Firewood vending machine

[havsawwilltravl]

I just bought two of them from a guy that has been operating them for about 10 years. I plan on making some changes but felt I had to buy them to take his idea and run with it. He hooked a pager system up that buzzed him every time someone bought a bundle, through that he learned that people usually bought two bundles then three and a single bundle was third on the list. He said on Sat and Sun mornings he would replace 100 bundles in a few of these machines (He had ten). These were State parks in Iowa.

Mine are built into shipping containers with the conveyers mounted on the side so there's room for 10 pallets of bundles beside the conveyers, I should only need to drive a truck for restocking when the pallets run out, otherwise you could ride your bike to restock them. I'm probably going to sell 40 litre bags of wood (about 1.5 cu. ft.) for $10 and do the bagging in the Winter when I have time, then I'll just have to do the stocking in the Summer. We have a lot of Ski condos in this area that might be a Winter business.

I'm planning to put a hooklift setup under mine so I can hire the dumpster guys to move them, a solar panel to charge the 24 volt electronics, and I'm also looking into a system that the candy venders use called a Cantelope system that allows you to track how many bundles were sold, if there was a jamb, time of purchases etc. all available online 24/7. That would be valuable if you had some of these things scattered about, you'd know which ones needed restocking at any given time.

Good luck to you, the guy in Tahoe has a cool machine but can't get his company off the ground, even if he did they'd be $15 to $20 grand, the trailer ones for 10k look OK to me.

 

[woodspltr]

Did he give you any idea of how big the parks were that used the 100 bundles a day? Trying to get an idea of what the sales would be per campsite. Seems like it would be at least 50% would have a fire each night. I'm sure it would vary with the type of sites (more for a rustic and less for one that had a lot of moter homes).

 

[havsawwilltravl]

Did he give you any idea of how big the parks were that used the 100 bundles a day? Trying to get an idea of what the sales would be per campsite. Seems like it would be at least 50% would have a fire each night. I'm sure it would vary with the type of sites (more for a rustic and less for one that had a lot of moter homes).

The park I went to this Winter was about a 100 RV spaces and some tent sites plus the day use crowd. The park wasn't maintained at all in the off season so we had to walk through the snow to look at the vending bin. When we got to it, there was fresh tracks of someone who had trudged through the knee deep snow and bought some wood, he pulled about $50 out of the bill taker just from Winter passers that month. If half of the users in that campground bought the 2 bundle average then the 100 bundles a night use seems about right.

I also talked to a campground host a few weeks ago that sells boxes of firewood for $6 during his business hours. He said they sell a lot of those 1 cubic ft. bundles during the season.

 

[mikefw]

If you had a site that did 100 a night for 24 nights (12 weeks Friday and Saturday) and another 100 for the rest of the week you would sell 4800 bundles a summer. Actually would be more if you included spring and fall.

10K for the machine at a 1 a bundle pay off gives you two years to pay for the machine. If you got it in early spring it would be paid off in fall of the next year, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Sure would beat trying to hire someone to sit there.

 

[Wood Doctor]

Any Droids Around?

If you had a site that did 100 a night for 24 nights (12 weeks Friday and Saturday) and another 100 for the rest of the week you would sell 4800 bundles a summer. Actually would be more if you included spring and fall.

10K for the machine at a 1 a bundle pay off gives you two years to pay for the machine. If you got it in early spring it would be paid off in fall of the next year, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Sure would beat trying to hire someone to sit there.

4800 bundles in one spring/summer by one merchant? And who is going to buy all the wrapping materials and wrap up all the bundles the same size?

I can't seem to find any "droids" around here to volunteer.

 

[havsawwilltravl]

I bought a bundler from Hudson forest products that is a manual crank instead of electric, so it's probably slower than some of the electric ones, and I can still do a bundle a minute with it for an hour. I don't think I would want to do it all day long but it would be easy to do a hundred bundles and deliver them by 10 oclock on a Saturday morning. Pulling $500 in cash out of the machine seems like a decent reward for a morning or evening shot in the a$$.

Plastic wrap runs .007 cents a foot and uses about 15 foot per bundle so it costs about a dime to wrap a wood bundle or $480 to front the material for a Summers worth of shrink wrap. My droid is the neighbors kid that I'll pay .50/bundle to wrap and load the bundles for me and I'll do the delivery/ collection myself.

 

[woodspltr]

.50 per bundle X 60 hour= $30.00/hr.

Where do I sign up my kid? Heck where do I sign up?

 

[havsawwilltravl]

.50 per bundle X 60 hour= $30.00/hr.

Where do I sign up my kid? Heck where do I sign up?

!!!!! whoa maybe I fouled up the math. I should pay him a quarter to start.

 

[mikefw]

Overall the idea sounds good to me. I you load 50 bundles at a time at $5 you make $250 per trip. The machines calls you when it is running low. If you loaded it once on Friday and once on Saturday and then one more time during the week you are at $750 a week. That would be some real nice pocket change.

 

[Dalmatian90]

Another thought popped into my head:

I think there's a substantial "regulatory risk" that folks selling wood this way will, within 10 years, be required to be kiln-dried to kill any potential bugs.

Might be worth running the numbers both with and without a kiln to make sure you wouldn't go belly up if required to get a kiln in the future.

 

[Curlycherry1]

Another thought popped into my head:

I think there's a substantial "regulatory risk" that folks selling wood this way will, within 10 years, be required to be kiln-dried to kill any potential bugs.

Around here kiln dried is becomming the standard. I have been checking the packets of wood I see at KwikiMarts and gas stations and I have seen 10 different suppliers and all of them are "DNR Approved" or kiln dried. I am not sure what DNR Approved means but every package of firewood has a label that says it on the label. A coworker that goes boyscout camping nearly every weekend says they can only bring DNR Approved wood with them.

The local gas stations I frequent says they really blow through the wood during the weekends on good camping days.

 

[redprospector]

Another thought popped into my head:

I think there's a substantial "regulatory risk" that folks selling wood this way will, within 10 years, be required to be kiln-dried to kill any potential bugs.

Might be worth running the numbers both with and without a kiln to make sure you wouldn't go belly up if required to get a kiln in the future.

If they required the wood to be kiln dried the price would have to go up to compensate for the extra expense. That's one of the reasons that a new pickup truck dosen't cost less than 10 grand anymore. Government regulations.
I think these vending machines are a pretty good idea. The cost of the machine would be covered in short order just by not having to pay someone to sit with the wood & collect money.
Only problem with it here is that the Forest Service own's all the camp grounds and contracts them out to companies to run them. FS takes bids on supplying all of the campgrounds, and it goes pretty cheap (last I checked under $2 a bundle).

Andy

 

[treemandan]

My dad owns a campground and we have used a honor system for many years and it has worked for us. The rack we have measures 18" X 18". What ever the camper can stack inside this opening is his. We cut our wood in 16" lengths.

That dispenser system. I'm certain there are areas that theft is more of an issue than other parks but the pay back for our 100 sight park would be way too long.

Tom

I agree, I mess with a lot of people but I would NEVER mess with someone who owns a campground... no offense.

This firewood #### has gotten way out of hand. Firewood wrapped in plastic? How droll, how so literally droll. The first time I ever saw one of those machines was back in 1989, I had taken a pretty large dose of LSD and there it was. It chased me up the street and tried to eat me.
Now you might wonder about me but it is I who wonder about people who wrap firewood in plastic and I certainly wonder about the people who would buy it. If you really want to sell firewood why don't you hire Willy Mays Hays to do a commercial for you?

 

[Circle B MN]

Around here kiln dried is becomming the standard. I have been checking the packets of wood I see at KwikiMarts and gas stations and I have seen 10 different suppliers and all of them are "DNR Approved" or kiln dried. I am not sure what DNR Approved means but every package of firewood has a label that says it on the label. A coworker that goes boyscout camping nearly every weekend says they can only bring DNR Approved wood with them.

The local gas stations I frequent says they really blow through the wood during the weekends on good camping days.

I looked in to the DNR approved wood program recently here in MN. There is an application on the DNR website. You fill in your info, then check yes or no if you could supply 2000 bundles a year to the local state parks, you also check off all the state parks within 100 miles. Take this down to your local DNR office, they ask about your product, it's source, etc. Give you a pep talk, and rubber stamp your form. You give a copy to any one that buys your wood. I imagine a random site inspection could be expected, but other than that there is no mention of fees or further action. For the time being I have chosen not to participate as I don't care to be on a list available to the public. I prefer to turn my firewood business off and on as I care to.

 

[havsawwilltravl]

Just got my vending machines this am, now I just have to start learning how to make them work. http://sawmillexchange.com/Photo_10841.jpg

 

[woodspltr]

Do they take coins? or just paper money?

 

[havsawwilltravl]

$1's $2's and $5's presently. I'll probably finish the Summer as is and then convert them to vend bigger bundles for $10's and $20's or credit/debit cards.

 

[woodspltr]

So what sort of return on your investment do you expect? How long to pay them off?

 

[havsawwilltravl]

So what sort of return on your investment do you expect? How long to pay them off?

I really don't know, I bought 2 of them to experiment with and if they work I'd like to have 10 or 12 that sell 100 big $10 bundles a wk. on average for the Summer. They could pay themselves off the first year or....watch for my name in the classifieds.

 

[mikefw]

Interested in how you make out. I'm going to go ahead an order one of The Firewood Express units. Have a location where I should sell between 50 and 150 bundles a week year around. If it does what I think then I will get a couple of more.