Need some help with the estimated labor cost on firewood business

[annasun]

I am considering a potential firewood business at the moment. Could someone please tell me your experience about the hours you will need to put in to produce one cord of firewood? For example based on 8 hours working time, how many tons of logs one man can cut by using chainsaw to felling, limbing, and cutting into 8 feet length? And how many cords of firewood can two man produce by using log splitter to process the already cut 8 feet length logs? The working site is flat to medium slope, trees are 30 years old gum trees.

Any advice would be helpful, thanks!

 

[svk]

The answers to all of your questions can be very subjective based on the experience level of your employees, the equipment you are using, the size of wood you are processing, and so on.

Do you have much personal experience musing firewood?

 

[Brushwacker]

Working alone at a safe modest pace i figure for 1 4X8'x16" row : 1 hour average cutting into length oak,limbing and felling included.
Splitting with fiskars axe and maul to about 4 to 5 diameter avg. Another hour
Loading,stacking and most all else leading up to leaving the woods with aload that size about another hour , so 3 hours and 1/3 cord medium average splits ready to deliver or stockpile.
Example of varables: felling reasonably straight cherry trees in to a field, not stacking or cleaning up the brush probably about 1/2 the time not getting in a big hurry. In a dense woods clearing brush to make a road to the firewood tree can add from a little to days time to the load. 2 people working as a team are easily capable of producing 3 times what 1 can do. Hire someone lazy and they might take the whole day to make 1/3 cord or less.
The best profit in firewood is when it is a by product of other work you are getting paid for.

 

[annasun]

The answers to all of your questions can be very subjective based on the experience level of your employees, the equipment you are using, the size of wood you are processing, and so on.

Do you have much personal experience musing firewood?

Thanks or your reply. I have no personal experience in this area I am new to this. I have a piece of forest I want to cut, I am trying to figure out the cost and potential profit. There are also forest harvesting service companies to do all the work and buy off the logs. But it seems they charge a lot and about at least 60% of the logs will be used for cover up the their charge.

 

[svk]

Honestly you’d probably be better off selling the logs than you would be trying to pay people to make firewood.

I would suggest talking to several of the harvesting companies to get some quotes of what you might expect to gain from logging. Even after they are done harvesting and you have a check in your pocket, you could then produce firewood with what’s left.

 

[Jethro 2t sniffer]

Another thing to keep in mind is bluegum can be a real bear to split. But rip into it I'm very jealous of your opportunity.

 

[DSW]

The weekly I'm getting into the firewood biz thread.

 

[Capitalist]

My brother and I on our best day would cut split and haul about 6 chord of 6-30" red oak.

It was not realistic to expect every day and that was a 12 hour day.

After a while joints would starrt aching to no end.

I think as the first responder said it would depend the guy and type of wood.

I have never seen a hydraulic splitter that was cost effective (fast enough) to compete with a good strong back and a guy that knew how to use a maul.

Personally I would focus on selling at family owned gas stations and stores off commission by the bundle to increase profit per log.

I will be doing a little firewood this year to keep my guy busy because he is very important to me.

Normally I wouldnt dream of even bothering with it, but this guy is the best worker I ever had with me and I want to keep him on forever.

I wish you the best of luck and I hope it is worth your effort. Have a great weekend

 

[Capitalist]

Also just to avoid breakdown of human resources.... Rotate the work.

My brother was a jerk and he would pretty much do what was easiest. That meant I was splitting and loading almost the entire time and splitting while he was hauling.

A human body can only take so much lol

 

[Deleted member 117362]

Owner of Great Lakes Tree Removal, drops them, looks for saw logs to sell or run through his band saw mill, chips them and sells to co-generation company, grinds or removes stumps with excavator. Point is, if he can make money doing something he will, but says no to selling firewood, too labor intensive.

 

[Capitalist]

Owner of Great Lakes Tree Removal, drops them, looks for saw logs to sell or run through his band saw mill, chips them and sells to co-generation company, grinds or removes stumps with excavator. Point is, if he can make money doing something he will, but says no to selling firewood, too labor intensive.

Amen to that.
Any job that requires a pickup and a saw and a maul is gonna take the toughest of the tough to earn a living at.

Any low investment production career will beat a person into the dirt.

Trucking
Concrete flatwork
Landscaping/lawn care
Lots of dirtwork jobs
Utility location

I could go on forever.
This is exactly why I realized from the start that I was doomed unless I could take down the big nasty trees with high liability under them. This immediately gave me something I could do that the wannabes with a pickup and a polesaw couldn't dream of.

The biggest part of modern day small business is balls and insurance.

 

[farmer steve]

The weekly I'm getting into the firewood biz thread.

Happens every winter.

 

[square1]

3~4 hours from standing to split & stacked 4' x 8' x 16" that will sell for between $50 & $65. I'm old and can no longer manage that for 6~8 hours.
That's $12.50 - $22 per hour before expenses. I've spent many years streamlining small scale firewood production. I'm old (maybe wise, maybe not) and will not work that hard for that pay.
I do firewood for the exercise and to be outdoors.

 

[Patrick62]

things will be different in NZ.
Here, I can not find "good help" now. Helpers are very hard on your equipment.
You won't be able to charge enough to cover the expenses. You will be working for practically nothing to make up the difference.

Go read that thread "how much should you make doing firewood" where by I am trying to figure out if there is a way that I can actually turn a profit.

 

[Del_]

Not to mention the liability you acquire shall one of your workers get injured. There are people out there just looking for making a claim on workman's comp. You not being experienced you're going to have a very difficult time telling who knows what they're doing. It's a losing proposition.

 

[Patrick62]

The answer I had, was everyone was a "independant contractor". Let them get their own coverage!
The insurance rep I talked to once told me I should have a umbrella policy that would cover the whole operation... Oh? What do you think that would cost? She came up with a quote...
I said, that would be interesting. We'd be covered and insured (chainsaws and splitters are dangerous) but Y'all are now working for free. All the income goes to insurance policy.

 

[ktmtigger]

One guy with perfect trees a saw and a super split you can make money. Anything not perfect and it's costing you more than you can make. Firewood outside of a processor is a losing battle. Started when I was 10 years old or younger and haven't really ever gotten rich from it

Sent from my E6910 using Tapatalk

 

[SamT1]

I can cut, axe split and stack a 4x8x2’ or whatever length stack every hour by myself. Once I hit 3 cords in a day im done. May have some energy later in the day to go deliver though.
The problem is anyone that can do it won’t work for you. If you can split good the barrier to entry is crazy low for a man with a pickup. $400 used 440, $50 fiskars, bum a trailer. Hydro splitter is too slow, worthless in 24”. (Not sure about your gum wood) The only way you find help is loaders, you cut and split and they just load/stack. If I can get my wife to help she can load a cord almost as fast as I can cut and split it if I just cut off fuel consumption and let her throw it. I prefer to stack it, going off fuel I’ve got some huge stacks before and some barely ok ones. The new M tronic saw seems a lot more consistent though so it has me rethinking.

But a guy near me has a model that may work for you. He has a business front that does lots of things. He sells firewood out front. Pickup yourself, load your self. Reasonable price, but the wood generally sucks (short stack and small pieces) He pays any crackhead that will show up with wood for the wood. Helps them locate a place to cut. He has a hydro splitter they can use on his yard. They get cash on the spot and he gets wood. I donno what he pays them, but he never touches the wood. He just has some money he spends paying them that he probably won’t recover for 6-8 months.