He really thinks that paying $80 per cord would cut into how much money he makes.
His processor lets him turn logs into firewood stacked on the truck ready to deliver at a rate of 1 cord an hour. His truck and trailer haul five cords. He could realistically put out a full load delivered each day, grossing $1125, with a log cost of $400. That leaves him $725 to cut, split, and deliver. Right now he works at least two 12hr days to sell the same amount of firewood. $1125 gross in two days vs. $1450 and probably only 10hr days at that. Once you start to add in the cost of his log trailer, winch, saws and assorted for felling, extra miles on the truck, wear on his body, he is realistically making less than half what he could.
Add in that he has a yard available to him in town to sell to people that want to haul their own, and has customers that are willing to buy the wood dumped loose, and he could really ramp up the volume.
We'll see though, he had a logger approach him with an offer to sell him some decent logs for a really good deal, he was slammed with orders and bought 8 truckloads (80 cords) he processed all of it and delivered it in less than a month, I think the light is dawning on him now, buying those logs let him reach 240 cords sold last year.
Anyway, point being that the splitting part really is only a small portion of making firewood.
