here, and you are farther north. Go figure!
John


----------



## Gypo Logger

flotek said:


> The old timers got it right when they coined the phrase " firewood is a poor mans business "


Ya, if there was any money in the firewood business the Mafia would be involved. Lol


----------



## hunter0182

Well I have between jobs a few times in the last 20 years and firewoos kept us going,I would guess it depends on what you think your time is worth and your wood resources.I have made anywhere from $5000.00 to $20,000 a year.I do it on the side.I like the woods and cutting .and i also have someone working part time helping me.I have managed to buy two splitters and 6 stihl ms 390 & ms 391 saws, 2 5x10 trailers with wood money.so I guess it just depends we get about 120.00 a cord here in Georgia give or take about 10.00 .I also have a wood burning stove in my den which heats the whole house ,my heater probably on comes on a few times during the winter.


----------



## hunter0182

sb47 said:


> Yes I was being sarcastic. If you’ll look at my past post I have gone into great detail about how I get things done. This business is not for the lazy man, its hard work and you have to go through a learning curve and do lots of research. If you have some sort of common since you’ll figure it out. You’re not going to start up and have great results rite away. It takes time to build a good customer base.
> 
> Top things that work.
> 
> Number 1 is answering the phone: if someone is shopping and you let it go to voice mail, they will most likely find someone else before you get back to them.
> 
> Number 2 be friendly, honest and be willing to answer any questions they have. And trust me people can ask some pretty dumb questions.
> 
> Number 3 say what you will do and do what you say.
> 
> Number 4 is be on time for your appointments.
> 
> Number 5 only sell a quality product.
> 
> Last year I did lots of deliveries and did pretty good. This year I did very little deliveries and did about a third better then I did the year before.
> Basically business 101
> 
> Ok there’s 5 good tips for everyone to ponder.


----------



## hunter0182

I actually stopped delivering wood,I do have about 15 old cutomers that I still take wood to ,but now i just tell the I dont deliver.most have no problem coming to get it.Iwas spending way to much time on the road.I have gained business.


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## Wood Doctor

Guswhit said:


> Pretty sure he ment splits not logs.


That's correct. I counted splits just yesterday. They averaged 100 per row, one under and three over. The wheels take up some room, so that row would need some mounding up.


----------



## Gypo Logger




----------



## ChoppyChoppy

I wouldn't see much business if I didn't deliver. Around here if people are buying wood they generally expect that it will be delivered. I deliver local for free (10 miles). Over that I charge per mile.
People that pickup I charge $25 less per cord. This year I've sold maybe 15-20 cords on pickup orders, the rest has been delivered. I've done about 400 cords so far this year.



hunter0182 said:


> I actually stopped delivering wood,I do have about 15 old customers that I still take wood to ,but now i just tell the I don't deliver.most have no problem coming to get it. I was spending way to much time on the road. I have gained business.


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## ChoppyChoppy

Wood Doctor said:


> That's correct. I counted splits just yesterday. They averaged 100 per row, one under and three over. The wheels take up some room, so that row would need some mounding up.



Well I'll count for grins here in a bit. I just came in to warm up before stacking the wood in my truck. Each row is 1/4 cord in my small truck.

edit: OK I stacked 1/2 a cord. First row was 123 splits, 2nd row was 130. My truck bed is about 8ft wide and I stack it about 3.25ft tall.

Not sure how you are fitting 100 splits in one row on the bed of a Ford Ranger, must be some small splits. How much wood do you haul with a full load?


----------



## Wood Doctor

ValleyFirewood said:


> Well I'll count for grins here in a bit. I just came in to warm up before stacking the wood in my truck. Each row is 1/4 cord in my small truck.
> 
> edit: OK I stacked 1/2 a cord. First row was 123 splits, 2nd row was 130. My truck bed is about 8ft wide and I stack it about 3.25ft tall.
> 
> Not sure how you are fitting 100 splits in one row on the bed of a Ford Ranger, must be some small splits. How much wood do you haul with a full load?


I figure about 85 cu ft per load. Note the side rails and height of the stack on my avatar. Makes all the difference in the world. I've measured the stack after unloading many times and 85 cu ft is the average. The actual split log count is going to depend on the average size of the splits. Most of my customers are using a fireplace or an open fire pit rather than a stove and they prefer smaller splits and a fire that's easier to light.

I really do think there is a partial load market out there that most of us have not made much effort to tap. Many of my customers get nearly two years of burning on a full load. And, the smaller, one row sale might be very attractive for people who don't want to buy 10 bundles for $50 and get only 60 or 70 split logs. A single row of 100 logs for $40 is a half-price bargain.


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## ChoppyChoppy

I have a 1 cord min for delivery. For pickup they can come grab 2 sticks or 10 cords. Big thing is I'm not going to drive around for $20 or $30 of wood. About the only time I have folks wanting under a cord is for a camping trip. I have bundle wood for that... a generous cu foot bundle for $5 or they can grab some loose wood as well.


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## hunter0182

I know what you are saying.I have only sold about a 100 cords,we have not had much cold yet ,was 75 today , my business normally comes later when the real cold hits,right now are a buch of kids around here selling wood,but they run out as usual and mine spikes,Isell wood to a big BBQ cook off they have in savannah ,3 hours away .Iasked a few people who came over last week from SC. why they come all the way over here to get wood and they said the guys over in SC were selling mixed sweetgum and popular and they didnt want that.all i cut is oak hickory and cherry,


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## ChoppyChoppy

It was pretty warm today, got to about 30*. We have gone some years without ever seeing as hot as 75* in the summer!


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## logger450

Valley Firewood what species fw is dominant up there?


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## Marine5068

Our hardwood firewood price is about $300/cord right now. 
So in US dollars that's about $240-$250 and it continues to rise yearly.
Ten years ago the going rate here was around $150/cord picked up.
It's profitable if you have some time and can get logs fairly cheap or have a woodlot to cut from. That's the key.
I live in a rural area near some small cities. 
Belleville is about 35,000 people and Kingston and it's metro area is about 290,000 folks. Peterborough is about 79,000 and rural area around is about 80,000.
Of course if you're near Toronto and the urban and metro area around it, you have about 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 people.
If you have the ability to deliver firewood sales could be increased by about 50%, but lots will still pick it up for themselves or others.


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## Deleted member 83629

cord is 200$ here and i just paid 1.66 per gallon for gasoline diesel is 2.19 here off road diesel is 2.07.


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## ChoppyChoppy

logger450 said:


> Valley Firewood what species fw is dominant up there?



Birch, spruce and poplar species (cottonwood, aspen)


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## ChoppyChoppy

jakewells said:


> cord is 200$ here and i just paid 1.66 per gallon for gasoline diesel is 2.19 here off road diesel is 2.07.



Gas here is around 2.30, diesel is 2.48. Not sure on off road, I normally only have to fill once a month or two, was 2.35 about a month ago.


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## Dalmatian90

logger450 said:


> We get around $240 a full cord here in upstate NY .Talked to a guy in New Hampshire that is selling it for $350 and can't keep up. Doesn't make sense, 100 gallons of fuel is equivalent in BTUS to 1 full cord of wood and fuel is selling for $1.80 a gallon.



Oil burners don't run when an ice storm takes out the power lines.

I'd suspect there's a lot of folks who will be burning more oil this year, and instead of buying of several cords just want one either for backup, or crank up the heat in the evening since they've gotten used to 75° living rooms and don't want to burn THAT much oil.

That type of market also affects price sensitivity -- if a few years ago you were spending $220 x 3 cords so your mind has $660 in it as your "wood budget," then $350 doesn't seem so bad for a year.

(And if it's just backup, they're probably figuring it'll last a couple years so they won't have to buy any next year.)


----------



## muddstopper

Wood Doctor said:


> . Giving a row of firewood logs for a holiday gift to a friend would be an interesting idea. WDYT?



Well, today, I was given some junk wood for firewood. Popular and some sort of hybrid whitepine. Already sawn into log lengths and they even loaded them on my dump trailer for me. Took first load home and dumped next to the wood pile. went back to get the second load and while heading home I remembered this thread. Called my buddy up and said "what ya doing". Told me it "Aint none of my business.", Which is how our conversations usually go. Told him I had him something if he behaved. "What Ya got". Load of wood if you want it. "bout time, I'm down to burning boards". Junk wood I says but its wood. "It'll burn, how much you got". Bout a cord, give or take. "Big Stuff", Na, most just saw to length and throw in the stove. "I got a saw, bring it on over". Got to his house and he starts complaining, "Mostly pine", bout half and half, I said it was junk wood. "took all the good to your house didnt ya" If you dont want it, I'll just take it on home. "Backup here and dump if off" Well I did and said I got to go. "Bring your splitter over and lets split this blackgum I got over there, tried to split it and the maul just bout hit me between the eyes" Be back over in a day or two. Before I left he threw a 10ft piece of 3x5x1/4 angle iron on the trailer, "You might need this building that processor", I thanked him and drove off knowing I had given him that same piece of angle iron a year or two ago to build one of his projects that he never got around to. He'll probably ask me if I got any angle in the next month or two and he needs a piece. 

The folks that gave me the wood are going to be removing about 20-30 whiteoaks next week. They are going to let me have all of it to. I'll probably drop off a load of it at my buddies house before i take my splitter over. I know I will have to split it for him. The first wood was all junk wood, but taking it gets me the good stuff. Never turn down wood just because its not the best firewood, it all burns.


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## Wood Doctor

20 to 30 oak white oak trees? You are kidding, of course. If not, you are in firewood heaven. I have an empty building lot in NC. Time to build a house on it.


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## muddstopper

All this wood is coming from a seed orchard. When the trees get a certain size they do a thinning taking out every other tree. The whitepine where dieing, heart rot, most are grafted trees to start with. The whiteoaks are all large butt, but had been trimmed for limb/acorn production. Makes good firewood, but not fit for much of anything else. Last time they did a thinning it was all wild cherry. I hauled about 4 cords out and there wasnt a decent saw log in the bunch. My private honey hole will probably dry up next year since my BIL is the care taker and he is thinking of retiring after the first of the year.


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## Wood Doctor

muddstopper said:


> All this wood is coming from a seed orchard. When the trees get a certain size they do a thinning taking out every other tree. The whitepine where dieing, heart rot, most are grafted trees to start with. The whiteoaks are all large butt, but had been trimmed for limb/acorn production. Makes good firewood, but not fit for much of anything else. Last time they did a thinning it was all wild cherry. I hauled about 4 cords out and there wasnt a decent saw log in the bunch. My private honey hole will probably dry up next year since my BIL is the care taker and he is thinking of retiring after the first of the year.


Enjoy it while you can. White oak is about the best firewood that there is. I used to cut and split lots of it in CT after the gypsy moth wiped out acres upon acres of oak. Not much is worse than the gypsy moth.


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## merc_man

I needed a wood splitter so i started selling wood till i had enough to pay cash for new one. Now i just sell to one person. I bring in about 600 and it covers my cost of getting wood for me and maintaining equipment and a bit to spare.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


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## Wood Doctor

merc_man said:


> I needed a wood splitter so i started selling wood till i had enough to pay cash for new one. Now i just sell to one person. I bring in about 600 and it covers my cost of getting wood for me and maintaining equipment and a bit to spare.
> 
> Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


If you bring in $600 in firewood from one customer, that's remarkable. I would have to make five deliveries to that person to equal it. I guess I am way underpriced at $120 per load, and that measures about 85 cu ft, racked up, split, delivered, and stacked. If nothing else, this thread has convinced me to go to $140 per load in 2016 and then see how many people object to the price hike.


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## merc_man

Wood Doctor said:


> If you bring in $600 in firewood from one customer, that's remarkable. I would have to make five deliveries to that person to equal it. I guess I am way underpriced at $120 per load, and that measures about 85 cu ft, racked up, split, delivered, and stacked. If nothing else, this thread has convinced me to go to $140 per load in 2016 and then see how many people object to the price hike.


A load for me is trailer and truck two face cord on trailer and one face cord on truck. cut my blocks about 14-16" long. It works out to about a full bush cord all to geather. I deliver it help stack it and she gives me 200 bucks. Thats $60 per face cord $10 delivery which is cheap and $10 for helping pile qhich is cheap. 

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


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## Marine5068

merc_man said:


> A load for me is trailer and truck two face cord on trailer and one face cord on truck. cut my blocks about 14-16" long. It works out to about a full bush cord all to geather. I deliver it help stack it and she gives me 200 bucks. Thats $60 per face cord $10 delivery which is cheap and $10 for helping pile qhich is cheap.
> 
> Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


WOW, that's cheap, considering most hardwood is selling for $300-$350 per cord in Ontario now.
A tandem log length load goes for about $1200-$1300 now (6-7 cords worth)


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## merc_man

Marine5068 said:


> WOW, that's cheap, considering most hardwood is selling for $300-$350 per cord in Ontario now.
> A tandem log length load goes for about $1200-$1300 now (6-7 cords worth)


It is but not looking to get rich.lol just a hobby and if i can make bit of money doing a hobby that ausome. I mostly sell ash. If i was to sell oak or hickory i would have to rais price and cant load as much cauae of the weight differance. Im already way over weight for my 2000lbs trailer but its home made so i know what it will do and just go easy when its loaded. My biggeat wory is the axle. I may upgrade it this summer for peace of mind to get me by till i can save enough to build a bigger tandom axle trailer.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


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## Wood Doctor

merc_man said:


> It is but not looking to get rich.lol just a hobby and if i can make bit of money doing a hobby that ausome. I mostly sell ash. If i was to sell oak or hickory i would have to rais price and cant load as much cauae of the weight differance. Im already way over weight for my 2000lbs trailer but its home made so i know what it will do and just go easy when its loaded. My biggeat wory is the axle. I may upgrade it this summer for peace of mind to get me by till i can save enough to build a bigger tandom axle trailer.
> 
> Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


Around here, people prefer ash over oak because it has almost the same heat content and seasons faster. Discounting the ash for selling would thus be pointless. We once ran a survey on this website and ash outdistanced oak as the #1 firewood that anyone could collect. It's also easier to get going in the stove and keep going. But, that's another topic.


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## merc_man

Wood Doctor said:


> Around here, people prefer ash over oak because it has almost the same heat content and seasons faster. Discounting the ash for selling would thus be pointless. We once ran a survey on this website and ash outdistanced oak as the #1 firewood that anyone could collect. It's also easier to get going in the stove and keep going. But, that's another topic.


Red oak is about same as ash but white oak is up about same as hichory and weighs alot more to.

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk


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## TRTermite

Wood Doctor said:


> If you bring in $600 in firewood from one customer, that's remarkable. I would have to make five deliveries to that person to equal it. I guess I am way underpriced at $120 per load, and that measures about 85 cu ft, racked up, split, delivered, and stacked. If nothing else, this thread has convinced me to go to $140 per load in 2016 and then see how many people object to the price hike.



You might keep the price of fuel in the back of your pricing structure. Your pricing in Omaha is basicly 180.00$ a cord in southeast NE many are paying 200 to 270 for a cord pending on size/specie/seasoned/Stacked etc..


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## ChoppyChoppy

Wood Doctor said:


> If you bring in $600 in firewood from one customer, that's remarkable. I would have to make five deliveries to that person to equal it. I guess I am way underpriced at $120 per load, and that measures about 85 cu ft, racked up, split, delivered, and stacked. If nothing else, this thread has convinced me to go to $140 per load in 2016 and then see how many people object to the price hike.



You just need to get a normal sized truck with dump bed. At least a 1 ton, but a 1.5 ton even better. Then you can easily haul 2+ cords in a trip.

Some of my deliveries are close to $2000 between the wood and delivery fee. I haul 5.5 cords in my 10 wheeler.


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## muddstopper

For some reason, I figure if I ever do get in the firewood business, my prices would have to be around $225 cord. I havent actually tried to set a price because I havent sold a stick of firewood since highschool. I do know a little about determining price and profits. It would seem to me that anybody selling wood would have to treat it as a business, not part time work or a hobby. Its either a business or its a charity. It the intent is to make money, then its a business. If your not making money then its a charity. Just trying to break even is just an exercise in futility, wont make money, be more aggravating than necessary, and a general waste of time. I can sit on the couch and go broke, why would anybody want to do firewood just to break even.


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## Wood Doctor

muddstopper said:


> For some reason, I figure if I ever do get in the firewood business, my prices would have to be around $225 cord. I havent actually tried to set a price because I havent sold a stick of firewood since highschool. I do know a little about determining price and profits. It would seem to me that anybody selling wood would have to treat it as a business, not part time work or a hobby. Its either a business or its a charity. It the intent is to make money, then its a business. If your not making money then its a charity. Just trying to break even is just an exercise in futility, wont make money, be more aggravating than necessary, and a general waste of time. I can sit on the couch and go broke, why would anybody want to do firewood just to break even.


Make it $230 or better yet, $240 a cord. Lots of people pay cash for firewood. Round it to the nearest $20 bill. That makes it a dozen twenties, but make sure that you deliver a full cord (128 cu ft), not some crazy face cord.


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## Deleted member 116684

If I paid the prices people on here charge for wood I wouldn't be able to afford it. I scrounge or have it dumped in my yard by a tree service. I then have the awesome privilege of cutting and splitting it. Sometimes I sell a little, sometimes I give a little.Maybe I'm just incredibly lucky, but I come across trees all the time that are free. I talked to a builder this week who will let me have all the wood they cut down on the lots he is clearing, even call me to tell me when its available. Or today, a tree service guy I know dumped 1.5 cords of oak in my yard, said it was a Christmas gift. He dumped it next to the 2 cords of white oak and hickory another guy gave me earlier this year for free.
300 dollars a cord??? People actually pay that?
Maybe I can get in the firewood business.


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## Cody

Wood Doctor said:


> If you bring in $600 in firewood from one customer, that's remarkable. I would have to make five deliveries to that person to equal it. I guess I am way underpriced at $120 per load, and that measures about 85 cu ft, racked up, split, delivered, and stacked. If nothing else, this thread has convinced me to go to $140 per load in 2016 and then see how many people object to the price hike.



I'm around 3 hours northeast of you and we started selling seasoned split ash at $60 full size truck load, oak was $75. We've since increased our prices to $100 for ash, $120 for oak. I think you can get more near the bigger cities, not a whole lot of people burn wood around here.


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## muddstopper

Biggest thing about getting free wood is being able to take it when its available. If you have another job and just doing firewood on the side, it hard to get to a work site where they are removing trees and actually get them removed on their time schedule. If you can get the tree service to dump on your site, thats all fine and dandy. Around here, the tree companies just want to get rid of the wood as fast as possible and they dont want the expense of having to haul it several miles to dump it. If you can show up on their work site while they are actually doing the job, often they will load your truck or trailer for you, just so they dont have to haul the wood away to be disposed of. Customers want the site cleaned up before the tree service leaves the site, they dont want to wait around for someone else to get roundtoit removing the wood. I have a 6x10 dump trailer. I can haul a full cord of hardwood behind my 1/2ton pickup pretty easily. Anymore than that and I start getting uncomfortable. being the trailer is a dump, I can haul 10ft logs, which means the tree company doesnt have to make as may cuts to get rid of the wood. If they have a loader of some sort on site, they can load the logs on my trailer pretty quickly and have that wood out of the way and only worry about chipping and removing the brush. Real world is I have a job that keeps me out of town during the week, seldom do I get to show up at the job site when the tree company is actually taking down trees. Around here, a homeowner that takes down their own trees usually has a wood stove too. My best wood comes from developers clearing house sites and loggers with cutoffs and rejects on their logging site. If I show up with a dump trailer, they will usually take their loader, and do their best to overload the trailer if I let them. Four or five loads a year will usually do me and it doesnt consume all my time to do other things.


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## Raganr

Just need to sell the right kind of firewood.


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## muddstopper

Now what kind of machine makes those????


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## Raganr

I am guessing a guy with a log vise, chainsaw, staple gun, and some rope. Looks like just a few noodlin plunge cuts.


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## fhafer

I have a day job, but we heat exclusively with wood. I get my logs free from a friend with a tree company. He get's 20%. I sell enough farwood to pay for all my equipment and equipment maintenance. Over the last ten years farwood sales have bought three splitters, two MAXX chain grinders, ten or so saws, and all the chains, bar oil & non-ethanol gas I need. Cash gets a 10% discount and I stack for the elderly no charge. Other than my time, the wood I burn is truly free. I don't go to the gym...I go to the log yard.


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## Magic_Man

I sell a half a dozen cords a year. I own 40 acres of oak, maple, and hickory. I also have access to family owned 270 acres as well.Typically in a years time I have enough blown down trees to supply me with the wood I need and sell the extra. A good business practice is to offer something that nobody else is, create a niche for yourself. I live in the poorest county in Ohio, but that doesn't mean that everybody is poor. I get $200 cash for half a chord, and $350 for a full chord. My wood is all split and seasoned for 2 years. I show up in a presentable delivery truck, wearing clean and presentable clothing. We hand stack the wood and clean up any mess when we are done. Most of my clients are doctors, lawyers, professors and such. They don't want bubba down the road in his old crusty pickup wearing his grease covered overalls in their homes. They don't want green freshly split wood either, they want well seasoned wood that is easy to light and burns clean. I keep my client list small as I'm not in it for business, but it works out well for me. So there are two ways to go about making money in anything, quantity, or quality, but not both, you have to choose your battle.


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## Wood Doctor

Magic_Man said:


> I sell a half a dozen cords a year. I own 40 acres of oak, maple, and hickory. I also have access to family owned 270 acres as well.Typically in a years time I have enough blown down trees to supply me with the wood I need and sell the extra. A good business practice is to offer something that nobody else is, create a niche for yourself. I live in the poorest county in Ohio, but that doesn't mean that everybody is poor. I get $200 cash for half a chord, and $350 for a full chord. My wood is all split and seasoned for 2 years. I show up in a presentable delivery truck, wearing clean and presentable clothing. We hand stack the wood and clean up any mess when we are done. Most of my clients are doctors, lawyers, professors and such. They don't want bubba down the road in his old crusty pickup wearing his grease covered overalls in their homes. They don't want green freshly split wood either, they want well seasoned wood that is easy to light and burns clean. I keep my client list small as I'm not in it for business, but it works out well for me. So there are two ways to go about making money in anything, quantity, or quality, but not both, you have to choose your battle.


Hard to believe that you can season maple for two years before selling it. Silver maple in this area will get punky after the first year that it dries. I agree that the others will last longer but most of the time they will season in a year if split. I sure wish I could sell wood for your prices. Mine are about half of that--$100 for a half cord and $180 for a full cord. If I raise it higher, they will walk away.


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## Magic_Man

Wood Doctor said:


> Hard to believe that you can season maple for two years before selling it. Silver maple in this area will get punky after the first year that it dries. I agree that the others will last longer but most of the time they will season in a year if split. I sure wish I could sell wood for your prices. Mine are about half of that--$100 for a half cord and $180 for a full cord. If I raise it higher, they will walk away.



Wood is stacked on pallets and covered from fall to spring. I'm burning some 3 year old maple tonight. Most of my firewood is oak, just the occasional maple and hickory. Normal Bubba in a truck prices are anywhere from $65 to $125 a pickup truck here. But they don't stack and who knows what kind of wood your getting.


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## Wood Doctor

Magic_Man said:


> Wood is stacked on pallets and covered from fall to spring. I'm burning some 3 year old maple tonight. Most of my firewood is oak, just the occasional maple and hickory. Normal Bubba in a truck prices are anywhere from $65 to $125 a pickup truck here. But they don't stack and who knows what kind of wood your getting.


Hard maple is much different than soft, silver maple. I've collected some hard maple that stalls out a 22-ton splitter until after it's seasoned in the round for eight months or more. The difference between soft maple and hard maple is huge. I imagine you are processing hard maple, which is really a premium firewood and makes excellent lathe turning stock, furniture, etc.


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## muddstopper

I have been burning some red maple since the start of burn season. The tree was about 4ft in dia before I got it worked up. Tree was dead. Anyways, I dont consider red maple a very good quality of firewood. My stove eats it. It does burn clean and hot, but it doesnt leave hardly any coals. As a firewood, I use it because it was a freebe and it burns, but I would rate it pretty low, about the same as popular and sourwood on my firewood chart. If I had a chart. I like locust best, with hickory next, then red oaks and white oaks about equal. Equal because red oak is easier to split than white oak, but white oak will burn a little longer. I even have some yellow pine and white pine in my stacks. It all burns


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## ChoppyChoppy

Magic_Man said:


> I sell a half a dozen cords a year. I own 40 acres of oak, maple, and hickory. I also have access to family owned 270 acres as well.Typically in a years time I have enough blown down trees to supply me with the wood I need and sell the extra. A good business practice is to offer something that nobody else is, create a niche for yourself. I live in the poorest county in Ohio, but that doesn't mean that everybody is poor. I get $200 cash for half a cord, and $350 for a full cord. My wood is all split and seasoned for 2 years. I show up in a presentable delivery truck, wearing clean and presentable clothing. We hand stack the wood and clean up any mess when we are done. Most of my clients are doctors, lawyers, professors and such. They don't want bubba down the road in his old crusty pickup wearing his grease covered overalls in their homes. They don't want green freshly split wood either, they want well seasoned wood that is easy to light and burns clean. I keep my client list small as I'm not in it for business, but it works out well for me. So there are two ways to go about making money in anything, quantity, or quality, but not both, you have to choose your battle.




I sell about 500 cords a year. I sell quality wood in quantity. 6 cords is a slow week.

I've delivered to everything from shacks to million dollar homes... or as the owners called.. their summer "cottage"!
I don't dress like a hobo, but there's no way I'm getting all dressed up to bring firewood somewhere!


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## Wood Doctor

ValleyFirewood said:


> I sell about 500 cords a year. I sell quality wood in quantity. 6 cords is a slow week.
> 
> I've delivered to everything from shacks to million dollar homes... or as the owners called.. their summer "cottage"! I don't dress like a hobo, but there's no way I'm getting all dressed up to bring firewood somewhere!


I wear blue jeans, an orange outer coat, work boots, and my Stihl cap. Sometimes I bring along my MS660 Mag, a saw that most homeowners have never seen. They often ask what I paid for it, to which I respond, "Well, if I had to buy it new today, it would run about $1,100 plus sales tax. I need to deliver ten of these firewood loads just to pay for the saw."

One guy's jaw dropped about a foot after I said that.


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## Magic_Man

ValleyFirewood said:


> I sell about 500 cords a year. I sell quality wood in quantity. 6 cords is a slow week.
> 
> I've delivered to everything from shacks to million dollar homes... or as the owners called.. their summer "cottage"!
> I don't dress like a hobo, but there's no way I'm getting all dressed up to bring firewood somewhere!



No need to get puffy there Mr, and I'm not wearing a three piece suit either. A pair of clean every day jeans and a coat or flannel works fine, no holes and clean. What your doing must work for you. The OP was that there is no money in firewood. I cut wood to save myself a couple thousand dollars a winter in heating costs, and sell my excess wood for a couple thousand dollars which is pure profit to high end clients. My point was that there is money in firewood, but you have to figure out what works for you and you area/customer base.


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## ChoppyChoppy

I think your reading into my post wrong. I just wrote how I do things, nothing more, nothing less.

I don't want to know what I have into it. When I went full time in 2013 I put about 150k into the business.


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## Tooterbug

ropensaddle said:


> Lol I started by trying to get our prices up where they need to be. I advertised seasoned oak and hickory 200.00 per cord. Guy advertised two spaces below me 135.00 per cord what gives? I will keep it and burn it myself anyway the price has been 150.00 per cord here for as long as I remember but everytime I deliver a cord I always hear thats twice as much as the last guy! I have thought of ordering a cord from this clown just to see for myself




Buy the guys cheep wood, ALL of it so he has no more. Up the price and sell it yourself for what you want. Keep doing that and you won't have competitors. Works for other cash based businesses so I'm sure it will work for you.


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## sb47

dhamblet said:


> Buy the saw, buy another as backup, repair saw, replace chain and bar, furnish truck to beat the crap outa, repair truck as necessary, gas and oil for truck and saw, buy wedges, mauls, sledges etc etc. Have tractor to drag logs out of the woods. Then furnish a place to stack and store wood while it drys. Then there's the labor, cut the wood, split the wood, haul it in and stack it, and cover it then when dry, load it up, haul it and unload it. Pay for insurance and property taxes. Bear in mind the unemployed guy down the street needs money so he's out cutting and selling firewood, undercutting your prices. Then your supposed to keep track of your sales and pay the state its share of sales taxes and timber taxes. All this and just hope you don't have an accident and get hurt.
> 
> I own 20 acres of alder, ash, maple, fir (which I rarely cut), and hemlock right in my backyard. Dry wood around here goes for around $165/cord in the summer to around $200 in the winter. I cut and split (by hand) around 10 cords a year. I sell 4 or 5 cords but I think I'd be better off paying my customers to buy their wood elsewhere.
> 
> If I didn't simply like cutting wood and enjoy the exercise (its cheaper than Golds Gym) I wouldn't do it. Unfortunately I'm hard headed. How the heck do you guys make any money cutting and selling firewood???? My hats off to ya.
> 
> Denny
> '72 Chevy, 4wd 3/4t truck (beater)
> stihl 031
> stihl 032
> Kubota L2900





Your doing it all wrong. I get tree company's to bring me there wood for free. All thats left is the cutting, splitting, stacking and selling.
One good saw is all you need, no need for a back up. One splitter and one wheelbarrow and a place to stack and season. No delivery, pick up only.
I have two saws but one would be enough, I have one splitter and several wheelbarrows a dolly (hand truck) all of witch I already have because I produce my own wood for my own heating needs. No need for a maul, wedges, tractor, trailer, insurance or any of that other stuff.


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## rarefish383

Tooterbug said:


> Buy the guys cheep wood, ALL of it so he has no more. Up the price and sell it yourself for what you want. Keep doing that and you won't have competitors. Works for other cash based businesses so I'm sure it will work for you.


Too late, the guy sold it all 3 years ago. Welcome to the site, we're not all wise guys, just some of us.


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## muddstopper

rarefish383 said:


> Too late, the guy sold it all 3 years ago. Welcome to the site, we're not all wise guys, just some of us.


I am still burning some of that whiteoak I got in 2015. Altho this winter sure put a dent in it.


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## rarefish383

muddstopper said:


> I am still burning some of that whiteoak I got in 2015. Altho this winter sure put a dent in it.


You didn't buy out that guy of all his wood for $135 a cord did you?


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## jrider

sb47 said:


> Your doing it all wrong. I get tree company's to bring me there wood for free. All thats left is the cutting, splitting, stacking and selling.
> One good saw is all you need, no need for a back up. One splitter and one wheelbarrow and a place to stack and season. No delivery, pick up only.
> I have two saws but one would be enough, I have one splitter and several wheelbarrows a dolly (hand truck) all of witch I already have because I produce my own wood for my own heating needs. No need for a maul, wedges, tractor, trailer, insurance or any of that other stuff.


I find it most profitable to keep it simple as well. My setup is a little different than yours but it's still well worth my sweat.


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## rarefish383

I remember this thread when it started 8 years ago. Nothing in life has changed, except I'm older and fatter. Of course there "IS" money to be made. I make enough to go on 3-4 offshore fishing trips and a couple hunting trips a year. But, I'm retired and UPS pays me more to stay home than I could make by myself selling wood. When my Dad was still alive and in business, he would say, "If I'm going to buy a new truck and hire two more men to process wood, and clear a couple hundred dollars a day. Wouldn't I be better off buying the new truck and a chipper, hiring the 2 new ground men, and a new climber, put on a whole new crew, and clear a couple thousand dollars a day". So, it's not "is" there money in it, but how much. I will cut, split, and sell wood as long as I can pick up my saws and drive. I love the sounds and smells of cutting wood. But, I can make more money selling my old Oak fence board bird and squirrel feeders than I do with the wood.


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## ChoppyChoppy

sb47 said:


> Your doing it all wrong. I get tree company's to bring me there wood for free. All thats left is the cutting, splitting, stacking and selling.
> One good saw is all you need, no need for a back up. One splitter and one wheelbarrow and a place to stack and season. No delivery, pick up only.
> I have two saws but one would be enough, I have one splitter and several wheelbarrows a dolly (hand truck) all of witch I already have because I produce my own wood for my own heating needs. No need for a maul, wedges, tractor, trailer, insurance or any of that other stuff.



I have very few that choose to pickup vs delivery. Maybe 5%.

I suppose if you're already at the point of buying wood it makes sense to go full pull with it. Few people have setups big enough to haul a few cords or want to make multiple trips.

I've had a few order a cord to pickup and then show up with an S-10 or similar and decide to only take 1/4 cord. A bit irritating because I cut to order, so now I either have to do more work and pick it all up or leave it for others, which for some reason hasn't worked well. The pile whither away somehow and I end up with little of the money.


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## ChoppyChoppy

rarefish383 said:


> I remember this thread when it started 8 years ago. Nothing in life has changed, except I'm older and fatter. Of course there "IS" money to be made. I make enough to go on 3-4 offshore fishing trips and a couple hunting trips a year. But, I'm retired and UPS pays me more to stay home than I could make by myself selling wood. When my Dad was still alive and in business, he would say, "If I'm going to buy a new truck and hire two more men to process wood, and clear a couple hundred dollars a day. Wouldn't I be better off buying the new truck and a chipper, hiring the 2 new ground men, and a new climber, put on a whole new crew, and clear a couple thousand dollars a day". So, it's not "is" there money in it, but how much. I will cut, split, and sell wood as long as I can pick up my saws and drive. I love the sounds and smells of cutting wood. But, I can make more money selling my old Oak fence board bird and squirrel feeders than I do with the wood.



Around here doing tree work is quite seasonal. It's often more of a want than a need too.
Most of the outfits have to resort to putting up Christmas lights and plowing in the winter to keep things going.

I've watched the guys climbing trees and having to deal with the risks of falling with inches of room. I'll stick to the woods!

I certainly have plenty of customers buying firewood just for a cozy fire here and there, but also lots depend on me for their winter heat too.


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## KenJax Tree

All our wood becomes mulch. It's 10x more profitable than messing with firewood. All the companies in our area pay to dump in our yard and it all goes in a tub grinder.


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## ChoppyChoppy

KenJax Tree said:


> All our wood becomes mulch. It's 10x more profitable than messing with firewood. All the companies in our area pay to dump in our yard and it all goes in a tub grinder.



You sure?

10 cords of logs would make 1280 cu/ft of firewood. Ground up, maybe 1000 cu/ft? (I'm guessing, maybe less even?)

1280 cu/ft of firewood is worth ~$2700-$3000 around here.

Mulch in the bag is 2cu ft, 3 bags for $10, so About $1.65 cu/ft, or roughly $1650 on 10 cords of wood.
(and less if bought bulk non bagged)

If my math is correct (and i may be off, its 0500) mulch would need to sell for $13 a bag to be 10x more $$. Or firewood selling at $16.50 a cord.

There's certainly trees not worth turning into firewood or lumber, I've looked into a tub grinder but the return on paying itself with sold mulch just isn't there for us.

All our cull/junk we burn, either for heat or in a bonfire, or dump for free.


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## rarefish383

ValleyFirewood said:


> Around here doing tree work is quite seasonal. It's often more of a want than a need too.
> Most of the outfits have to resort to putting up Christmas lights and plowing in the winter to keep things going.
> 
> I've watched the guys climbing trees and having to deal with the risks of falling with inches of room. I'll stick to the woods!
> 
> I certainly have plenty of customers buying firewood just for a cozy fire here and there, but also lots depend on me for their winter heat too.


I know you have customers that buy 5 or more cord at a time. I have one that gets 3 cord spread out from Thanksgiving till February, the rest only get 1 cord a year. Down here we had tree work scheduled 6 weeks out, year round. We would only miss a few days a year to weather. Dad used to guarantee his men a half day pay if we didn't work, so he would keep enough Oak around the lot to stick them on the wood pile waiting for the weather to break. If they split for an hour or so and weather didn't show any sign of breaking, he'd let them go and pay the half day. If they didn't want to split wood, they could go home, no hard feelings, but no half day pay. The only wood he brought back to the lot was Oak, everything else he would wholesale to a Farmers Market. All the wood that did get split by the guys on rain days, he gave to me to sell, and I split the rest on my time, so there was no real money in it compared to the Tree Service work. When he retired in 86, he was averaging $85 per man hour on 3 and 4 man crews. I forget what he made on the spray rigs with 2 man crews, it may have been a little less per man hour, but the profit margin was higher due to less money in the equipment. Down here there are big firewood processing operations that I'm sure make a lot of money, but they are not one man, one saw operations, definitely not scroungers. People always ask me why I didn't take over the family business when my Dad retired. I think he made about $800,000 his last year. He had guys that drove trucks get DWI's on the weekend, and not show up for work on Monday, leaving a crew stranded, a customer waiting. He had one of our best climbers shoot himself, thank goodness at home, not on the job. He wasn't able to take real vacations till he was about 50-55, then I never got vacations because I had to run things while he was gone. When he retired I went to UPS. My last year I made just shy of $100,000, had 8 weeks paid time off, didn't have to worry about how other peoples actions would affect my life and such. It's all a trade off. But, anyway, that's why so many of the guys on the forum here get Tree Services to dump their wood free. It's a necessary evil, and down here you can only keep so much "debris" on a lot before the State or County gets on you. So, just get rid of it.


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## muddstopper

I have looked at getting into the firewood business for several years. Lots of little guys running around selling pickup loads. the buy/sell adds are always full of people selling wood, at the first of the burning season. The number drops consideralbly when the weather turns bad and messey. Hunting season starts and those part timers rather spend their time in the woods with a rifle instead of a chainsaw. One tree service I know of has always dabbled in firewood. He piles his wood on his lot and would split it in their off time. He bought a processor this last winter, but a lot of what he cuts wont fit in the processor so he still spends a lot of time using a normal splitter. I havent noticed that he ever runs out of firewood.


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## ChoppyChoppy

rarefish383 said:


> I know you have customers that buy 5 or more cord at a time. I have one that gets 3 cord spread out from Thanksgiving till February, the rest only get 1 cord a year. Down here we had tree work scheduled 6 weeks out, year round. We would only miss a few days a year to weather. Dad used to guarantee his men a half day pay if we didn't work, so he would keep enough Oak around the lot to stick them on the wood pile waiting for the weather to break. If they split for an hour or so and weather didn't show any sign of breaking, he'd let them go and pay the half day. If they didn't want to split wood, they could go home, no hard feelings, but no half day pay. The only wood he brought back to the lot was Oak, everything else he would wholesale to a Farmers Market. All the wood that did get split by the guys on rain days, he gave to me to sell, and I split the rest on my time, so there was no real money in it compared to the Tree Service work. When he retired in 86, he was averaging $85 per man hour on 3 and 4 man crews. I forget what he made on the spray rigs with 2 man crews, it may have been a little less per man hour, but the profit margin was higher due to less money in the equipment. Down here there are big firewood processing operations that I'm sure make a lot of money, but they are not one man, one saw operations, definitely not scroungers. People always ask me why I didn't take over the family business when my Dad retired. I think he made about $800,000 his last year. He had guys that drove trucks get DWI's on the weekend, and not show up for work on Monday, leaving a crew stranded, a customer waiting. He had one of our best climbers shoot himself, thank goodness at home, not on the job. He wasn't able to take real vacations till he was about 50-55, then I never got vacations because I had to run things while he was gone. When he retired I went to UPS. My last year I made just shy of $100,000, had 8 weeks paid time off, didn't have to worry about how other peoples actions would affect my life and such. It's all a trade off. But, anyway, that's why so many of the guys on the forum here get Tree Services to dump their wood free. It's a necessary evil, and down here you can only keep so much "debris" on a lot before the State or County gets on you. So, just get rid of it.



Most of my orders are 1-2 cords, but I do have several 5-15 cord orders each year as well.

I'm in a spot now where I'd need to have a full time guy year round, but can't really afford it.
Would need someone that can think and do without needing to be babysat and that's tough to find.


As with anything, area/market can make something sell great in one place and not sell elsewhere.
Heating season here is about 8 months.


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## KenJax Tree

Mulch in bags. We selling 60/70/120yds truck loads to wholesale customers.

After tree service companies, landscapers, and others drop off their wood material, it is loaded into the tub grinder where moisture is added. The mulch runs lengthwise from north to south on the 11 acres so that it receives maximum sun coverage. As soon as the windrows are formed, a sprinkler system begins the watering process, and their internal temperature is monitored. The mulch sits and cooks for about six to nine months before it is ready for sale.

Yeah, i'm pretty sure


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## rarefish383

KenJax Tree said:


> All our wood becomes mulch. It's 10x more profitable than messing with firewood. All the companies in our area pay to dump in our yard and it all goes in a tub grinder.


I guess it's location, location, location. We had 5 acres about 30 miles outside of Washington DC, surrounded buy bigger farms, so zoning wasn't as bad on us as companies based in town, but we paid more in fuel, to be based so far out. A typical day, I'd make a run home at lunch with a load of chips. Get back after the guys finished lunch, load up the wood, drop the chipper and make a run to the Farmers Market. They paid us $50 for a dump load of wood, 12' bed with 6' sides, they got whatever was on the truck. I had an old Hough Payloader with a 2 yard bucket on it. Once a week or so I'd push the chip piles up and just let them rot. Dad mixed the rotted chips in his garden and let neighbors take all they wanted. He had zero money invested in processing/handling wood once it was off the truck. The old "Huffer" was big enough I could push a weeks worth of chips around in a few minutes. It all boiled down to "why pay several men to make a few hundred dollars, when you could pay the same men, the same amount, to make a few thousand dollars.


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## ChoppyChoppy

KenJax Tree said:


> Mulch in bags. We selling 60/70/120yds truck loads to wholesale customers.
> 
> After tree service companies, landscapers, and others drop off their wood material, it is loaded into the tub grinder where moisture is added. The mulch runs lengthwise from north to south on the 11 acres so that it receives maximum sun coverage. As soon as the windrows are formed, a sprinkler system begins the watering process, and their internal temperature is monitored. The mulch sits and cooks for about six to nine months before it is ready for sale.
> 
> Yeah, i'm pretty sure



I used the bag cost since that's the most expensive (IE best possible way for it to be 10x the profit). Even then it's about 1/2 the profit as firewood.

Granted if you have no market for firewood, it's a moot point.


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## rarefish383

ValleyFirewood said:


> Most of my orders are 1-2 cords, but I do have several 5-15 cord orders each year as well.
> 
> I'm in a spot now where I'd need to have a full time guy year round, but can't really afford it.
> Would need someone that can think and do without needing to be babysat and that's tough to find.
> 
> 
> As with anything, area/market can make something sell great in one place and not sell elsewhere.
> Heating season here is about 8 months.


That's the main reason I had to let the company go. Dad could depend on me, but I couldn't find one knucklehead to depend on. We had a couple of the best climbers in the area, but they were not businessmen. If they made enough money for the day they were happy, they didn't think about down days, where the money came from that Dad used to guarantee their half day, etc. When I was young I had a volatile temper, I could be easy going and get along great, till people started doing really stupid stuff, then I'd blow. We had one dumb arse pick up a chunk of steel, just about the size of a brick, in a big scoop shovel, and throw it through our almost new Asplundh 16" drum chipper. Busted the drum. Dang drum cost several thousand dollars. The guy was a good worker, we had a strict policy of "NO" rakings in the chipper. But, no matter how many times you told them, some one would be scooping up gravel and trash throwing it through the chipper. I found it was just easier for me to be a good employee for someone else, than to find good employees for me.


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## muddstopper

Finding good employees can make or break a business. When I had my hydroseeding company, I couldnt keep good help. They where always running off to the next great job, only to endup getting fired or quitting and trying to run back to me. I had to tolerate this behavior for a few years simply because I couldnt find good help. I bought a $40k truck and mounted my hydroseeder on the back. First trip out one of the guys climbed his big arsh up on the cab and set right down on the top of the cab. His job ended right then and there. People just dont care about you or your equipment. I got tired of it and shut the business down in 2010. I kept the equipment for a few years thinking I would try it again when I retired from my current job. When I offically retired last year I sold the hydroseeder before the temptation took over. I still get two or three calls each week from people that found my old ad somewhere, and are wanting some seeding work done.


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## rarefish383

muddstopper said:


> Finding good employees can make or break a business. When I had my hydroseeding company, I couldnt keep good help. They where always running off to the next great job, only to endup getting fired or quitting and trying to run back to me. I had to tolerate this behavior for a few years simply because I couldnt find good help. I bought a $40k truck and mounted my hydroseeder on the back. First trip out one of the guys climbed his big arsh up on the cab and set right down on the top of the cab. His job ended right then and there. People just dont care about you or your equipment. I got tired of it and shut the business down in 2010. I kept the equipment for a few years thinking I would try it again when I retired from my current job. When I offically retired last year I sold the hydroseeder before the temptation took over. I still get two or three calls each week from people that found my old ad somewhere, and are wanting some seeding work done.


The problem with Tree work was ground help was pretty reliable, and worked hard. Good climbers were few and far between, and they knew it. If you said boo to them they would quit, and the next day they would be hired on with another big company. Everybody knew the top men and would be trying to hire them away from you. They would offer them $5 bucks an hour more and keep them through the good months then lay them off during the winter, then they would be back begging for their old job. We had been in business in the area for 4 generations, so we had enough clientele to stay busy during the bad months. Dad climbed into his 70's and by the late 70's early 80's I was climbing. So, if we had a no show, one of us had to take his place, which put running estimates behind. It provided a good living, put me through private school and college. But there were a lot of family sacrifices to be made. Climbing gets in your blood. I always missed climbing, but never missed the 24/7 of owning the business. I still climbed on the side till I had my knee replaced 2 years ago at age 60.


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## Wood Doctor

I just got a rush order for a truckload of dry firewood. Buyer says he will bring over a trailer for me to fill at my drop site. It all has to be ready to burn this weekend for campers who may show up at the park. He wants dry splits.

To me, that means the campers are coming out of the freezer and need heat for their evening parties. Somehow wood fuel is better than solar (or about anything else) at night. Simple as that. But, if I raise my price as buck higher than last year, he said he can find another supplier. Oh, and I have to load his trailer by myself.

Yep, there is no money in selling firewood. Great exercise and fresh air, that's the reward, not money.


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## farmer steve

maybe i posted this earlier. What my Dad always tells customers when they ask how much a load of wood is. The wood is FREE!! you're just paying for the sawing,splitting and delivery.


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## sb47

Wood Doctor said:


> I just got a rush order for a truckload of dry firewood. Buyer says he will bring over a trailer for me to fill at my drop site. It all has to be ready to burn this weekend for campers who may show up at the park. He wants dry splits.
> 
> To me, that means the campers are coming out of the freezer and need heat for their evening parties. Somehow wood fuel is better than solar (or about anything else) at night. Simple as that. But, if I raise my price as buck higher than last year, he said he can find another supplier. Oh, and I have to load his trailer by myself.
> 
> Yep, there is no money in selling firewood. Great exercise and fresh air, that's the reward, not money.




Sounds like a bluff to keep prices down. Call his bluff.


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## ChoppyChoppy

Pass on doing business that doesn't pay. You make the rules, not the customer.




Wood Doctor said:


> I just got a rush order for a truckload of dry firewood. Buyer says he will bring over a trailer for me to fill at my drop site. It all has to be ready to burn this weekend for campers who may show up at the park. He wants dry splits.
> 
> To me, that means the campers are coming out of the freezer and need heat for their evening parties. Somehow wood fuel is better than solar (or about anything else) at night. Simple as that. But, if I raise my price as buck higher than last year, he said he can find another supplier. Oh, and I have to load his trailer by myself.
> 
> Yep, there is no money in selling firewood. Great exercise and fresh air, that's the reward, not money.


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## dave_dj1

ValleyFirewood said:


> Pass on doing business that doesn't pay. You make the rules, not the customer.


This right here^^^^
My accountant told me 35 years ago, if you work your azz off and make "0", might as well stay home and make "0"


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## farmer steve

Wood Doctor said:


> I just got a rush order for a truckload of dry firewood. Buyer says he will bring over a trailer for me to fill at my drop site. It all has to be ready to burn this weekend for campers who may show up at the park. He wants dry splits.
> 
> To me, that means the campers are coming out of the freezer and need heat for their evening parties. Somehow wood fuel is better than solar (or about anything else) at night. Simple as that. But, if I raise my price as buck higher than last year, he said he can find another supplier. Oh, and I have to load his trailer by myself.
> 
> Yep, there is no money in selling firewood. Great exercise and fresh air, that's the reward, not money.


i wood think that your buyer is in a bind. i wonder if he raised any prices at his campground since last year. if he has been a longtime regular customer then i think he should know what you have delivered in the past and tell him that. plus nobody wants a unhappy camper.


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## gorman

I was doing a hundred cords a year and now I’m giving my logs away. I have absolutely no patience for firewood. I can’t get a guy who can sharpen a saw and run a splitter productively to save my life. There is no way in heck I’m taking a day away from doing tree work with a crew to “split wood”. I might as well take a field trip to dave and busters.


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## muddstopper

I have always said I can sit on the couch and go broke a lot easier than going broke working my arsh off. I guess dealing with people is why I dont even try to sell firewood. I have always tried to price my services at a reasonable rate. My price is what it is and if you dont like it move on, dont stand there with me and try to haggel, I dont have the patience for it.

I got tickled at the guy I sold my old hydroseeder to. I made him a price over the phone, and sent a bunch of pictures. I had robbed the engine for my wood splitter, but everything else was there. He asked about possible trades, told me what he had, mostly hydraulic stuff, and I told him to just bring it with him when he came to look at the hydroseeder. When he got here, he started trying to trade this and that, telling me this part is worth this much, that part is worth something else. I laughed and said, Look we are both tradeing on junk, nothing new here. I want rid of the hydroseeder, you want rid of your stuff, just throw what you think is right in the tractor bucket and we will go from there. He Started throwing stuff off his trailer until it was empty, then he went to his truck and started throwing out more stuff. Tractor bucket was full of cyl, pumps, valves, a brand new f11 style hyd motor, which would cost around $1600 and was worth way more than the hydroseeder, a bunch of swivel fittings. He didnt want to hual all that junk back home. No money changed hands, he was happy, I was happy. Happy, happy, happy. Since he still had his money in his pocket, we started tradeing on guns. Sold him a rifle and gave him a new set of reloading dies, some new brass and new bullets. We prowled thru my other junk, but he didnt see anything he needed. Now he was Happy happy happy. I keep telling myself I am going to go visit him and his junk pile one of these days. And while I am at it, anybody need a new 8000rpm hyd motor to build a processor saw with, I just happen to have a new one I can give a bargain in. Bring a truck load of junk and you might get it for free.


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## gorman

This thread should be linked for people who think tree guys “double dip” with the firewood end of the business.


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## rarefish383

gorman said:


> This thread should be linked for people who think tree guys “double dip” with the firewood end of the business.


All you need to do is go to the Commercial Tree Care forum and it's like you walked into another world. Most tree guys want nothing to do with firewood.


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## kevinlar

rarefish383 said:


> All you need to do is go to the Commercial Tree Care forum and it's like you walked into another world. Most tree guys want nothing to do with firewood.


It's very true statement... I have a tree service dumping boat loads of firewood at my lots... they want nothing to do with it.


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## Wood Doctor

kevinlar said:


> It's very true statement... I have a tree service dumping boat loads of firewood at my lots... they want nothing to do with it.


Labor is expensive. Processing good firewood is labor intensive. That's why there is no money in it. I do it for the exercise and fresh air, but men like me are scarce. The guy who bought the most recent truckload of firewood from me weighs 400 lb and can hardly tie his shoe. Regardless, he said, "I need dry split wood that will burn immediately.'


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## Cody

Cutting firewood/running saws is fun, even if it's work. Cleaning up, even with a rake, isn't horrible, good exercise. Nobody likes splitting wood. I like doing it by hand every so often, especially on the smaller stuff as it's faster than with a hydro. Running a lever just isn't fun to do for an extended amount of time. Unless of course, you've got one that you've either built, or spent 8K or better on.


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## ChoppyChoppy

Wood Doctor said:


> Labor is expensive. Processing good firewood is labor intensive. That's why there is no money in it. I do it for the exercise and fresh air, but men like me are scarce. The guy who bought the most recent truckload of firewood from me weighs 400 lb and can hardly tie his shoe. Regardless, he said, "I need dry split wood that will burn immediately.'



Not that bad with equipment. No different that trying to have at it in the logging industry without any equipment, or dirt work, or pretty much any job really.... having the right tools is a work smarter, not harder type thing.


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## woodshax

Well, with the right market, product and strategy you can make money selling just about anything...including garbage. We sell strictly by the stick to captive audiences and our per cord (true cord) profit is between $550 and $600 a cord on 200 cords a year. I can get that higher by investing in wood processing and bagging equipment and reducing transportation costs by getting more customers on my established routes. Once I get a larger area I will definitely befriend every Tree company in a 50 mile radius


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## rarefish383

You found a niche market and jumped on it, and did a dang good job about working it. As you say a good businessman will be successful at anything he puts his mind to. There are firewood processors that are very profitable. But that's a little Apples to Oranges to what the OP was doing. He was a weekend warrior selling 3-4-5- cord a year. For a guy to sell just a few cord a year, it's a lot of hard work for a low return. Once you start buying trucks, splitters, processors, more help, comp, taxes, it's not a little hobby gig anymore. It's a real job where you have to be responsible. I hate that "R" word. If my fishing buddy calls tomorrow and says, "you wanna go Tuna fishing tomorrow?". I'm gone. That's just about how much money I make on my firewood a year, 3-4 offshore trips and a couple hunting trips. Yeah, there can be good money in firewood, you proved that. I always like your posts and updates on your Park/Camping vending business. Just curious, if you're making about $120K on the vending business, how many people are you supporting, as in workers, not family?


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## ChoppyChoppy

No different in any other thing as far as hobby or actual money earning business.

I could have a T Shirt printing hobby and only sell enough to cover costs and beer money, or invest into it and make 500k a year.


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## rarefish383

ValleyFirewood said:


> No different in any other thing as far as hobby or actual money earning business.
> 
> I could have a T Shirt printing hobby and only sell enough to cover costs and beer money, or invest into it and make 500k a year.


That's the point I was trying to make. If you have a "Day Job", a Fiskars, a 82 Chevy Luv Truck, and a wheelbarrow, you are going to work your butt off for very little profit. Basically beer money. If you put enough into it to make $500K, it's no longer a little beer money gig. If a guy is a School Teacher, and comes here and asks if he can make some easy money scrounging, my answer is no. He can make some money, but it wouldn't be what I call easy. If I say "Sure you can make a lot of money, just go buy an $80,000 dump truck, a $250,000 mega processor, hire 4-5 guys to run the setup, you will be good to go". I really didn't do that School Teacher guy any favors, and I didn't answer the question he asked.


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## Wood Doctor

rarefish383 said:


> That's the point I was trying to make. If you have a "Day Job", a Fiskars, a 82 Chevy Luv Truck, and a wheelbarrow, you are going to work your butt off for very little profit. Basically beer money. If you put enough into it to make $500K, it's no longer a little beer money gig. If a guy is a School Teacher, and comes here and asks if he can make some easy money scrounging, my answer is no. He can make some money, but it wouldn't be what I call easy. If I say "Sure you can make a lot of money, just go buy an $80,000 dump truck, a $250,000 mega processor, hire 4-5 guys to run the setup, you will be good to go". I really didn't do that School Teacher guy any favors, and I didn't answer the question he asked.


Joe, that hit the nail on the head. Get big with lots of investment, and there is money in it. Unfortunately, 4-5 guys and some heavy equipment may not do it either. That's just a start. We have some large firewood suppliers around here, but they make their big money clearing trees and biomass at large construction sites. Selling firewood is a just a side business that amounts to at most 10% of their revenue. Many residential firewood buyers do not want to deal with them. That includes most of my customers.


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## woodshax

rarefish383 said:


> You found a niche market and jumped on it, and did a dang good job about working it. As you say a good businessman will be successful at anything he puts his mind to. There are firewood processors that are very profitable. But that's a little Apples to Oranges to what the OP was doing. He was a weekend warrior selling 3-4-5- cord a year. For a guy to sell just a few cord a year, it's a lot of hard work for a low return. Once you start buying trucks, splitters, processors, more help, comp, taxes, it's not a little hobby gig anymore. It's a real job where you have to be responsible. I hate that "R" word. If my fishing buddy calls tomorrow and says, "you wanna go Tuna fishing tomorrow?". I'm gone. That's just about how much money I make on my firewood a year, 3-4 offshore trips and a couple hunting trips. Yeah, there can be good money in firewood, you proved that. I always like your posts and updates on your Park/Camping vending business. Just curious, if you're making about $120K on the vending business, how many people are you supporting, as in workers, not family?



Thanks rarefish....I agree with your take....unless you live near one of those places where that have "captive customers" and get in there to sell. I have a guy in West Texas who was doing 5-600 cords a year wholesale and by the cord...he now runs 3 parks and is looking for more and he will soon just do park wood....He has a big park near Austin and and that thing alone will do 50K this year....he did a contract with the friends group....he just dumps off full bags once a month or so and for 20% instead of 10% they fill the machines. One park can make that small time guy really good fishing money.

We only have 4 people here including me..... a well used F450, skid steer and splitter. We buy from local guys and have them split and put the wood in dino bags and then we go get them. One of my guys can do 200 bags a day....so it is only about a day and a half a week.... I have two routes that takes me about a day and a half to complete and we have guys in North Texas and East texas who are in the business who split, bag and fill machines too far for me to get to....they get 3 times what they would normally make and I still get a good by bag profit so we only do about 120 cords out of here. The rest of the time we are prototyping new types of machines. I have a UL certified 20lb propane bottle machine we are waiting on orders for from the big players in the exchange game, I just shipped off 3 machines to California to rent propane bottles and propane fire rings for the beaches (they are outlawing wood fires on the beach). Working on a Kayak and Paddle board kiosk to beta at a local park, a bike rental one for a guy in Wisconsin and a marine battery Kiosk for a big battery company to sell batteries after hours at marinas......The firewood sales pay the overhead plus some and was really only started to prove the business model ....and then got out of control.....When I retired from the Army I got bored.


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## KiwiBro

200 dino bags a day? Are you talking these bags?






That's one heck of a productive operation if so.

That said, I learned years ago firewood is a stay small or go big proposition. There's a huge, wide-open stretch of no-mans-land inbetween that will bleed even the best operators dry if they don't make it back or get across in time.


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## cantoo

KiwiBro, I think he is talking getting wood out of the dino bags and putting it into the smaller bags for the self vending machines. So one guy can bag up 200 smaller bags a day. The dino bags are just to dry and transport the splits to his site to small bag it.


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## KiwiBro

Thanks cantoo. I was looking forward to learning more about the operation that was producing 200 of those large bags of firewood a day. They'll be out there for sure and a great learning opportunity.

We don't have so much the parks wood niche market here but there is the wood-fired oven niche that pays a premium for certain woods. It's a profitable market but quite spread out. There is also the small bag/sack firewood market usually sold at coastal gas stations where the buyers are on their way to their weekend retreats and don't want to be messing with firewood themselves. It's a tough one to break into though. Would need to build up a good, tight area of such places to keep stocked while not clocking up too many largely unproductive miles doing deliveries.

The best I can work out for here is to either do firewood as a secondary (in downtime) product to a more profitable main business like milling/harvesting/tree work, or go very big and chase massive volumes of sales.


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## ChoppyChoppy

I can do around 400 bundles in a short day (~10hrs) if I wanted to do it that long. I usually get bored after a few hrs though.


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## T. Mainus

200 of those dino bags would be roughly 66 cord of wood give or take. Nobody can do that much in a day.


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## KiwiBro

T. Mainus said:


> 200 of those dino bags would be roughly 66 cord of wood give or take. Nobody can do that much in a day.


Running two shifts with some of the processors out there would give it a good nudge.


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## cantoo

Like everyone says "the easy part is the work, the hard part is getting paid and making money for the work".
We do sell campfire wood but prefer to sell it by the trailer load to the camp ground or to someone in the campground and they can resell or do whatever they want with it. I did build a shrink wrap wrapper a few years ago and it worked great however some idiot made a crazy offer for it and my daughter in law sold it to him. In the end selling it saved us a pile of work for a few dollars return. I told her I could make more money selling wrappers then I ever could selling camp fire wood.


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## Wood Doctor

cantoo said:


> Like everyone says "the easy part is the work, the hard part is getting paid and making money for the work".
> We do sell campfire wood but prefer to sell it by the trailer load to the camp ground or to someone in the campground and they can resell or do whatever they want with it. I did build a shrink wrap wrapper a few years ago and it worked great however some idiot made a crazy offer for it and my daughter in law sold it to him. In the end selling it saved us a pile of work for a few dollars return. I told her I could make more money selling wrappers then I ever could selling camp fire wood.


Even if you have a camp or park manager buying loads from you and reselling them out, it's not really big money -- especially working with the ones I deal with. They chisel you down like gangbusters. I've even had these guys try to buy on consignment, paying me only after all the bundles they hand out are sold. They hate paying C.O.D. And, they want me to deliver cutting and splitting scraps for free.

When it comes to campfire wood, it's actually more fun for me to deliver loads to a trailer park and talk to the customers who always pay on the spot without batting an eye. Sometimes they even throw in an extra ten bucks.


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## cantoo

Wood Doctor, we sell the wood to the park for the same price as winter heating wood. Only time we charge a little more is if someone buys a load and wants us to dump part of it at 2 or 3 different spots. We don't sell a lot but it's nice to make a few extra bucks before long weekends in the summer. I do split summer wood a little smaller but with my setup it doesn't take much more time splitting. We have gotten a few winter wood customers from the camp grounds too.


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## Cody

cantoo said:


> Wood Doctor, we sell the wood to the park for the same price as winter heating wood.



I've been contemplating this the last year or two, because I have just a regular box store type splitter so it does take me more time to split it small. I'm selling quality campfire wood though, and just settle on the $60 for a face cord. Either way it's the same work, and I still have to get the wood, whether it's a lesser quality or not. There's a guy that asked me to split wood for his smoker, with a firebox that's 14x18 by foot tall or so. I told him what a load of oak wood goes for, and that having to cut pieces 1' long, and then to split them to 2x4 size pieces or smaller, that it was going to be more work/time for me so I'd have to charge more. For some damn reason, he thinks I should charge less. Did I mention he wants little to no bark? I told him just use those pieces to get a fire started.


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## farmer steve

I've posted this before but my best money maker is selling in these bins. 1/4 cord +/- per bin. customer picks up. $60. dry,ready to burn. i try to keep my handling of wood to 4 times. a bin is the same amount as the rack of wood in the background.


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## rarefish383

Steve, I can make more money making bird and squirrel feeders out of those old crates, than I could make with the firewood in them. The artsy folks out of D.C. and Baltimore love them. Only problem, there is only so much distressed fence boards and siding out there, and it takes 30-50 years for it season right.


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## farmer steve

rarefish383 said:


> Steve, I can make more money making bird and squirrel feeders out of those old crates, than I could make with the firewood in them. The artsy folks out of D.C. and Baltimore love them. Only problem, there is only so much distressed fence boards and siding out there, and it takes 30-50 years for it season right.


i have tons of old barnwood stored in my barn Joe. i'm a hoarder.


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## muddstopper

rarefish383 said:


> Steve, I can make more money making bird and squirrel feeders out of those old crates, than I could make with the firewood in them. The artsy folks out of D.C. and Baltimore love them. Only problem, there is only so much distressed fence boards and siding out there, and it takes 30-50 years for it season right.


Aint them barnwood builders you see on TV some where in Virgina. You might want to look them up, watching them on tv, they go for the old logs and trash most of the boards. A road trip with a pickup truck and a trailer and you might get all the boards you ever need.


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## rarefish383

muddstopper said:


> Aint them barnwood builders you see on TV some where in Virgina. You might want to look them up, watching them on tv, they go for the old logs and trash most of the boards. A road trip with a pickup truck and a trailer and you might get all the boards you ever need.


I used to watch one of the log cabin guys on cable, I think they were based in WV. I get 1"X 6" Oak fence boards. I have a farmer friend that's slowly replacing the fences around 300 acres. So, for the foreseeable future I'm OK. I made some doors for a friend, two big sliders that make a set and two smaller sliders for single doors. I figured I had just about 60 8' boards in the doors. The big ones were 120 pounds each. The fresh cut 16 footers cost my farmer friend $8 each if she buys 100 at a time.


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## Ontario Firewood Resource

If you want to sell firewood to make money, bo big or go home


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## rarefish383

Dang, my volume is down and I have to get under the desk and unplug it so it can reboot. With my knees, I can't do it, have to wait for my son to get up. 13 minutes and I didn't see any firewood?

Welcome to the site, just messing with you.


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## Ontario Firewood Resource

rarefish383 said:


> Dang, my volume is down and I have to get under the desk and unplug it so it can reboot. With my knees, I can't do it, have to wait for my son to get up. 13 minutes and I didn't see any firewood?
> 
> Welcome to the site, just messing with you.


Thanks man, take a tour of my wood yard on my channel page. I have a nice setup, since its a narrow confined space, maybe a little over half an acre, I have to keep it organized by cleaning up the debris and having crates stacked three high


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## Ontario Firewood Resource

Out of the many firewood retailers I've seen, some sell bags which sell for more money than face or bush cords, but I noticed that not many at all sell smoker wood. I cry when I see guys putting hickory, sugar maple, red oak and cherry into their mixed firewood inventory. No one ever has apple, but of course they tend not to be forest trees cut and loaded onto pup trailers of course. Even mulberry sells.Smoker wood can sell for more than mixed hardwood and smoker wood bags can sell for more money than firewood bags! I make baseball sized chunks and sell for double the price of a regular firewood bag and everyone says its a good deal!


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## Ontario Firewood Resource

rarefish383 said:


> All you need to do is go to the Commercial Tree Care forum and it's like you walked into another world. Most tree guys want nothing to do with firewood.


Theres way more and easier money in tree cutting than firewood. Ok, tree cutters get free wood (so do I from them) butthat means a whole other set of medium or heavy equipment and lots more space than a small shop with up to a few trucks parked


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## rarefish383

We wanted nothing to do with it. We had a farmers market on the way home. This was in the 70's-80's. We sold him an F6oo 12'X 6'high chipper box almost every day for $50 a load. Back then $50 paid most of the fuel for the week, for a truck and chipper.


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