ya know what really irritates me?

[OLD_ JD]

the way i understant this situation is,U.S. think the stumpfee they pay for the wood is kind of "undercover" subsy but in fact most of the teritory is so far off where there no road,no town....nothing as ex: the town of lebel sur Quevillons who was built in ALL by a lumber comp .more they go far up north less they paid for the wood.in U.S. where is mostly private land whit easy acces,the price of the log is more $$ wise..
about the $$ they paid for the wood it's depend of the geo. situation more u go up less u paid,whene u open a mill the gouv.have to supply u of so manny metric cubic wood\ per year
about the wood from the U.S. here where i live ,close to the border i see several truck coming every day loaded of saw log,mostely pulp and 3 and 4 grade saw log,are mill are more efficent and that kind of log
J.D.

[Ron Wenrich]

Duramax

In an early post, you said you supported sustainable forestry.  In a later post you complained about the marking of low quality wood, and how you think that is being done to squeeze out smaller mills. 

If this sustainable thing is going to work, then you're going to have to start to take out that low grade from the woods.  That's one of the problems about having an industry try to regulate themselves.  They talk about the ideal, but have to revert to bad practices to remain in the game.  I doubt that the government is trying to force weak mills out to support bigger mills, but is marking timber in a more sustainable manner. 

We used to sell lumber to Canadian markets.  I believe a lot of it went to the export markets in Europe.  Europe isn't exactly a hot spot of activity anymore, so those markets have pretty well closed for us, for the time being. 

I know the Canadians used to come pretty far south for logs.  It was mainly oak, which was a lot more plentiful here.  Oak markets have pretty well dried up in recent years, and I don't hear too much about the Canadians buying logs.  I'm sure the trucking costs have a lot to do with it, as well.

The fall of the American dollar has probably hurt, as well.  Your lumber isn't as "cheap" as it used to be and our sawlogs continue to be at a better price. 

[Black_Bear]

Maybe being right at the border is different because you always see the trucks coming and going. When I was back in VT in early April I drove from Lyndonville to the border and passed no fewer than a dozen trucks loaded with hard and softwood logs. Like Ron said, most of the hardwood was Oak. One of the truckers I talked to last month was coming from southern NH and northern MA.

I'm sure the dried up European market and the U.S. dollar has affected the trade, but to what extent?

I think one difference here is that if you own a mill you are not dependent on the govt for much of anything except tax breaks and regs.

Old_JD, the town you wrote of sounds a lot like the towns in northern Maine. The infrastructure may be intact, but at one time roads did have to be punched in and there wasn't much govt. assistance for that.

[MemphisLogger]

How much does a sapling cost?  Sounds expensive.

The Division sells 'em by the bundles. I think it ends up working out to a few cents each. They've given thousands to our neighborhood associations to promote urban plantings after our severe storms. They're typically 1/2" to 3/4" caliper so you have to "dibble" a lot of them to get good success. My favorites are the Chinkapins and Swamp Whites.

[slowzuki]

Swampdonkey would be the best person to answer this but in New Brunswick, I think it works like this:

Crown lands - their are only a few licences to cut on crown land issued.  The big players get them as they have to have harvesting and enviromental plans made up.  The licences allows a certain harvest in certain areas and you must pay stumpage fees to the province.

No small guys get a licence.  The big players sell parts of their license to smaller mill or subcontract the harvesting.  The smaller mills also sub out the harvesting.

So basically, the only way a small outfits gets to operate on crown land is via contract work with a larger mill or forest products company.

This is bad and good.  The good part is the larger company has management plans and may supervise the work.  They don't want envirmental fines etc because they can't just go out of business to deal with it.

Bad is the small guys make no money, no incentive to work independantly of the managment plan if some areas weren't considered when prepping the plan.  No chance to harvest based on markets, it all has to be harvested in a period of time or you're fired.

So many small guys try to get private work.  Hard in NB compared to Nova Scotia as they have much more private land.

The private work can be bad and good too.  Some of the "slobber logging" happens here as the owner usually doesn't have the resources or clout to force the contractor into good practices or a good knowledge of what the practises should be.

[Ron Wenrich]

We have quite a few loggers that subcontract to bigger mills.  Most mills don't have their own logging crew thanks to workman's comp prices.

That can be OK, if you're looking for a steady paycheck; but, you're still at the mercy of the weather and other unknowns.  From a mill standpoint, they know how much they can spend on logs.  So they take that price and deduct the stumpage.  The balance goes to logging and trucking.

It works out OK if stumpage isn't too high or log prices too low.  But, everyone likes to squeeze someone else.  Mills often own the trucks, so they can only squeeze the logger.  They can do it in 2 ways - by unit price or by grade stick. 

I've known several successful independent loggers.  They make their money on marketing logs, not so much by logging.  When you subcontract, you lose that ability and the lucrative end of logging.

[slowzuki]

Another point is the government here does not provide any form of roadways to its land or maintenance, nothing. 

I've heard in the US they US Forest Service builds roads and seems to be more involved.

[duramax]

 Ron,
   
       I know it sounds rediculous that the government would try to starve a mill, but I've heard this from at least 3 different reliable sources. An engineer, a representative of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and a sawmill owner.

      As for the tree marking issue, we were already removing UGS trees (unacceptable growing stock) and no AGS trees. The percentage of trees removed went from 40% to 35% to 30% and now were at about 25%. When you start walking a feller buncher 150 feet between trees, there isn't much production. The buncher does all the work and we need to take cash from the skidders to support the cost of the buncher.  We never sacrifice the quality of our work to increase production. Most of the mills that we work for appreciate not having to pay fines, so we are in demand.  If it comes down to us ruining our reputation to make ends meet, we'll quit.

      The problem still reverts to the mills not getting the volume of logs they need to survive. We're producing more pulpwood instead of sawlogs. Untill they weed out the weaker mills, the large mills will continue to suffer as well. I also forgot to mention that this season the MNR is only issuing half of the AAC to each mill untill october. At that point, they will only issue another 20 to 30% to the mills that have completed all of thier allocated cuts. So in fact they're cutting back a total of 20% of the  overall AAC.

      Time will tell what's going to happen to the loggers from all of this.

[MemphisLogger]

Another point is the government here does not provide any form of roadways to its land or maintenance, nothing. 

I've heard in the US they US Forest Service builds roads and seems to be more involved.

This is true, Slowzuki. It is effectively a subsidy on many US Nat'l Forests.

Many landowners I know feel that there is unfair socialist market competition from some Nat'l Forest districts, particularly in the South where we have exceptionally productive growth conditions.

Private landowners who have to eat the costs of TSI and road maintenance are forced to compete for stumpage with federal managers that tally those costs in another account.

This ends up being a disincentive to manage uneven-age and many choose to crop pulp in shorter rotations for fast cash.