how many cords per truck load?

[SwampDonkey]

Since we were on the subject of red pine, there is one adjustment to the specific gravity of red pine figures in the Wood Handbook. Those figures are from 1978 keep in mind. It was brought to our attention that the specific gravity of red pine at 12% is not 0.46, but is 0.44. The published 0.46 is oven dry red pine. You know how sticky some professors can be with numbers and rounding and units and all that jazz. 

You'll notice that jack and red (being both hard pine) have similar numbers for specific gravity and lb/cu ft @ 12 % MC. Red is a lot heavier green though. Jack tends to grow in sand based soils around here. Red grows in red clay based soil around here.

[barbender]

Thompsontimber- I know that wood down your way is heavy, after running #102,000 loads of light wood up here, and then going down to Georgia and seeing the #80,000 loads go by, it looked like they only had half a load on!

[barbender]

 Up here the Red Pine and Jack Pine both tend to grow on sand, White Pine seems to do better in clayey soils. I've never hauled Jack Pine, hauled a load of big White Pine saw logs one time, they were light. It's pretty surprising how much the weight varies among just one species, I've been hauled aspen off of 4 or 5 different jobs this winter, the first 4 seemed about the same, this last one the aspen is a lot heavier. I'd venture a guess of #200 per cord heavier, just seems to have more moisture in it. You can see it in the log ends, the drier stuff looks kind of fuzzy, the wet stuff is a cleaner cut. This is all in frozen winter wood. I like Gary's theory, "a more uniform way of screwing the logger" I'd have to agree, but I guess I can't see the scalers at Sappi trying to keep up with all the trucks stick scaling. The lines get long enough as it is

[thompsontimber]

We are plenty jealous of those high weight allowances down here too barbender.  In big timber you really gotta be careful, can look like you don't have anything on but be overweight.  And those weigh men seem to sit around like snipers waiting for the kill around certain mills, and the overweight fines are plenty stiff.  Best to have on-board scales or scales in the woods, but with that added expense most folks get by with just guessing and trying not to press their luck.  Had our fair share that looked half loaded only to cross the scales at 95+ though.

[SwampDonkey]

We only find wild red pine here on clay soil high in iron (red soil). Even if there is some glacial till veneered near the surface of the soil profile it will be heavy clay underneath. Roads will have ruts as deep as a truck tire will allow on those types of roads in the wet season. Those areas occur along the Tobique watershed and down around Rusagonis and Salmon River if I recall. The range map shows it all over the province, but that's simply not fact. Sure it's been planted all over. I see in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence region it prefers sandy or gravelly soil. The soil where it grows here does have a lot of gravel mixed in the clay in places. But it's still a sticky soil that turns to snot when it gets wet. I've never recalled red mixed with jack pine, but I have seen it mixed with black spruce along the Waspske (part of Tobique watershed) on the Stewart Plain Reserve. I've been in vast jack pine forest and never another pine except white pine.

[barbender]

I'd love to see your country someday SD, I've never made it to the northeast (I guess you'd be southeast in Canada ) Red, Jack and white pine often grow together around here on sandy soil. On our property, which is a very fine grained sand, you will find all three. Plus balsam, white spruce, paper birch, bigtooth and quaking aspen, red and bur oak, soft maple, basswood, ironwood, and one lone white cedar. This is all natural regen after a forest fire I think. I know there was a big fire here years ago, you can still see huge old charred stumps. I just don't know if it was logged once in between now and then.

[SwampDonkey]

Well, there's room for one more I guess.