The log market is in the toilet

[dsgsr]

Anyone else ever see it this bad? Most everything has been shut off. No poplar,spruce,Pine. I've got a truck load of poplar/hardwood pulp and no one wants it.

David

[Kodiakmac]

Gee, and I thought with all our mills closed up here, I could haul it South!!

Seriously though...logging is going the same way so many other North American Industries are going...and farming is next on the list.  Siberia and Brazil must rub their hands in glee every time our legislatures add another regulatory bump to our continental playing fields.

For the time being - in these parts - you can still make a few bucks peddling firewood in our cities, but some urban centers have already outlawed wood burning because of the g-house gas nonsense - and the rest will probably follow suit.   

Hey, anybody got some good news?

[LeeB]

I woke up today still sucking air. That's always good news to me.

[Ron Wenrich]

I think things are moving along pretty well.  Since the beginning of the year i know we moved at least 10 trailerloads of sawlogs and veneer.  We just loaded one load of birch on a trailer bound for Canada.  We also loaded a container load of 10/4 white oak and white oak veneer logs.  Another veneer buyer came in and bought 3 loads of tulip poplar veneer, and we have another buyer that is buying #2 grade tulip poplar for New York right on the landing.  I think there was also a load or two of pulpwood.

At the mill, I sawed 2 loads of 8/4 ash, and have been working on loads of 4/4 and 8/4 tulip poplar this week.  The tie buyer came in, but I didn't have anything cut for him.  We also sent out 3 loads of pallet cants.  We also took a trailerload of firewood out.

At the beginning of the month we had a lumber buyer come back into the market looking for red oak, tulip poplar and ash.  We also had a Canadian lumber buyer drop by that was looking for 8/4 ash and red oak.  He didn't like our ash. 

We work one 2 man crew in the woods full time, and there is another crew that runs hit-or-miss, mostly miss.  They are cutting with a chainsaw and using a grapple skidder.  The cutter is 65 years old.  There are 3 truck drivers, and they buck and load the logs.  We also have a couple of part time drivers that come around when needed.

I'm not going to pretend that the prices are great, but if we're finding the markets, why can't anyone else?  One thing that helps us out is that we have decent timber quality, and everyone else has hung it up or scaled back.  That's leaving a hole in the supply chain.  Usually you can't move pallet stock in a recession.  We haven't had a problem, and pallet shops are looking for supply.

Things were bad in December, but I think they have rebounded quite well.  I'm amazed at how much stock has moved, considering the hype of us being in a really bad recession.  Someone is using the wood or at least stock piling it. 

Why can we move stock and others can't? 

[Papa1stuff]

You tell us

[dsgsr]

Well, I was working on a load of hi-grade poplar/aspen Bigtooth & quaking, got about 5-6 cord of 28' ers , good clear and straight and about 4-5 cord of poplar tops for hardwood pulp. Now with no market I may have too sell it as one load of Bio-mass/hog fuel unless I can find someone interested in the good logs for milling. Some of the butts would be good for veneer but not enough too mess with cutting them up and all, because of the price difference. Not many sawmills buying in this area.

David

[Cedarman]

We have had more inquiries on cedar than I can remember.  Still selling a lot of small orders.  If 1/3 the quotes come through we will be very busy this year.  Our cedar prices have stayed the same.    Just made a quote for 1000 sq ft of T&G for Germany.  Amazing the number of people looking.  Am sending an order to Pa next week and Georgia also.

 we did 8 loads mulch in Dec of 07, did 33 this past year.  Did 10 loads in Jan last year.  Sent out load 30 today and have 10 scheduled for next week and will them if weather permits. 

Last year was our best year according to the amount I will have to pay Uncle Sam and Mitch(Indiana's gov)

[Rick Alger]

Things are slow in NH. Hardwood pulp is not moving, Softwood is tickets only. Saw logs have dropped $20 to $40 per mbf.

[Maineloggerkid]

The price I am getting has dropped almost in half on a lot of things. Maineis in a real bad spot for the logging industry right now. The mills have to much wood coming in and nowhere nera enough going out. I have a friend that runs a loader at chester forest products, and they have/had 52,000 cord of hardwood piled up about the middle of december. Even the big companies were down for like a month at christmas time.

[SwampDonkey]

I see Frasers had to shut off a mill up in Ashland. They have two mills here also shut off, but they are investing in cogeneration at those saw mills. Frasers is one of our home grown forest companies that isn't about to jump ship like the Fins or Japanese outfits. Those mills will be up and running again. They have been spending on upgrades at their pulp mill in Edmundston this year as well.

[Onthesauk]

Our mill in town has stayed open, I think primarily because they built a cogen plant a couple of years ago and dramatically cut their costs.  The one thing I do notice is that they seem to be getting higher grade logs going in there, stuff that a year ago probably went for export.  Changing markets.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Our closest and best paying aspen pulp mill has been shut down since november. And now Smurfit-stone is taking bankruptcy so it looks as though the mill may never reopen.

Hardwood veneer and sawlogs are about 1/2 of what they have been in the past, and not looking good anytime soon. Over the last year probably 1/3 - 1/2 of the local loggers have folded up their business, which is good for the remaining few because the mills still need a few logs.
Even then some of the mills were running 2-3 shifts a day and now are running 1 shift only a few days a week.

There is a lot less work going on in the woods thats for sure.

[SwampDonkey]

Smurfit  folded up in Bathurst a few years ago along with many other foreign mills that followed. The mill was old and they weren't going to invest into upgrades, it was an unprofitable mill they said. It was there for 90 years, someone made money. I guess it still didn't help their bottom line or please the big wigs in the long run, take your pick. Funny these foreign outfits look to local government to invest tax dollars and they won't invest their own money. I say let them sink, some day we won't be buying their product. Already, in the last few years local run pulp/paper mills have displaced products from foreign outfits. Go buy toilet or nose tissue and it's Irving Tissue all over the shelf under many brands. Lumber in Home Depot, is J D Irving. In the local lumber yards it's Fraser, Crabbe Lumber, JDI. Finally, people are waking up.

[Corley5]

Maple sawlogs have been trending down but are still moving.  Basswood grade logs actually went up 20 bucks a thousand    Hardwood pulp isn't moving if you don't have a quota with a mill and some of those have been reduced dramatically.  One guy I know was sending 10 loads a month to Da UP and now is limited to 3.  Firewood is HOT if you can find seasoned to process.  I ran out of my own wood and just bought my second train load of seasoned pulp and have another coming this week with another for next week  It's good to have connections in the industry    Most firewood suppliers ran out of seasoned wood shortly after the New Year.  I've been running the processor daily and have orders come in every day just from word of mouth and returning clients.  I couldn't keep up if I was running ads.  Long, cold, snowy winters are good for something    The snow depth in the woods makes it pretty hard to navigate carrying a chainsaw right now anyway.  I may get caught up with wood tomorrow and will break some trails so I can cut timber this week but if the firewood orders continue it's a lot easier way to make dollars right now than trudging through a## deep snow     

[Frickman]

We're like Ron W., still moving alot of wood. I've been getting alot of inquiries about logs and lumber. It seems that everyone else has shut down or cut back so much that there is noone still operating enough to fill orders. Imagine that, mills shut down because of no orders so their customers come my way.

[thompsontimber]

Things are worse than I have ever seen before around here, and based on my numerous conversations with others in the industry around here, its not simply due to my age.  It is as bad as it has ever been.  Pine pulpwood is shut down, no one taking any anywhere.  We are moving some for shavings, but now that market is starting to tighten as no one will take it for pulp and they are flooding the shaving market.  Both of my pine log markets cut prices $4.00/Ton this week. They are still accepting the logs at the reduced price, but of course you can't move the pulpwood on those tracts.  Oak lumber has stopped too, and my primary hardwood sawtimber market is completely full.  I've had my guys in primarily pine and hardwood pulp for the past month and hadn't sold any oak logs since before Christmas.  Things looked bad then, but got no word that we weren't gonna be able to sell logs.  Prices had fell, but not in an overly dramatic fashion. Then on Wednesday I sent a load of mixed red oak, white oak, and yellow-poplar--big mistake.  They didn't want to unload it, but did...told us to bring no more, they were full.  Got the check and my jaw hit the floor.  They paid me $253.82/MBF on the load.  These were quality oak/poplar saw logs, not pallet stock.  The same load would have easily done $350-400/MBF a month ago.  Feel like I've had it broke off in me, that's for sure.  I have another load to send but we are just gonna let it set there.  Unlike what some others on here are saying about their areas, here hardwood pulp is wide open and with good prices.  Unfortunately, hard to find tracts of pure hardwood pulp with no sawtimber and no pine.  Can't afford to cut sawlogs, even if someone will take them.  Pallet logs here are stagnant and basically worthless.  I can sell them, but it brings more for pulpwoood.  I sent a load two weeks ago and it brought $6.50/Tn less than it would have for pulp.  I went to the mill and complained, and he said he couldn't afford to saw it right now, and that was the best he could do, really couldn't afford to pay as much as he is paying.  I corrected him and pointed out that he could indeed to afford to buy them for that price.  He could unload people's trucks, reload it on his and haul it 5 miles up the road to the pulp mill for an additional $6.50 without ever sawing a bit.  He paid me the difference to make it the same as a load of pulp, and needless to say no pallet logs are being cut out.  When you can't sell anything, or what little you can sell is at a loss, its a downhill business.  Things can't continue like this for long around here or the already thin logging resource is gonna get thinned out a lot more.  

[thompsontimber]

Hey Ron and Frickman, you oughta be able to buy plenty of lumber cheap from down here in the Carolinas!  Might be cheaper to buy and ship up there than to saw your own.

[Frickman]

I don't need to go to the Carolinas to buy timber. I have people calling me left and right to come cut their timber. I had one call out of the blue this evening with over one hundred acres two counties away. They said that someone else looked at in October and never came back. I haven't seen it, but I can probably move just about any of it somewhere for some price. Like Ron W. said, I don't like all the prices I'm getting but the product is still moving. I'm still making just as much money because my stumpage price reflects the market. I explain this to the landowners, and if they still want to sell at the current price I'll buy it. I am still out there actively buying timber, usually spending one or two days a week out on the road looking at tracts.

[thompsontimber]

 Stumpage still isn't that hard to come by down here either, I certainly have plenty of timber to cut.  Our problem is that we can't sell it.  Stumpage is bound to get harder to come by in this type of market though. Unfortunately, I'm seeing lots of loads of logs heading down the road to the pulp mill, and that isn't good for landowners at all.  That hardwood mill that took my logs is sitting on several hundred thousand board feet of logs right now and can't sell any lumber.  The sold none, not one stick, of oak lumber in the month of January, and they are not anticipating any orders for February, but won't know for sure until the end of next week. Clendenan has cut back to accepting 65 loads of logs per week, and rumors are floating that is gonna drop too.  Doesn't matter how many hundreds of acres of timber you have bought when you can't sell it.  And of course, you can't change stumpage rates once you buy a tract of timber, doesn't matter what the market does.  You might be able to sit on a tract for 12, 18, even 24 months...but loggers have to eat 365 days a year, and the equipment payments come due every month whether the mill is accepting loads or not.

[Tillaway]

Yep, tell me about it.  Our sale plan for 09 was about 60 million feet.  We have trimmed it back to about 25.  At current prices we would have to pay someone to take hemlock logs.  The Doug fir is near break even.  You can sell a hemlock log but there are zero mills in the area taking the Doug fir.  Hardwoods are better so we are targeting those if we can.