Been reading a few threads on splitting prices, It seems most folks will hire themselfs and their splitter out for around $50 hr. Some folks as low as $20 and some as high as $100 and some just aint going to do it at all. Most of those folks claim about a cord per hr, if true than thats about $50 a cord for splitting. And I assume the wood is already bucked, if not then they are getting $50prhr bucking and $50 prhr splitting. In converstaion with another member here on AS, he states he paid $70 hr for someone to bring their processor 2 hr drive to his site. the guy averaged about 3 or so cords hr, but that was with the customer supplying skid steers to keep the processor loaded. At any rate, that would be about $23 per cord to buck and split 3 cords of wood. That isnt paying anything to the customer for the use of his labor and personal equipment. Easy enough for me to see that I wouldnt tow my processor 2 hrs to process only 3 or 4 cords of wood. Member had 12 cord processed and if he wants to chime in, he can tell you what it cost him, but I think it was a reasonable price considering the drive time and amount of wood processed.
Now lets say you are in the firewood selling business and you have access to plenty of log length firewood. Just for example lets say you sell 12 cords a year average. Small time by many standards, but in line with what a lot of part time operators do. Guy comes and processes all your seasons worth of wood for $23x 12 cord=$276. Folks that amount of money wont even make a good down payment on a factory processor. Also it would take several years at that rate to even pay for owning a processor. Even if you averaged 1 cord splitting per hour for 12 hrs worth, if they figure their labor and machine rate at the Low end of $20 splitting for hire, it would cost them $240. Would you split all that wood yourself just to save $36. And if you figure your own splitting rates to be closer to the $50hr rate, it would be a lot cheaper for you to hire the wood split than do it yourself. Not to mention the time you loss that you could have been selling and delivering firewood. I think hiring someone with a processor to come out and split a selling season worth of firewood might make more sense that buying a processor and doing it yourself. Of course different size operations present different operating cost. But whether 12 cords or 100 cords a year, hiring someone to process your wood sure should be worth considering.
Lets take it one step farther. Last log truck load I bought cost me $400. I got about 8 cords so I paid $50 cord for unprocessed wood. ( to be fair, I think the logger has raised his prices to about $450 load now) I hire someone to process that wood at $70 hr and average $23cord processing fees, (numbers taken from about example). I would have $63 cord in my firewood, and I havent even had to touch it. I can sell that wood delivered for $200 cord, all I need is a truck, a little gas and my labor. Thats trippling my money with a little left over for operating cost. Being able to hire someone to process my product looks a little more profitable than scrounging wood and hauling it to my wood lot and then firing up the chainsaws to buck everything and then still having to split, load and deliver it before selling it.
Prices vary around the country, you might have to pay more than these numbers and you might be able to sell your processed wood at higher numbers also. The numbers I used are made up numbers just for these examples, but I think they do reflect a probable scenario that might fit certain areas around this country. I only posted this to support my position that processing for hire can be in demand if the situation is carefully considered and marketed properly. all you have to do is convince a firewood producer that he can make more money by hiring you to process his firewood rather than doing all the work himself.
