There's no money in selling firewood

[ropensaddle]

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>

 

[BuddhaKat]

" 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.

 

[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

 

[hunter0182]

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

 

[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

 

[hunter0182]

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:

 

[Jester4736w]

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.

 

[davidbradley360]

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]

 

[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".

 

[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.

 

[Dirtboy]

Splitting by hand?


Is your truck human powered, too?

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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[John R]

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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[sb47]

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

Why would I do that?

 

[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.

 

[CRThomas]

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

 

[sb47]

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.