what do you do with logs?

[treeman82]

Hey fellas, this past weekend I had a guy out to one of my jobs with a 10 wheeler and a full size backhoe. His job was to remove a few stumps and get rid of some logs from 2 maple trees I took down. He wound up having to take the tailgate off his truck because these logs were so big. He loaded the truck up 2 times to where it was almost overflowing with logs. I had only cut up like 20 pieces of firewood, TOPS! and they were pretty small. The bulk of the logs ranged in size from 6' - 20'? I wound up dumping the logs at a guy's house who asked for hardwood logs a while back, he wasn't all too happy about those big pieces. The wood for the most part ranged in diameter from 8" - almost 40" in diameter. What do you guys do with all that wood? I have a couple more trees to remove at this one house which will produce another 3 10 wheelers full of wood.

 

[Nickrosis]

We lay them to the side in our yard and wait for Lance Wallace (www.lancerigging.com) to come and make them into lumber. We've replaced the floors of trailers and installed sheds with the lumber. One day, Lance went through a couple thousand board feet just from urban timber we saved for him - the value was pretty high because they were oak and other hardwoods.

Most of the wood furniture in our house is from trees that my dad has taken down. I think that's a pretty cool thing to pass down to your family (hint, hint, Dad...).

Nickrosis

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I have two guys that will take anything but willow. We can dump in thier drives.

As long as we can get them in the truck they will take the wood. Both will go out and pick it up if it is bucked down.

I have a buddy i work with who has a few "firewood guys" they come out and pick the bucked wood for free.

 

[FBerkel]

Whoops, couldn't delete, try next message :alien:

 

[FBerkel]

I have to admit, I'm lucky with the arrangement that's come about for me. There's a girl who lives on about 5 acres just outside town. Lets just say she's a few logs short of a cord. Also: not particularly attractive. Actually, not attractive at all. (This may seem a little cold, but hang on, it becomes relavent.)

Anyway, in an amazing coincidence, a few years ago my supervisor responded to an advert she placed for a room to rent. He got to talking with her about what he did for a living, and suggested that she mulch her trees with chips. She took the idea and ran with it: Somehow she got the idea in her (somewhat hollow) head that she could make all kinds of money if all the local tree companies brought her the wood they didn't want. So she went through the yellow pages and called us all up.

Next thing you know, she's sitting on hundreds of cords of unprocessed logs, including mainly 4 and 5 foot diameter cottonwood and willow logs. The big companies in town were abusing the privlege like there was no tomorow. We would at least buck it up for her. We named her "Money Girl", because she would always explain her brilliant plan by making the forefinger/thumb circle gesture, the one that indicates "everything's a-o.k.", and simple saying "money" with a deep, significant look in her eye.

I guess she started to figure out that it wasn't working about a year later. She had gigantic logs strewn all aover her place, and started to ask me if I could come over some time and cut them up for her, as if a guy could spend an afternoon and turn her pile into gold. I of course politely declined. She was still saying "money", still using the little hand gesture.

About a year later, after she'd cut off the large companies from dumping anymore, but was still allowing those who would buck their wood up to continue dumping, she went through a change in plans. The goal was still to make money, but the hand gesture had changed. (I will keep this as clean as I can): One day, the same supervisor returned from dumping a load, and reported that she was now, ahem, soliciting business without even a wink but with a rapid hand movement of a different sort. I thought he was imagining things, but sure enough, the next time I went out there, she did the same to me (gesture, that is; none of us has taken her up on the offer, as far as I know, anyway.) She even told me what her rate ($100) was, told me how she was making much more money than she had in the wood business. I feigned surprise. The weird thing is she would usually make the gesture in the midst of some innocent discussion such as where to dump the wood.

She still asks me to cut up her pile occasionally. (No, I'm a married man,not considering a trade), still comes out and waggles her hand at us. :blob4:

 

[Jumper]

Wood

Customers keep some for their stoves/furnaces/fireplaces. The good stuff my boss keeps for his place, and I taken a lot for my use as well, in fact the fireplace is on tonight.

The really junk, ie spruce, willow, pine, we put at the side of the road and I kid you not it is gone within 24 hours. Do not know who is burning it or for what (sugar camps maybe???) but it sure goes quick

I am not picky about firewood, I am burning Manitoba Maple tonight and it gives off good spark free heat, though obviously not as hot as oak for eg.

I was burning trash in the yard the other day and someone stopped and offered to buy some right on the spot. My boss has enough split for at least two years, so guess i should have sold it for him

 

[Nickrosis]

To me, it seems like firewood grades are overrated. I can imagine burning hardwood might be nice if you were relying on it for heat or to maintain a certain temperature, but if someone just wants the ambience and they have a screen or glass, softwood seems to work just fine.

What do you think? Isn't firewood firewood in most cases? A lot of our firewood customers make a big deal of it, and we just tell them that our wood comes from our business and contains the urban wood in our area. I basically just recite what's on our website: http://www.crawfordtree.com/services/seasoned_firewood.htm and people say, "Oh..." and stop asking questions.

So, we make lumber with high-grade logs, firewood with the stuff not good enough for lumber, chips with whatever fits in a Model 17 or 13, and tubgrind the huge pieces of willow and other butt logs. Once, we did use a big dumpster to clean out our yard of the pieces we didn't think were worth saving. I would like to see us reduce our landfilling to about one small dumpster every two weeks.

This reminds me... has anyone chipped into a dumpster and had the disposal service dump it at a customer's property? We've used it, and I would like to try it more often. I like outsourcing when you can use it appropriately and cost-effectively.

At school, we send logs to the wood products classes. The school only has one Model 7 chipper, so they are limited in the size of pieces they can take.

Nickrosis

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

All cleulose burns at the same temp somewhree ove 400F. It is the amount of water that will reduce the energy yeild, and the crappier woods will have a lower density. Dry willow burns like paper.

So the better woods have a higher energy potential in that they will burn longer.

I like the dumpster too. One thing you can do if you doo it more often is buy an old one so you no longer have rental fees just transport. You guys have a lot of storage space. Then you can start renting it while not in use......

 

[DDM]

Nick, I agree about the firewood but I cant seem to sell anything but hardwood in SC. I Wish i could have sold sweet gum
because theres no telling how much sweetgum and other soft woods ive burned up in a pit in the yard.Most people that call thats the first question they ask "this will be all hardwood wont it?" I burn sweetgum ect in my stoves.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Maybe classify it, Higher price for the oak,hickory... and a lower figure for "good softwoods"

I always thought softwood was timber talk for conifers, so you could say "Nope, no pine in my sales!"

 

[DDM]

Since we are speaking of firewood. There are several people in my area that
thats all they do is cut for firewood I mean with a chain saw and a pickup. If i were not getting paid to take the tree down paid to haul it away theres no way i'd spend the time to even split and stack it especially since a full size pickup load of oak only sells delivered for 75.00 and some of the firewood sellers will deliver for 65.00 a load. I dont see how they do it and we really dont have cold winters here.

 

[Nickrosis]

Originally posted by John Paul Sanborn
I like the dumpster too. One thing you can do if you doo it more often is buy an old one so you no longer have rental fees just transport.

It's not all about the money, though. It can be more convenient to have a dedicated trucking company do the trucking for you. It may be more expensive than the hourly wage of your driver, but when you consider the <i>potential</i> the driver could be earning while in a tree or behind a stump grinder, it can be cheaper.

This goes along with using flatbed tow trucks for moving loaders around for you through the night. If all your equipment was set up onsite at 7am, you could rock and roll all day and never use a company truck all day. For example, and we've done this, take a loader and a chipper and work all day using different attachments on the loader for grappling, grading, moving the chipper, etc. Now something we haven't tried would be combining this with a dumpster and having it hauled to customers for you.

At the end of the day, the tow truck could take your loader to the next job, and you could move the chipper with a pickup. The dumpster could be at the next job, and you're ready to keep rolling. I doubt this would be a viable business plan, but if your chipper truck broke down, it could be a great setup to keep the jobs moving. Problems I see with this would include more people that could be late and slow the system down. Also, more businesses would be trying to make a buck off this.

Rip it apart, I wanna see what other people think.

Nickrosis

 

[DDM]

Actually Nick, I like the idea of having the loader moved on a roll back especially for long hauls i know it would save wear and tear on the tow vehicle. Plus you wouldnt have to worry about an employee getting involved in a liabillity while towing a piece of heavy equipment. I usually haul in the loader when needed the evening beforeand pick it up when conveinient
Because i dont need it every day but that idea might pay off.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Many clients ask me what I do with the chips and logs that I generate. I turn and look at them, with all seriousness, and tell them that I dump them in client's yards who don't pay me. I trade out dump fees. They alwasy get a paniced look and then I smile and wink

There is a guy in town who buys my softwood trunks. He turns them round and makes log houses and poles for Timber Lodge Steakhouse and the like.

When I have good wood I have a buddy mill it into lumber. This summer I'm going to fence my backyard with white and burr oak that was milled about 18 months ago. For me, it will be the cheapest way to fence in the yard. In the end, it will be a fence that is worth more than any cedar fence. Some of the oak is high grade stuff.

My book shleves are overflowing so I just started to get the wood together for some new shelves in my office. I have some ash that will get cut and planed. There is a good feeling when I know that I saved the wood from becoming chips or firewood.

Last month I cut down a buckthorn and had the trunk milled to 5/8" boards. That wood is stickered on my front porch. It should make pretty picture frames or boxes. I had the wood milled with the bark on. I like to use that wood for shelving. The wild edge looks more like trees than the square edges of lumber.

The rest of the good wood goes to the nursery where I park my trucks. I give them the wood because they are pretty good to me. They are always there to pull me out of the snow or mud, depending on the season.

The dregs go into a pile which has become a wildlife refuge of sorts. Woodchuck and rabbits like the protection. In the next year or so the nursery will become a housing project. I'm hoping that I can just walk away from the dregs. When they clear the land, they'll have a lot of other debris to dispose of. Like Arlo Guthrie wrote in "Alice's Restaurant", it makes more sense having one big pile of garbage than two small ones.

Tom

 

[Jumper]

The comments about value of firewood sparked memories of what people use out in the interior of BC, which is almost exclusively pine (Lodgepole mainly I think). That is all my uncle burned in his furnace for years because that is all that was readlily available. Those hunks when they got going looked like they were dripping hot tar. Had to watch the creosote buildup in the flue and chiminey though. People back east are spoiled when it comes to wood, me included. I used to give away all the birch that was cut for me from my aunts farm, and keep only the maple and ash.

 

[Nickrosis]

It's interesting that we were just talking about the Rhamnaceae family today in class. My professor said he had not seen buckthorn that big...I have some stories to tell him! What's the largest buckthorn you have ever seen? Defined as a contiguous clump...measured at 12" above groud for comparison sake.

Yesterday, I was just talking to a friend about how pretty the wood is. Does the smell go away after a while? I wonder if there's a market for the stuff...

Nickrosis

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

The smell stays, but it looks pretty. I've sold a litttle of it. I want to get a bandsaw so I can saw small logs up.

I had an 18 inch section I tried to turn a half of, but it checkked up too fast. Hated the smell too.

BTW, 'bout the dumpster, I was saying own the dumpster and have a private roll-off hauler transport and dump it. I think it wouild be perfect for big removals and when working large properties. Dontcha hate it when in the middle of a job someone has to stop and haul a load to Minors or Mega Dicount Nurseries!

 

[Stumper]

I have a guy in my area who is the only truly successful firewwod retailer I have ever met. He buys my firewood from me wholesale. He even will pick it up at the job site if a cord or more is involved. Saves a lot of handling for me!