Urban sawmilling - make it easier!

[jsimons]

Hello all--

I'm new to the boards here, but definitely recognize some of the names on this forum from real life...

I'm working with an organization in SE Michigan to help find ways to utilize the millions of trees that have been removed due to the emerald ash borer outbreak.  We've had some success so far (www.semircd.org/ash), but are looking to expand our programs.  Here's where I need your help.

For all of your folks who have milled, or are thinking of working, in urban areas -- what would make this easier for you?  I'm not as interested in the technical milling aspects (metal in trees, etc.), but am more curious about what kinds of resources would make finding trees easier.  For example, would any of these things help?

- Having a message board where municipal foresters could list available recent "blocks" of removed trees?

- Having access to a coordinated shared log transportation system?

- Having partnerships with other local secondary wood processing businesses?  Or an organization that networks other small wood industry members (including tree service companies)?

These ideas are just to start the discussion -- I'm really interested in what you've been thinking.  We want to help support a thriving wood industry in SE Michigan.  What do you need?

I'd appreciate any feedback that you can give!

Thanks,
Jessica Simons

[farmerdoug]

Welcome aboard Jessica.  We met at the RR tie seminar.  These guys will be very helpful. ;)

Farmerdoug

[Tom]

Welcom Jessica,

I live in Florida and can't speak for the EAB program, but Urban logging and sawmillng is pretty much the same here as it is everywhere.  There are things I tried to do on my own here without too much success but will share.  These are not all inclusive but rather a start of ideas to give direction.

1.   Awareness:  One of a new sawyer's biggest problems is advertising.  There are government organizations that could help your goals as well as the sawyer's if the right people were made aware of the sawyer's existence and what he can do for the City, County or State.  Making those organizations aware and also providing them with a list of local sawyers would help everyone.
2.   Sawing Sites:  Unlike logging in the forest, Urban logging and Sawing is reactive rather than proactive.  Urban loggers and Sawyers don't usually go around knocking on doors looking for trees.  They sit back and wait for someone to have a trouble tree, or to clear a lot.  Getting Arborists and custom sawyers together would help to make sure that the wood got to the saw rather than the landfill.  Some sawing could be done on site, but, a county-approved site would get all of the "mess" in one place.  Getting approved sawing sites created may be a good idea.  Places like the county dump where an area could be designated for log disposal could create both sawing and firewood business'.   It may be that very little of the operation would ever reach the landfill, which would even save the governments money.
3.   Transportation:  Many sawyers and Urban loggers haven't the heavy equipment to transport many large logs to a place to saw.  Having a Government truck available to load and haul urban logs would benefit both industries.  Getting those logs to a "community" sawing area would save the government logistic problems and would keep the operation in one area where waste could be controlled.  Providing material handling equipment and operators would keep the number of vehicles on the site at a minimum and ease the management of the site.
4.   Dispensing of Logs: Many sawyers will have room to saw at their site. It would be in the Governments interest to deliver "select and clean" logs to any of these near-by sawing sites rather than spend the fuel to go to a landfill with all of the logs. (I'm speaking here mostly about right-of-way clearing, etc.)
5.   Government use:  The willingness of City, County and State Governments to use logs from Urban "harvest" is almost nil.  Your organization would be doing a great favor to all if it "sold" the idea  of  "use of local logs" to the Government.  Local logs could be used for dunnage, blocking, park benches, trailer decking and many other things that the Government usually sends out on bids and buy's, with tax money, from organizations outside of their bailiwick.  Part of this could be the creation or implementation of carpentry shops run by county employees or training an use of prisoners in the corrections system.
6.   Approval:   This is an important area where Urban Sawyers need a government entity on their side.  The use of wood, other than that purchased through the large corporate sawmills, has been disallowed or made difficult, by Building and Zoning departments.  An education provided to these bureaucrats as to the viability of the Urban Forest and its use would be to the advantage of the entire population.  There would have to be some easing of the requirements of graded woods and the ability of a local building department to recognize and allow the use of grade equivalents.  As it is now, the Government depends on self-regulation of the grading of lumber as its only recognition of approved material.

[oakiemac]

I agree with a lot of what Tom said. The tree services seem to vary considerably. Some say they can't give their logs away and certainly can't sell them. Around  southwest Michigan I have a hard time getting them to even sell them. They either think they are worth a fortune or they think firewood is more profitable.
Some sort of co-op truck that could load and haul logs would be the most useful thing to have.

BTW it was nice meeting you and the others at the RR seminar in whitmore lake.

[FeltzE]

Tom is on with his points.

I've found that working partnerships with local tree removal services works well but there are catches to that. . .

First, everyone is in business to make money. So working with residential removal crews means you need to save them money, labor, effort, or pay for delivery or logs to saw. I have found it difficult to generate a lasting relationship having anyone deliver me their unsaleable logs as they will stage them in the back of their wood yard till they rot rather than deliver just 5 miles to my site, that takes labor, time, and fuel. It's better to stop up and visit them and offer to pay a delivery fee and select sawable logs from the scrap pile.

Second, Coordinated timeliness. You need to have the ability to pick up logs clearing a worksite efficiently, quickly and often on short notice. A truck with hydraulic boom is optimum. Not a large log truck as it often can't get into the hard spots, and not a pickup as it won't efficiently clear even small jobs.

If you get handling equipment you can often partner with smaller tree services to effeciently help them clear their job sites taking both good timber and the bad timber at no cost but time and fuel to you.
The larger services will often have established points of sale for grade and pulp logs leaving only firewood quality or oversize logs to sawmill. Then the challange is to get saleable lumber from lumpy logs ... can you develop a market for knotty pine or knotty oak?  Critical pont here is the ability to be on site on call with little notice 5-7 days a week. You can efficiently make a small operator a lot of money by reducing his labor and waste costs that way, but you will struggle with getting useable lenghts of timber from them  often finding a 15'8 " log instead of a 16'2" that would have made length ... same goes for the 8's 10's 12's .... they paced it out, instead of measuring them... (at one time I bought ove $100 in logging tapes for the tree service guys gave them out, replaced broken ones, but it made a difference in stock length for a while.

Home owners would like to sell their trees seeing potential value of lumber from that 100 yr old oak (not seeing the carpenter ants that ruined the heart ... or that overgrown set of spikes that held the kids tree house.) I have been stopped on the road to estimate the value of logs and trees in residential settings as I picked up stock and the patent answer to the home owner is that there is no commercial value to his 2 or 3 trees, he will have to pay to have an insured trustworthy tree service drop them, and for a fee I'll pick them up or the tree service may contract me to do so, but its not cost effective to drive 20 miles across town, pick up one grade log 3 pieces of pulp and some total scrap... then pay for the privilege? no way. The timber only becomes valueable when sorted cut to length graded and in truckload quantities. (this often happens at the tree service's home yard, where they can stage several jobs until adequate saleable quantities are generated then they will haul them to the scales.


Eric

[Part_Timer]

Welcome to the forum Jessica,

   The town I live close to has a dumping site for yard waste.  Most of it is tree and yard trimmings but they also allow the dumping of trees.
    Most of the logs are cut to short to saw (firewood length) up but from time to time we are able to salvage some longer and fairly nice stuff but we have a good market for small amounts of short lumber with local woodworkers.  The rest is used by local folks for firewood.
   Once or twice a year the city comes in and shreads what ever is small enough to shread and starts a compost pile.  Anyone can come in and help themselves to whatever they can use.
   It is a nice system and works 95%of the time.  I wish that the city had a truck that could come out to local residents and pick up the logs in longer lengths and deliver them to the dump site.  That way we could make use of longer logs and open our options.

   The only trouble I have had with advertising is that once people find out that you will take logs they think that every log is good and don't understand why you won't take the rotten ones with the bird houses still attached to them.  That is why the local yard waste site is so nice, I can suggest it to them as an alternative if I can't use it.  If I come home and someone has just dropped one off in the yard I have somewhere to go with it.  



I don't know if this helps or not.  It is just what I have seen work here.

Tom

[jsimons]

Thanks for the warm welcome and for all of the great ideas.  You've all definitely confirmed some of the thoughts that we've been working through -- it seems like people are either convinced that the wood has no value (local governments) or far more than what it's really worth (homeowners). 

I appreciate all of the suggestions you offered.  I'll have to mill around (bad pun  ;D) on these for a while.  I'm especially thinking of some of the advertising/perception issues that you brought up, Tom. 

We've done considerable outreach to communities here and plan to keep building on this idea with them... we've kept lists of local sawmill services, distributed helpful USFS publications, given presentations.  Despite this, it seems that all of the players in this issue still work independently.  I've wondered lately if setting up a regional message board system would be more helpful.  If governments, tree service companies, and wood processing services had a common site they might be able to set up working partnerships more easily.  This would require a good amount of time and expense, but we would be willing if this seemed to be the most efficient option.  But, would I be recreating the wheel?  Do sites like Forestry Forum already do this just as well?  Or would hosting joint face-to-face meetings between these groups help more to foster successful relationships?  I'm just throwing out ideas here -- it's really helpful to hear from those of you "in the field" whether these things could actually be useful.

I'm glad to see so many of our training veterans around this neighborhood -- nice to talk to you again!  Not sure if you saw the posting in the education forum, but we're having a Game of Logging program in early November.  Just give me a call if you're interested.

Thanks!

[lawyer_sawyer]

Hello jsimons, welcome to the forum

your topic is of particular interest to me for a couple reasons.  One I was hoping to get some of those tress someday free hopefully  but more importantly that there seems to be a lot of waste at the municipality, city, and state level.  The state or city is paying money out of their budget to get rid of trees.  Depending on the sate or city this could be required to go to the highest bidder. The problem I see is that they are paying to get rid of so many trees in some place and then like Tom said turn around and purchase lumber for other needs.  much of the wood I have seen from my home city that is taken out is White Oak.  White Oak is very rot resistant yet it is cut up for firewood and the city buys treated wood for parks and playgrounds or even landscaping timbers for city gardens.  If you paid the same money you pay someone to take the tree away to have someone cut the trees up and make ecologically friendly material for your city you would save the city money.  I don't want to sound like I am against treated lumber but I think the cities budget would be better managed if they pursued options like these.

I like the idea and hope to hear how it goes forward.

I do not have a sawmill but am attempting to get one and if there were ways to start a service where people who needed to fill time to make money on their mills I think this could be set up to be a fair system for all involved.  maybe there would be problems with regulations I do not know.

great idea and welcome again

[beenthere]

jsimons
I applaud your efforts to go beyond the initial stages of 'effort' here, and go after removing the apparent roadblocks to succeed with the EAB problem.
Are you familiar with the person in Detroit with all the trees to 'give away' free just for removal?  
free trees

Or is this just one of many difficult hurdles to cross over?

[Tom]

If there is one single thing that needs to be attacked from inside of Government, it's the perception that the Governments purpose is to "stop" citizens from doing things.  In a country  that is proud of individual freedoms, there are a lot of "permissions" that must be attained, silviculture that is thwarted, small business' that are intimidated and closed minds at the clerk level of Zoning and Building departments.  Small business exists, not because of, but, in spite of this overbearing.  

What a wonderful change it would be if Governments had a revelation one day and decided that it really was the citizen's country and it would be more advantageous to encourage the use of local products, the development of small business, the lifting of heavy hands on agriculture and silviculture.  

It is a mind-set that has to take place from inside. Things like providing areas for the accumulation of logs, offering the availability of government equipment and operators and encouraging people to use the products would be a good start.

In our town, the County landfill collected yard trash, ground it up and started composting it.  Landscaping company's could purchase the compost and mulch at good prices.  The best thing that was done for image purposes was giving away the compost to citizens.  It was kept in piles at the front of the landfill and citizens could bring their pickups or trailers and, using their own shovels, take as much as they liked.  When it first started everyone took advantage of it.  The County Government announced it once or twice and then never again.  Now, it seems that the general population doesn't know that the product is available.  The County is not taking that opportunity to appear as if it is "working for the people".   What a shame.  What complacency.

[Furby]

jsimons,
It seems to me that even if you take the route of a message board system, you would still need to get the word out!
That I belive, was the major issue with the EAB, and would follow suit as to how you get folks together.
People would need to learn of the board, before it could be used.

The Forestry Forum does have a data base that allows people to search for sawyers, foresters and the like. Check and click the upper right corner of every page.
Just a suggestion, but perhaps if you speak with Jeff B, maybe something could be worked out to adapt an online format along those lines, or even possibly hosted by the forum in exchange for sponsorship or other advertising.....again just a thought.


A side note here:
In Michigan, we are no longer allowed to dump yard waste of any type in conventional landfills.
Just last year I was told about a place locally, run by the city where they allow for a fee, drop off of yard waste. They also haul all the city waste by way of trees and such there. For $25 you get a 15 day pass to cut "firewood" on site. Once in a while the city brings in a grinder and grinds what they can as well as make compost from leaves and clippings.
A MAJOR down side to all this is they do not allow those from outside the city in, and I'm not sure they allow larger pieces of wood to be removed, like say sawlogs. I asked at one point if they had a loader or something to pull out a log that was in the pile and was told "no, they are how they are". That would be another problem if a place were to allow sawlogs to be removed, the piles getting to big to get at some of the logs.

[MSU_Keith]

Welcome to the board Jessica -

There are several good examples of marketing models displayed here that could be applicable to the ash utilization project, check out:

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=10006.0

If the SE Michigan counties could seperately or jointly sponser an ash marketing board similar to this it might improve the utilization.  The driving force for all parties needs to be profit.  If the utilization choice is more profitable than the chipper then it will be successful.  A marshalling yard would be required and log transport probably also.  Tree services could get a small payment for calling to have sawlogs picked up or slightly larger payment for dropoff.  Local sawyers could process logs into ties or other value added products on a consignment basis - maybe even on site for those who are mobile.  Costs could be covered by the final product sales.  Unfortunately the technical aspects cannot be seperated out - from my limited knowledge and reading here the viability of this system is directly dependent on sawlog quality (as others have mentioned).

Just wondering if the ash inventory project was ever completed and if the results are publicly available?

[Kelvin]

I had actually tried to get some ash from southeast michigan, and contacted the company that got the bid to clean up and burn them all, Ashpulnd.  I was trying to get some of the logs, but unless i paid $10,000 worth, and made it worth their while ( i don't know what people who drive brand new $40k pickups consider worth their while) they didn't want to deal with us.  I got two guys together to try buy a couple of truck loads.  Nope, that wasn't good enough.  Burned them all at the biomass burner.  THe big guys get all the govt assistance.  Ashpuland gets our tax money to cut the trees, and i can't even buy them back cause i'm not big enough!  They already have their money in the bid, and they ususally pay to dispose or pay a lot in trucking.  I have a feeling that all the good logs will go to the big guys for pennies on the dollar.  WHo else can front $10k at a pop and process the logs? 
I live right in the middle of the situation.  I would like some of all these logs they are chipping and burning.  Isn't it tax payers money that is being used to cut the trees?  Are we getting the best return for our money?  Maybe i could get some logs for my share of the cost of removing them?
Maybe make the drop off sites available to small guys to pickup useable stuff without having to pay the private company, who is getting paid to collect logs, whatever money is called "worth their time".

[Tom]

Furby,

Have you ever wondered why you have to pay $25 dollars for a 15 day pass?   Taxes drive the operation anyway.  The money is already spent.  Why make citizens pay to get some of their junk back?   

It's those kinds of decisions, the kind that don't pay their way but intimidate citizens from taking advantage of an available product that is a cost to the Gov.  The city council or whomever, doesn't look at what it's going to cost to get rid of that stuff that citizens can't use.  Here they are trying to sell it.   Baffling.

[Furby]

I agree Tom, but I also figure they must have some kind of insurance to allow the on site cutting.
Still I don't like the fee.

[Todd]

Kelvin
I think the biggest problem you'll find with government or large companies is that open thinking is trouble.  Every time I try to talk to Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA,...or NoDA depending on who you ask) about utilization of eradicated Ash they claim its a legal problem, or a safety problem, or up to Ashplundh...etc.  No one in these organizations will get in trouble for doing what they've been doing, but trying somthing new could bring  trouble.  Try to go as high as you can with your concerns, while also looking for that "back door".  Persistance pays.

Jessica...welcome. About time you got here.